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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          8th February 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
  32 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
  33 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
  34 <ahref="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
  35 activity in the <ahref="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
  36 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
  37 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
  38 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
  39 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
  40 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
  41 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
  42 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
  43
  44 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
  45 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
  46 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
  47 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
  48
  49 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
  50 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
  51 distribute the TV content.  The
  52 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
  53 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
  54 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
  55 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
  56 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
  57 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
  58 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
  59 following activity, we now have the schedule
  60 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
  61 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
  62 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
  63 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
  64
  65       </div>
  66       <div class="tags">
  67
  68
  69         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
  70
  71
  72       </div>
  73     </div>
  74     <div class="padding"></div>
  75
  76     <div class="entry">
  77       <div class="title">
  78         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
  79       </div>
  80       <div class="date">
  81         12th January 2015
  82       </div>
  83       <div class="body">
  84         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
  85 Foundation</a> announced a new video
  86 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
  87 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
  88 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
  89 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
  90 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
  91 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
  92
  93 <p>But today I was told that
  94 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
  95 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
  96 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
  97 available in
  98 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
  99 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
 100 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
 101
 102 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
 103 Libreplanet
 104 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
 105 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
 106
 107       </div>
 108       <div class="tags">
 109
 110
 111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 112
 113
 114       </div>
 115     </div>
 116     <div class="padding"></div>
 117
 118     <div class="entry">
 119       <div class="title">
 120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
 121       </div>
 122       <div class="date">
 123         30th December 2014
 124       </div>
 125       <div class="body">
 126         <p>I am very happy that we in the
 127 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
 128 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
 129 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
 130 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
 131 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
 132 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
 133 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
 134 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
 135 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
 136 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
 137
 138 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
 139 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
 140 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
 141 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
 142 reports in public.</p>
 143
 144       </div>
 145       <div class="tags">
 146
 147
 148         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 149
 150
 151       </div>
 152     </div>
 153     <div class="padding"></div>
 154
 155     <div class="entry">
 156       <div class="title">
 157         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
 158       </div>
 159       <div class="date">
 160         19th December 2014
 161       </div>
 162       <div class="body">
 163         <p>So, Sony caved in
 164 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
 165 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
 166 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
 167 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
 168 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
 169 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
 170 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
 171 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
 172 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
 173 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
 174 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
 175 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
 176 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
 177
 178 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
 179 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
 180 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
 181 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
 182
 183 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
 184 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
 185 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
 186 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
 187 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
 188 income. :)</p>
 189
 190       </div>
 191       <div class="tags">
 192
 193
 194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 195
 196
 197       </div>
 198     </div>
 199     <div class="padding"></div>
 200
 201     <div class="entry">
 202       <div class="title">
 203         <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>
 204       </div>
 205       <div class="date">
 206         22nd November 2014
 207       </div>
 208       <div class="body">
 209         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
 210 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
 211 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
 212 courtesy of
 213 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
 214 Schubert</a> and
 215 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
 216 McVittie</a>.
 217
 218 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
 219 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
 220 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
 221 you upgrade:</p>
 222
 223 <p><blockquote><pre>
 224 Package: systemd-sysv
 225 Pin: release o=Debian
 226 Pin-Priority: -1
 227 </pre></blockquote><p>
 228
 229 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
 230 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
 231 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
 232 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
 233 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
 234
 235 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
 236 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
 237 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
 238 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
 239 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
 240 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
 241
 242 <p><blockquote><pre>
 243 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
 244 </pre></blockquote><p>
 245
 246 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
 247
 248 <p><blockquote><pre>
 249 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
 250 </pre></blockquote><p>
 251
 252 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
 253 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
 254
 255 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
 256 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
 257 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
 258 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
 259 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
 260 Jessie is released.</p>
 261
 262 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 263 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
 264 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
 265 line.</p>
 266
 267       </div>
 268       <div class="tags">
 269
 270
 271         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>.
 272
 273
 274       </div>
 275     </div>
 276     <div class="padding"></div>
 277
 278     <div class="entry">
 279       <div class="title">
 280         <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>
 281       </div>
 282       <div class="date">
 283         10th November 2014
 284       </div>
 285       <div class="body">
 286         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 287 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 288 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
 289
 290 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 291 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 292 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 293 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 294 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 295 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 296 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 297 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
 298 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
 299 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 300 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 301 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 302 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
 303 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
 304 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
 305
 306 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 307 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 308 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 309 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 310 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 311 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 312 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 313 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 314 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 315 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 316 were fairly easy, and
 317 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
 318 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
 319 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 320 useful approach.</p>
 321
 322 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 323 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
 324 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 325 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 326 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
 327 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 328 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 329 this:</p>
 330
 331 <p><blockquote><pre>
 332 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 333   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 334 </pre></blockquote></p>
 335
 336 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 337 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
 338
 339 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 340 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 341 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 342 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 343 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 344 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 345 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 346 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 347 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 348 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 349 system.</p>
 350
 351 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 352 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
 353 SMTorP. :)</p>
 354
 355       </div>
 356       <div class="tags">
 357
 358
 359         Tags: <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>.
 360
 361
 362       </div>
 363     </div>
 364     <div class="padding"></div>
 365
 366     <div class="entry">
 367       <div class="title">
 368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
 369       </div>
 370       <div class="date">
 371         27th October 2014
 372       </div>
 373       <div class="body">
 374         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
 375 sent out
 376 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
 377 announcement</a>:</p>
 378
 379 <pre>
 380 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
 381 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
 382
 383 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
 384 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
 385 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
 386 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
 387 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
 388 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
 389 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
 390
 391 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 392 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 393 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
 394 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
 395 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
 396 of at least 5 characters!
 397
 398  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
 399
 400 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
 401 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
 402 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
 403 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
 404 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
 405
 406 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
 407 mostly in Germany and Norway.
 408
 409 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
 410 ===============================
 411
 412 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
 413 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 414 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
 415 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 416 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 417 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 418 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 419 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
 420 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 421 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 422 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 423 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
 424 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 425 environment.
 426
 427  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
 428  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
 429
 430 Full release notes and manual
 431 =============================
 432
 433 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
 434 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
 435 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
 436 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
 437 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
 438
 439  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
 440  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
 441
 442 Where to get it
 443 ---------------
 444
 445 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
 446
 447  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
 448  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
 449  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
 450
 451 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
 452
 453 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
 454 ===============================================================================
 455
 456
 457 Installation changes
 458 --------------------
 459
 460  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
 461
 462 Software updates
 463 ----------------
 464
 465 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
 466
 467  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
 468  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
 469    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
 470    choose one of the others see manual.)
 471  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
 472  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
 473  * GOsa 2.7.4
 474  * LTSP 5.5.4
 475  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 476  * new boot framework: systemd
 477  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
 478  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 479  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 480  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
 481  * golearn 0.9
 482  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 483  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 484  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
 485    installation.
 486  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
 487    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
 488
 489  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
 490  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
 491
 492 Fixed bugs
 493 ----------
 494
 495  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 496    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 497    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
 498  * and many others.
 499
 500 Documentation and translation updates
 501 -------------------------------------
 502
 503  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
 504    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
 505    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
 506
 507 Other changes
 508 -------------
 509
 510  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
 511    server takes more time.
 512  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
 513    doesn't work.
 514
 515 Regressions / known problems
 516 ----------------------------
 517
 518  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
 519    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
 520    and Debian bug #762103).
 521  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
 522    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
 523  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
 524    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
 525    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
 526
 527 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
 528
 529  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
 530
 531 How to report bugs
 532 ------------------
 533
 534 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
 535
 536 About Debian
 537 ============
 538
 539 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 540 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 541 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 542 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 543 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 544 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 545 operating system.
 546
 547 Contact Information
 548 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
 549 mail to press@debian.org.
 550
 551  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
 552 </pre>
 553
 554       </div>
 555       <div class="tags">
 556
 557
 558         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 559
 560
 561       </div>
 562     </div>
 563     <div class="padding"></div>
 564
 565     <div class="entry">
 566       <div class="title">
 567         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
 568       </div>
 569       <div class="date">
 570         23rd October 2014
 571       </div>
 572       <div class="body">
 573         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
 574 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
 575 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
 576 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
 577 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
 578 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
 579 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
 580 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
 581 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
 582 live.</p>
 583
 584 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
 585 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
 586 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
 587 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
 588 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
 589 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
 590 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
 591 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
 592
 593       </div>
 594       <div class="tags">
 595
 596
 597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 598
 599
 600       </div>
 601     </div>
 602     <div class="padding"></div>
 603
 604     <div class="entry">
 605       <div class="title">
 606         <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>
 607       </div>
 608       <div class="date">
 609         22nd October 2014
 610       </div>
 611       <div class="body">
 612         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 613 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 614 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 615 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 616 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 617 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 618 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 619 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
 620 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 621 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 622 lists I recently took over:</p>
 623
 624 <p><blockquote><pre>
 625 % time listadmin xiph
 626 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 627 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 628
 629 real    0m1.709s
 630 user    0m0.232s
 631 sys     0m0.012s
 632 %
 633 </pre></blockquote></p>
 634
 635 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 636 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 637 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 638 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 639 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 640 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 641 program.</p>
 642
 643 <p>If you install
 644 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
 645 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
 646 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
 647
 648 <p><blockquote><pre>
 649 username username@example.org
 650 spamlevel 23
 651 default discard
 652 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
 653
 654 password secret
 655 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 656 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 657
 658 password hidden
 659 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 660 </pre></blockquote></p>
 661
 662 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 663 learn the details.</p>
 664
 665 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 666 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 667 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 668 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
 669
 670 <p><blockquote><pre>
 671 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 672 </pre></blockquote></p>
 673
 674 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 675 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 676 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 677 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 678 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 679 email.</p>
 680
 681 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 682 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 683 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 684 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 685 software.</p>
 686
 687 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 688 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 689 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 690
 691 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
 692 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
 693 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 694 sure why.</p>
 695
 696       </div>
 697       <div class="tags">
 698
 699
 700         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 701
 702
 703       </div>
 704     </div>
 705     <div class="padding"></div>
 706
 707     <div class="entry">
 708       <div class="title">
 709         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 710       </div>
 711       <div class="date">
 712         17th October 2014
 713       </div>
 714       <div class="body">
 715         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 716 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 717 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 718 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 719 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
 720 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 721 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
 722
 723 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 724 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 725 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 726 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 727 of this story.)</p>
 728
 729 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 730 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 731 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 732 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 733 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 734 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 735 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 736 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 737 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 738 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
 739
 740 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 741 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 742 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 743 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
 744
 745 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 746 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
 747
 748 <p><blockquote><pre>
 749 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 750 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 751 </pre></blockquote></p>
 752
 753 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 754 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 755 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 756 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 757 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 758 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 759 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 760 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
 761
 762 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 763 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
 764
 765 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 766 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 767 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 768 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 769 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
 770
 771 <p><blockquote><pre>
 772 Task: isenkram-packages
 773 Section: hardware
 774 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 775  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 776  proposed.
 777 Test-new-install: show show
 778 Relevance: 8
 779 Packages: for-current-hardware
 780
 781 Task: isenkram-firmware
 782 Section: hardware
 783 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 784  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 785  packages are proposed.
 786 Test-new-install: mark show
 787 Relevance: 8
 788 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 789 </pre></blockquote></p>
 790
 791 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 792 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 793 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 794 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 795 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 796
 797 <p><blockquote><pre>
 798 #!/bin/sh
 799 #
 800 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 801 export PATH
 802 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 803 </pre></blockquote></p>
 804
 805 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 806 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
 807
 808 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 809 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 810 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 811 install.</p>
 812
 813 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
 814 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 815 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
 816
 817       </div>
 818       <div class="tags">
 819
 820
 821         Tags: <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>.
 822
 823
 824       </div>
 825     </div>
 826     <div class="padding"></div>
 827
 828     <div class="entry">
 829       <div class="title">
 830         <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>
 831       </div>
 832       <div class="date">
 833          4th October 2014
 834       </div>
 835       <div class="body">
 836         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
 837 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
 838 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
 839 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
 840
 841 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
 842
 843 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
 844 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
 845 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
 846
 847       </div>
 848       <div class="tags">
 849
 850
 851         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 852
 853
 854       </div>
 855     </div>
 856     <div class="padding"></div>
 857
 858     <div class="entry">
 859       <div class="title">
 860         <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>
 861       </div>
 862       <div class="date">
 863          4th October 2014
 864       </div>
 865       <div class="body">
 866         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
 867 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
 868 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
 869 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
 870 Dibb.</p>
 871
 872 <p>I just wrapped up
 873 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
 874 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
 875 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
 876 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
 877 0.17.</p>
 878
 879 <ul>
 880
 881  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
 882  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
 883    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
 884  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
 885  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
 886  <li>Fix include orders</li>
 887  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
 888  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
 889  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
 890    the palette size is the same.</li>
 891  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
 892  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
 893  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
 894  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
 895    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
 896
 897 </ul>
 898
 899 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
 900 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
 901 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
 902
 903       </div>
 904       <div class="tags">
 905
 906
 907         Tags: <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>.
 908
 909
 910       </div>
 911     </div>
 912     <div class="padding"></div>
 913
 914     <div class="entry">
 915       <div class="title">
 916         <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>
 917       </div>
 918       <div class="date">
 919         26th September 2014
 920       </div>
 921       <div class="body">
 922         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 923 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
 924 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
 925 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
 926 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
 927 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
 928 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
 929 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
 930 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
 931 future.  The
 932 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
 933 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
 934 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
 935 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
 936 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
 937
 938 <p>First, download the test ISO via
 939 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
 940 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
 941 or rsync (use
 942 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
 943 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
 944 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
 945 install with some tweaking.</p>
 946
 947 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
 948 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
 949
 950 <p><blockquote><pre>
 951 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
 952 </pre></blockquote></p>
 953
 954 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
 955 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
 956 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
 957 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
 958
 959 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
 960 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
 961 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
 962 your need.</p>
 963
 964 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
 965 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
 966 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
 967 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
 968 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
 969 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
 970 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
 971 days.</p>
 972
 973 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
 974 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
 975 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
 976 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
 977 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
 978 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
 979 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
 980 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
 981 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
 982
 983 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
 984 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
 985 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
 986
 987       </div>
 988       <div class="tags">
 989
 990
 991         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>.
 992
 993
 994       </div>
 995     </div>
 996     <div class="padding"></div>
 997
 998     <div class="entry">
 999       <div class="title">
1000         <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>
1001       </div>
1002       <div class="date">
1003         25th September 2014
1004       </div>
1005       <div class="body">
1006         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1007 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1008 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1009 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1010 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1011 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1012 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1013 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1014 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1015 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1016 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1017 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1018 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1019
1020 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1021 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1022 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1023 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1024 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1025 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1026 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1027 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1028 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1029 list</a>. :)</p>
1030
1031       </div>
1032       <div class="tags">
1033
1034
1035         Tags: <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>.
1036
1037
1038       </div>
1039     </div>
1040     <div class="padding"></div>
1041
1042     <div class="entry">
1043       <div class="title">
1044         <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>
1045       </div>
1046       <div class="date">
1047         16th September 2014
1048       </div>
1049       <div class="body">
1050         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1051 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1052 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1053 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1054 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1055 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1056 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1057 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1058 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1059 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1060 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1061 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1062 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1063 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1064
1065 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1066 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1067 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1068 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1069 depend on the small and clever package
1070 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1071 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1072 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1073 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1074 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1075 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1076 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1077 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1078 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1079 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1080 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1081
1082 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1083 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1084 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1085 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1086 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1087 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1088 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1089 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1090 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1091 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1092 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1093 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1094 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1095 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1096 dialog.</p>
1097
1098 <p><table>
1099
1100 <tr>
1101 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1102 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1103 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1104 <th>Reduction</th>
1105 </tr>
1106
1107 <tr>
1108 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1109 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1110 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1111 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1112 </tr>
1113
1114 <tr>
1115 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1116 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1117 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1118 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1119 </tr>
1120
1121 <tr>
1122 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1123 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1124 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1125 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1126 </tr>
1127
1128 <tr>
1129 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1130 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1131 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1132 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1133 </tr>
1134
1135 <tr>
1136 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1137 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1138 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1139 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1140 </tr>
1141
1142 </table></p>
1143
1144 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1145 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1146 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1147 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1148 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1149 installed.</p>
1150
1151 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1152 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1153 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1154 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1155 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1156 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1157 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1158 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1159 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1160 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1161 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1162 for the entire installation.</p>
1163
1164 <p>I've implemented this in the
1165 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1166 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1167 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1168 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1169 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1170
1171 <p><blockquote><pre>
1172 #!/bin/sh
1173 set -e
1174 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1175 info() {
1176     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1177 }
1178 error() {
1179     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1180 }
1181 override_install() {
1182     apt-install eatmydata || true
1183     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1184         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1185             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1186             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1187             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1188                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1189                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1190                     > /target$file.edu
1191                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1192                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1193                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1194                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1195             else
1196                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1197             fi
1198         done
1199     else
1200         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1201     fi
1202 }
1203
1204 override_install
1205 </pre></blockquote></p>
1206
1207 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1208 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1209
1210 <p><blockquote><pre>
1211 #! /bin/sh -e
1212 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1213 error() {
1214     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1215 }
1216 remove_install_override() {
1217     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1218         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1219         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1220             rm /target$file
1221             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1222                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1223             rm /target$file.edu
1224         else
1225             error "Missing divert for $file."
1226         fi
1227     done
1228     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1229 }
1230
1231 remove_install_override
1232 </pre></blockquote></p>
1233
1234 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1235 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1236 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1237
1238 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1239 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1240 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1241 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1242 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1243 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1244 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1245 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1246 everyone.</p>
1247
1248 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1249 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1250 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1251 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1252
1253 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1254 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1255 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1256 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1257 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1258
1259 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1260 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1261 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1262 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1263 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1264
1265       </div>
1266       <div class="tags">
1267
1268
1269         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>.
1270
1271
1272       </div>
1273     </div>
1274     <div class="padding"></div>
1275
1276     <div class="entry">
1277       <div class="title">
1278         <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>
1279       </div>
1280       <div class="date">
1281         10th September 2014
1282       </div>
1283       <div class="body">
1284         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1285 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1286 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1287 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1288 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1289 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1290 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1291 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1292 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1293 those problems are gone now.</p>
1294
1295 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1296 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1297 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1298 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1299 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1300
1301 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1302 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1303 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1304
1305 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1306 line:</p>
1307
1308 <p><blockquote><pre>
1309 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1310 </pre></blockquote></p>
1311
1312 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1313 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1314 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1315 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1316
1317 <p><blockquote><pre>
1318 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1319 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1320 %
1321 </pre></blockquote></p>
1322
1323 <p>Now if only
1324 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1325 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1326 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1327 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1328 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1329 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1330 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1331 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1332 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1333
1334       </div>
1335       <div class="tags">
1336
1337
1338         Tags: <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>.
1339
1340
1341       </div>
1342     </div>
1343     <div class="padding"></div>
1344
1345     <div class="entry">
1346       <div class="title">
1347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
1348       </div>
1349       <div class="date">
1350         25th August 2014
1351       </div>
1352       <div class="body">
1353         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
1354 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
1355 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
1356 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
1357 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
1358 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
1359 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
1360 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
1361 am not sure.
1362 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
1363 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
1364 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
1365 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
1366 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
1367 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
1368 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
1369 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
1370 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
1371 licenses are.</p>
1372
1373 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
1374 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
1375 end user</a>
1376 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
1377 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
1378
1379 <p><blockquote>
1380 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
1381 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
1382
1383 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
1384 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
1385 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
1386 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
1387 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
1388 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
1389 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
1390 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
1391 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
1392 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
1393 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
1394 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
1395 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
1396 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
1397 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
1398 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
1399 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
1400 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
1401
1402 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
1403 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
1404
1405 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
1406 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
1407 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
1408 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
1409 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
1410 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
1411 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
1412 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
1413 </blockquote></p>
1414
1415 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
1416 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
1417
1418 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
1419 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
1420
1421 <p><blockquote>
1422
1423 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
1424 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
1425 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
1426 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
1427 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
1428 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
1429 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
1430 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
1431 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
1432 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
1433 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
1434 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
1435
1436 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
1437 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
1438 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
1439 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
1440 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
1441 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
1442 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
1443 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
1444 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
1445 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
1446 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
1447 additional details.</p>
1448
1449 </blockquote></p>
1450
1451 <p>Some free software like
1452 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
1453 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
1454 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
1455 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
1456
1457       </div>
1458       <div class="tags">
1459
1460
1461         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1462
1463
1464       </div>
1465     </div>
1466     <div class="padding"></div>
1467
1468     <div class="entry">
1469       <div class="title">
1470         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
1471       </div>
1472       <div class="date">
1473         31st July 2014
1474       </div>
1475       <div class="body">
1476         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
1477 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1478 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
1479 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
1480 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
1481 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
1482
1483 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1484
1485 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
1486 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
1487 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
1488 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
1489 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
1490 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
1491 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
1492 works with Windows . :-(</p>
1493
1494 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
1495 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
1496 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
1497 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
1498 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
1499 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
1500
1501 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1502 project?</strong></p>
1503
1504 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
1505 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
1506 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
1507 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
1508 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
1509 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
1510 with this job.</p>
1511
1512 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1513 Edu?</strong></p>
1514
1515 <p>The independence.</p>
1516
1517 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
1518 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
1519 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
1520
1521 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
1522 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
1523 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
1524 working reliable. </p>
1525
1526 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
1527 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
1528 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
1529 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
1530 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
1531 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
1532 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
1533 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
1534
1535 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1536 Edu?</strong></p>
1537
1538 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
1539 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
1540 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
1541
1542 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1543
1544 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
1545 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
1546
1547 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1548 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1549
1550 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
1551 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
1552 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
1553 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
1554 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
1555 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
1556 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
1557
1558       </div>
1559       <div class="tags">
1560
1561
1562         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1563
1564
1565       </div>
1566     </div>
1567     <div class="padding"></div>
1568
1569     <div class="entry">
1570       <div class="title">
1571         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
1572       </div>
1573       <div class="date">
1574         23rd July 2014
1575       </div>
1576       <div class="body">
1577         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
1578 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1579 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1580 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
1581 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
1582 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
1583 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
1584 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
1585 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
1586 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
1587 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
1588 the translation show this very well:</p>
1589
1590 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
1591
1592 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
1593 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1594 project pages and the
1595 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1596 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1597 and HTML version available in the
1598 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1599 directory</a>.</p>
1600
1601 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1602 you find any.</p>
1603
1604       </div>
1605       <div class="tags">
1606
1607
1608         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1609
1610
1611       </div>
1612     </div>
1613     <div class="padding"></div>
1614
1615     <div class="entry">
1616       <div class="title">
1617         <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>
1618       </div>
1619       <div class="date">
1620         17th June 2014
1621       </div>
1622       <div class="body">
1623         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1624 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1625 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1626 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1627 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1628
1629 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1630 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1631 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1632 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1633 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1634 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1635 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1636 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1637 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1638 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1639 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1640 goals.</p>
1641
1642 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1643 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1644 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1645 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1646 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1647 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1648 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1649 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1650 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1651 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1652 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1653 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1654 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1655 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1656 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1657 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1658 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1659 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1660 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1661 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1662 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1663 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1664 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1665 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1666
1667 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1668 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1669 track the English original.  For this we use the
1670 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1671 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1672 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1673 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1674 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1675 files), which the translations update with the native language
1676 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1677 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1678 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1679 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1680 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1681 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1682 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1683 of the documentation.</p>
1684
1685 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1686 recommend using
1687 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1688 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1689 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1690 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1691 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1692 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1693 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1694 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1695
1696 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1697 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1698 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1699 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1700 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1701 translated images by storing translated versions in
1702 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1703 package maintainers know more.</p>
1704
1705 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1706 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1707 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1708 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1709 PDF version</a> or the
1710 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1711 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1712 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1713
1714 <p>To learn more, check out
1715 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1716 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1717 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1718 manual on the wiki</a> and
1719 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1720 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1721
1722       </div>
1723       <div class="tags">
1724
1725
1726         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>.
1727
1728
1729       </div>
1730     </div>
1731     <div class="padding"></div>
1732
1733     <div class="entry">
1734       <div class="title">
1735         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
1736       </div>
1737       <div class="date">
1738         29th May 2014
1739       </div>
1740       <div class="body">
1741         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
1742 in my car, connected to
1743 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
1744 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
1745 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
1746 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
1747 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
1748 such car computer.</p>
1749
1750 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
1751
1752 <ul>
1753
1754  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
1755
1756  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
1757    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
1758    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
1759    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
1760    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
1761
1762  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
1763    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
1764    route.</li>
1765
1766  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
1767
1768  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
1769    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
1770    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
1771    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
1772    connection do not work.</li>
1773
1774  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
1775    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
1776
1777  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
1778    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
1779
1780  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
1781    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
1782
1783 </ul>
1784
1785 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
1786 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
1787
1788       </div>
1789       <div class="tags">
1790
1791
1792         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1793
1794
1795       </div>
1796     </div>
1797     <div class="padding"></div>
1798
1799     <div class="entry">
1800       <div class="title">
1801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
1802       </div>
1803       <div class="date">
1804         29th April 2014
1805       </div>
1806       <div class="body">
1807         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
1808 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
1809 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
1810 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
1811 newer AVM2 format - see
1812 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
1813 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
1814 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
1815 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
1816 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
1817 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
1818 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
1819 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
1820 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
1821 sites do not work yet.</p>
1822
1823 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
1824 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
1825 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
1826 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
1827 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
1828 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
1829 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
1830 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
1831 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
1832 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
1833 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
1834
1835 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
1836 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
1837 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
1838 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
1839 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
1840 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
1841 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
1842
1843 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
1844 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
1845 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
1846 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
1847 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
1848
1849       </div>
1850       <div class="tags">
1851
1852
1853         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1854
1855
1856       </div>
1857     </div>
1858     <div class="padding"></div>
1859
1860     <div class="entry">
1861       <div class="title">
1862         <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>
1863       </div>
1864       <div class="date">
1865         23rd April 2014
1866       </div>
1867       <div class="body">
1868         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1869 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1870 So I implemented one, using
1871 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
1872 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1873 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
1874 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
1875 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1876 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
1877
1878 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1879 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1880 packages to install.  The first part is in
1881 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
1882 this:</p>
1883
1884 <p><blockquote><pre>
1885 Task: isenkram
1886 Section: hardware
1887 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1888  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1889  proposed.
1890 Test-new-install: mark show
1891 Relevance: 8
1892 Packages: for-current-hardware
1893 </pre></blockquote></p>
1894
1895 <p>The second part is in
1896 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
1897 this:</p>
1898
1899 <p><blockquote><pre>
1900 #!/bin/sh
1901 #
1902 (
1903     isenkram-lookup
1904     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1905 ) | sort -u
1906 </pre></blockquote></p>
1907
1908 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1909 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1910 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
1911 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1912 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
1913 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
1914
1915 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1916 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1917 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1918 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
1919 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1920 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
1921 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
1922 the python-apt code (bug
1923 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
1924 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1925 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1926 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
1927 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
1928 unstable today.</p>
1929
1930 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1931 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1932 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
1933 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1934 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
1935 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
1936 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
1937 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1938 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
1939
1940 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1941 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
1942 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
1943 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1944 package.  See also
1945 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
1946 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
1947 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1948 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
1949
1950       </div>
1951       <div class="tags">
1952
1953
1954         Tags: <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>.
1955
1956
1957       </div>
1958     </div>
1959     <div class="padding"></div>
1960
1961     <div class="entry">
1962       <div class="title">
1963         <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>
1964       </div>
1965       <div class="date">
1966         15th April 2014
1967       </div>
1968       <div class="body">
1969         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1970 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1971 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1972 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1973 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
1974 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
1975
1976 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1977 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
1978 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1979 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
1980 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1981 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1982 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
1983
1984 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1985 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
1986 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
1987 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
1988 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
1989 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
1990 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
1991 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
1992 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1993 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1994 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
1995 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
1996
1997 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1998 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1999 become root:</p>
2000
2001 <p><pre>
2002 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2003   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2004   u-boot-tools
2005 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2006   freedom-maker
2007 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2008 </pre></p>
2009
2010 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2011 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2012 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2013 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2014 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2015 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2016 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2017 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2018
2019 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2020 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2021 the preseed values:</p>
2022
2023 <p><pre>
2024 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2025 </pre></p>
2026
2027 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2028 it still work.</p>
2029
2030 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2031 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2032 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2033 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2034 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2035 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2036 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2037
2038 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2039 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2040 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2041 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2042 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2043 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2044
2045       </div>
2046       <div class="tags">
2047
2048
2049         Tags: <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>.
2050
2051
2052       </div>
2053     </div>
2054     <div class="padding"></div>
2055
2056     <div class="entry">
2057       <div class="title">
2058         <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>
2059       </div>
2060       <div class="date">
2061          9th April 2014
2062       </div>
2063       <div class="body">
2064         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2065 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2066 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2067 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2068 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2069 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2070 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2071 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2072 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2073 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2074 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2075 have looked at a system called
2076 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2077 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2078
2079 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2080 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2081 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2082 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2083 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2084 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2085 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2086 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2087 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2088 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2089 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2090 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2091 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2092
2093 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2094 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2095 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2096 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2097 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2098 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2099 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2100 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2101 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2102 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2103 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2104 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2105 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2106 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2107 account.</p>
2108
2109 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2110 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2111 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2112 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2113 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2114 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2115 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2116
2117 <p><blockquote><pre>
2118 [s3c]
2119 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2120 backend-login: API-login
2121 backend-password: API-password
2122 fs-passphrase: local-password
2123 </pre></blockquote></p>
2124
2125 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2126 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2127 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2128 details and password to create it:</p>
2129
2130 <p><blockquote><pre>
2131 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2132 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2133   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2134 Enter backend login:
2135 Enter backend password:
2136 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2137 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2138 Enter encryption password:
2139 Confirm encryption password:
2140 Generating random encryption key...
2141 Creating metadata tables...
2142 Dumping metadata...
2143 ..objects..
2144 ..blocks..
2145 ..inodes..
2146 ..inode_blocks..
2147 ..symlink_targets..
2148 ..names..
2149 ..contents..
2150 ..ext_attributes..
2151 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2152 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2153 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2154
2155 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2156
2157 <p><blockquote><pre>
2158 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2159   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2160 Using 4 upload threads.
2161 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2162 Reading metadata...
2163 ..objects..
2164 ..blocks..
2165 ..inodes..
2166 ..inode_blocks..
2167 ..symlink_targets..
2168 ..names..
2169 ..contents..
2170 ..ext_attributes..
2171 Mounting filesystem...
2172 # df -h /s3ql
2173 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2174 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2175 #
2176 </pre></blockquote></p>
2177
2178 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2179 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2180 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2181 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2182 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2183 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2184
2185 <p><blockquote><pre>
2186 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2187 #
2188 </pre></blockquote></p>
2189
2190 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2191 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2192 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2193 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2194 file system:</p>
2195
2196 <p><blockquote><pre>
2197 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2198 Using cached metadata.
2199 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2200 Checking DB integrity...
2201 Creating temporary extra indices...
2202 Checking lost+found...
2203 Checking cached objects...
2204 Checking names (refcounts)...
2205 Checking contents (names)...
2206 Checking contents (inodes)...
2207 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2208 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2209 Checking objects (backend)...
2210 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2211 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2212 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2213 Checking objects (sizes)...
2214 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2215 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2216 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2217 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2218 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2219 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2220 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2221 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2222 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2223 Checking directory reachability...
2224 Checking unix conventions...
2225 Checking referential integrity...
2226 Dropping temporary indices...
2227 Backing up old metadata...
2228 Dumping metadata...
2229 ..objects..
2230 ..blocks..
2231 ..inodes..
2232 ..inode_blocks..
2233 ..symlink_targets..
2234 ..names..
2235 ..contents..
2236 ..ext_attributes..
2237 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2238 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2239 #
2240 </pre></blockquote></p>
2241
2242 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2243 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2244 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2245 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2246 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2247 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2248 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2249 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2250 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2251 working set.</p>
2252
2253 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2254 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2255 busy:</p>
2256
2257 <p><blockquote><pre>
2258 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2259   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2260 Using 8 upload threads.
2261 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2262 #
2263 </pre></blockquote></p>
2264
2265 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2266 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2267 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2268 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2269 s3qlctrl:
2270
2271 <p><blockquote><pre>
2272 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2273 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2274 #
2275 </pre></blockquote></p>
2276
2277 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2278 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2279 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2280 a report:</p>
2281
2282 <p><blockquote><pre>
2283 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2284 Directory entries:    9141
2285 Inodes:               9143
2286 Data blocks:          8851
2287 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2288 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2289 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2290 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2291 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2292 #
2293 </pre></blockquote></p>
2294
2295 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2296 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2297 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2298 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2299 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2300 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2301 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2302 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2303 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2304 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2305 best.</p>
2306
2307 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2308 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2309 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2310 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2311 poster is titled
2312 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2313 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2314 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2315 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2316 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2317
2318 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2319 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2320 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2321 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2323 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2324 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2325 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2326
2327 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2328 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2329 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2330 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2331 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2332 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2333 only read from it.</p>
2334
2335 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2336 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2337 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2338
2339       </div>
2340       <div class="tags">
2341
2342
2343         Tags: <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>.
2344
2345
2346       </div>
2347     </div>
2348     <div class="padding"></div>
2349
2350     <div class="entry">
2351       <div class="title">
2352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
2353       </div>
2354       <div class="date">
2355          1st April 2014
2356       </div>
2357       <div class="body">
2358         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
2359 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
2360 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
2361 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
2362 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
2363 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
2364 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
2365 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
2366 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
2367 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
2368 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
2369 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
2370 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
2371
2372 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
2373 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
2374 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
2375 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
2376 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
2377 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
2378 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
2379 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
2380 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
2381 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
2382 Linux.</p>
2383
2384 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
2385 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
2386 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
2387 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
2388 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
2389 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
2390 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
2391 Windows before metro).</p>
2392
2393 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
2394 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
2395 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
2396 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
2397 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
2398 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
2399 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
2400 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
2401 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
2402 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
2403 old Windows binaries, check it out by
2404 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
2405 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
2406 image.</p>
2407
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="tags">
2410
2411
2412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
2413
2414
2415       </div>
2416     </div>
2417     <div class="padding"></div>
2418
2419     <div class="entry">
2420       <div class="title">
2421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
2422       </div>
2423       <div class="date">
2424         30th March 2014
2425       </div>
2426       <div class="body">
2427         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2428 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
2429 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
2430 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
2431 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
2432
2433 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2434
2435 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
2436 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
2437 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
2438 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
2439 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
2440
2441 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
2442 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
2443 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
2444
2445 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
2446 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
2447 hunger.</p>
2448
2449 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2450 project?</strong></p>
2451
2452 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
2453 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
2454 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
2455 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
2456 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
2457 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
2458 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
2459 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
2460 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
2461 running.  I just loved it.</p>
2462
2463 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2464 Edu?</strong></p>
2465
2466 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
2467 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
2468 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
2469 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
2470 be made of steel.</p>
2471
2472 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2473 Edu?</strong></p>
2474
2475 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
2476
2477 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
2478 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
2479 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
2480 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
2481 or dropped.</p>
2482
2483 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
2484 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
2485 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
2486 discourage many people too.</p>
2487
2488 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2489
2490 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
2491 Virtualbox.</p>
2492
2493
2494 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2495 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2496
2497 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
2498 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
2499 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
2500 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
2501 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
2502 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
2503 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
2504 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
2505 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
2506
2507       </div>
2508       <div class="tags">
2509
2510
2511         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2512
2513
2514       </div>
2515     </div>
2516     <div class="padding"></div>
2517
2518     <div class="entry">
2519       <div class="title">
2520         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
2521       </div>
2522       <div class="date">
2523         25th March 2014
2524       </div>
2525       <div class="body">
2526         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
2527 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
2528 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
2529 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
2530 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
2531 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
2532 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
2533 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
2534 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
2535
2536 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
2537 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
2538 looked a given way.  Such
2539 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
2540 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
2541 called a
2542 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
2543 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
2544 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
2545 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
2546 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
2547 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
2548 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
2549 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
2550 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
2551 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
2552 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
2553 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
2554 There are several commercial services around providing such
2555 timestamping.  A quick search for
2556 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
2557 service</a>" pointed me to at least
2558 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
2559 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
2560 Vadis</a>,
2561 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
2562 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
2563 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
2564 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
2565
2566 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
2567 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
2568 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
2569 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
2570 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
2571 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
2572 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
2573 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
2574 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
2575 Greifswald.</p>
2576
2577 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
2578 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
2579 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
2580 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
2581 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
2582
2583 <p><blockquote><pre>
2584 #!/bin/sh
2585 set -e
2586 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
2587 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
2588 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
2589 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
2590 cafile=chain.txt
2591 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
2592     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
2593 fi
2594 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
2595     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
2596 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
2597 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
2598 base64 < "$resfile"
2599 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
2600 </pre></blockquote></p>
2601
2602 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
2603 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
2604 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
2605 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
2606 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
2607 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
2608 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
2609 changed.</p>
2610
2611 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
2612 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
2613 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
2614 to set up?</p>
2615
2616       </div>
2617       <div class="tags">
2618
2619
2620         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2621
2622
2623       </div>
2624     </div>
2625     <div class="padding"></div>
2626
2627     <div class="entry">
2628       <div class="title">
2629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
2630       </div>
2631       <div class="date">
2632         21st March 2014
2633       </div>
2634       <div class="body">
2635         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
2636 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
2637 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
2638 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
2639 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
2640 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
2641 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
2642
2643 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
2644 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
2645 tried using
2646 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
2647 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
2648 and program
2649 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
2650 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
2651 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
2652 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
2653 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
2654 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
2655 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
2656 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
2657 this method.</p>
2658
2659 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
2660 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
2661 problem is
2662 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
2663 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
2664 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
2665 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
2666 DVD structures, as the python library
2667 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
2668 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
2669 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
2670 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
2671 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
2672 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
2673
2674 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
2675 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
2676
2677       </div>
2678       <div class="tags">
2679
2680
2681         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2682
2683
2684       </div>
2685     </div>
2686     <div class="padding"></div>
2687
2688     <div class="entry">
2689       <div class="title">
2690         <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>
2691       </div>
2692       <div class="date">
2693         14th March 2014
2694       </div>
2695       <div class="body">
2696         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2697 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2698 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2699 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2700 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2701 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2702 release (0.2).</p>
2703
2704 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2705 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2706 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2707 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2708 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2709 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2710 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2711 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2712 and build using
2713 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2714 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2715
2716 <pre>
2717 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2718   freedom-maker
2719 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2720   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2721   u-boot-tools
2722 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2723 </pre>
2724
2725 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2726 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2727 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2728 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2729 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2730 kpartx call.</p>
2731
2732 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2733 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2734 the preseed values:</p>
2735
2736 <pre>
2737 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2738 </pre>
2739
2740 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2741 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2742 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2743 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2744 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2745 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2746
2747 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2748 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2749 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2750 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2751 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2752 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2753
2754       </div>
2755       <div class="tags">
2756
2757
2758         Tags: <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>.
2759
2760
2761       </div>
2762     </div>
2763     <div class="padding"></div>
2764
2765     <div class="entry">
2766       <div class="title">
2767         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2768       </div>
2769       <div class="date">
2770         12th March 2014
2771       </div>
2772       <div class="body">
2773         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
2774 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
2775 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
2776 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
2777 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
2778 document this better when one of the customers of
2779 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
2780 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
2781 get this working are the following:</p>
2782
2783 <p><ol>
2784
2785 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
2786 example host here.</li>
2787
2788 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
2789 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
2790
2791 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
2792 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
2793
2794 </ol></p>
2795
2796 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
2797 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
2798 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
2799 started).</p>
2800
2801 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
2802 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
2803
2804 <p><blockquote><pre>
2805 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
2806 Export list for nas-server:
2807 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
2808 root@tjener:~#
2809 </pre></blockquote></p>
2810
2811 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
2812 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
2813 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
2814 NFS access.</p>
2815
2816 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
2817 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
2818 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
2819
2820 <p><blockquote><pre>
2821 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2822 </pre></blockquote></p>
2823
2824 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
2825 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
2826 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
2827 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
2828
2829 <p><blockquote><pre>
2830 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2831 objectClass: automount
2832 cn: nas-server
2833 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2834
2835 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2836 objectClass: top
2837 objectClass: automountMap
2838 ou: auto.nas-server
2839
2840 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2841 objectClass: automount
2842 cn: /
2843 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
2844 </pre></blockquote></p>
2845
2846 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
2847 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
2848 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
2849
2850 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
2851 the storage server directly by just visiting the
2852 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
2853 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
2854
2855       </div>
2856       <div class="tags">
2857
2858
2859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
2860
2861
2862       </div>
2863     </div>
2864     <div class="padding"></div>
2865
2866     <div class="entry">
2867       <div class="title">
2868         <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>
2869       </div>
2870       <div class="date">
2871         22nd February 2014
2872       </div>
2873       <div class="body">
2874         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2875 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2876 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
2877 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2878 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2879 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2880 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2881 proper home since then.</p>
2882
2883 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2884 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2885 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2886 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
2887 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
2888
2889 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2890 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2891 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2892 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
2893 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2894 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
2895 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
2896 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
2897 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
2898
2899       </div>
2900       <div class="tags">
2901
2902
2903         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2904
2905
2906       </div>
2907     </div>
2908     <div class="padding"></div>
2909
2910     <div class="entry">
2911       <div class="title">
2912         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
2913       </div>
2914       <div class="date">
2915          3rd February 2014
2916       </div>
2917       <div class="body">
2918         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2919 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2920 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
2921 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2922 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2923 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
2924 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2925 <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>,
2926 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
2927
2928 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2929 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
2930 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2931 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
2932 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2933 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
2934
2935 <p><blockquote><pre>
2936 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2937 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2938 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2939 dhclient /dev/eth0
2940 </pre></blockquote></p>
2941
2942 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2943 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2944 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2945
2946 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2947 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2948 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2949 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2950 side.</p>
2951
2952 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2953 stuff:</p>
2954
2955 <p><blockquote><pre>
2956 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2957 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2958 EOF
2959 apt-get update
2960 apt-get dist-upgrade
2961 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2962     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2963 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2964 </pre></blockquote></p>
2965
2966 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2967 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2968 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2969 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2970 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2971 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2972 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2973 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2974 ssh instead.
2975
2976 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2977 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2978 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2979 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2980 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2981 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2982
2983 <p><blockquote><pre>
2984 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2985 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2986 EOF
2987 </pre></blockquote></p>
2988
2989 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2990 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2991 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2992 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2993
2994 <p><blockquote><pre>
2995 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2996 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2997 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2998 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2999 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
3000 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
3001 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
3002 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
3003 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
3004 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
3005 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
3006 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
3007 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
3008 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
3009 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
3010 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
3011 #
3012 </pre></blockquote></p>
3013
3014 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
3015 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
3016 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
3017 command line stuff.<p>
3018
3019       </div>
3020       <div class="tags">
3021
3022
3023         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>.
3024
3025
3026       </div>
3027     </div>
3028     <div class="padding"></div>
3029
3030     <div class="entry">
3031       <div class="title">
3032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
3033       </div>
3034       <div class="date">
3035         29th January 2014
3036       </div>
3037       <div class="body">
3038         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
3039 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
3040 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
3041 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
3042 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
3043 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
3044 investigated in
3045 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
3046 from December 2013, in the article
3047 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
3048 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
3049 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
3050 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
3051 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
3052 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
3053 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
3054 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
3055
3056 <p><blockquote>
3057 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
3058 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
3059 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
3060 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
3061 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
3062 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
3063 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
3064 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
3065 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
3066 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
3067 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
3068 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
3069
3070 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
3071 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
3072 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
3073 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
3074 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
3075 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
3076 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
3077 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
3078 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
3079 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
3080 </blockquote><p>
3081
3082 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
3083 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
3084 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
3085 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
3086 summarized like this:</p>
3087
3088 <p><blockquote>
3089 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
3090 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
3091 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
3092 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
3093 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
3094 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
3095 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
3096 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
3097 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
3098 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
3099 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
3100 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
3101 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
3102 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
3103 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
3104 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
3105 </blockquote></p>
3106
3107 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
3108 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
3109 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
3110 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
3111
3112 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3113 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3114 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3115
3116       </div>
3117       <div class="tags">
3118
3119
3120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
3121
3122
3123       </div>
3124     </div>
3125     <div class="padding"></div>
3126
3127     <div class="entry">
3128       <div class="title">
3129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
3130       </div>
3131       <div class="date">
3132         14th January 2014
3133       </div>
3134       <div class="body">
3135         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
3136 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
3137 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
3138 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
3139 the source.  The company behind it provide
3140 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
3141 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
3142 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
3143 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
3144 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
3145 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
3146 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
3147 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
3148 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
3149 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
3150 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
3151 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
3152 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
3153 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
3154 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
3155 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
3156 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
3157 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
3158 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
3159
3160 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
3161
3162 <ul>
3163
3164   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
3165   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
3166   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
3167
3168 </ul>
3169
3170 <p>You can
3171 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3172 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3173 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3174 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3175 include a test suite check.</p>
3176
3177       </div>
3178       <div class="tags">
3179
3180
3181         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>.
3182
3183
3184       </div>
3185     </div>
3186     <div class="padding"></div>
3187
3188     <div class="entry">
3189       <div class="title">
3190         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
3191       </div>
3192       <div class="date">
3193         25th December 2013
3194       </div>
3195       <div class="body">
3196         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3197 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
3198 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
3199 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
3200 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
3201 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
3202 George</a>.</p>
3203
3204 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
3205
3206 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3207
3208 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
3209 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
3210 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
3211 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
3212 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
3213 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
3214
3215 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
3216 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
3217 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
3218 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
3219 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
3220 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
3221 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
3222 to help building another school's informational education concept from
3223 scratch.</p>
3224
3225 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
3226 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
3227 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
3228
3229 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
3230 and cycling.</p>
3231
3232 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3233 project?</strong></p>
3234
3235 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
3236 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
3237 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
3238 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
3239 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
3240 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
3241
3242 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
3243 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
3244 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
3245 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
3246 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
3247 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
3248 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
3249 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
3250 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
3251
3252 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
3253 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
3254 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
3255 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
3256
3257 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3258 Edu?</strong></p>
3259
3260 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
3261 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
3262 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
3263 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
3264 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
3265 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
3266 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
3267 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
3268 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
3269 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
3270 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
3271 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
3272 that it rocks!</p>
3273
3274 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
3275 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
3276 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
3277 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
3278 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
3279 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
3280 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
3281
3282 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3283 Edu?</strong></p>
3284
3285 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
3286 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
3287 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
3288 can list a few points about that:</p>
3289
3290 <ul>
3291
3292  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
3293  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
3294  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
3295
3296 </ul>
3297
3298 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
3299
3300 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3301
3302 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
3303 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
3304 year.</p>
3305
3306 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
3307 run text tools. I use
3308 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
3309 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
3310 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
3311 based full-featured student management software with the two),
3312 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
3313 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
3314 coloured world called the WWW, I use
3315 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
3316 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
3317 e-mail.</p>
3318
3319 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
3320 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
3321 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
3322 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
3323 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
3324 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
3325 Facebook now ;).</p>
3326
3327 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3328 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3329
3330 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
3331 side is what I have experienced.</p>
3332
3333 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
3334 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
3335 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
3336 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
3337 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
3338 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
3339 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
3340 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
3341 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
3342 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
3343 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
3344 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
3345 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
3346 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
3347 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
3348 plain criminal.</p>
3349
3350 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
3351 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
3352 founded an association named
3353 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
3354 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
3355 area of free and open source software, for example the
3356 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
3357 Teckids and are the youth programme of
3358 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
3359 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
3360 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
3361 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
3362 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
3363 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
3364
3365 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
3366 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
3367 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
3368 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
3369 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
3370 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
3371 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
3372 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
3373 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
3374 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
3375 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
3376 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
3377
3378 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
3379 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
3380 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
3381 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
3382
3383 <!--
3384
3385 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
3386
3387 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
3388 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
3389
3390  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
3391    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
3392    of the decision makers above;
3393  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
3394    knowledge about free software
3395
3396 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
3397
3398 -->
3399
3400       </div>
3401       <div class="tags">
3402
3403
3404         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
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/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
3414       </div>
3415       <div class="date">
3416          6th December 2013
3417       </div>
3418       <div class="body">
3419         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
3420 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3421 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
3422 had a new school administrator show up on
3423 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
3424 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
3425 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
3426 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
3427 Germany a few years ago.</p>
3428
3429 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3430
3431 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
3432 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
3433 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
3434 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
3435
3436 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
3437 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
3438 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
3439 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
3440 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
3441 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
3442 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
3443 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
3444 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
3445
3446 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3447 project?</strong></p>
3448
3449 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
3450 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
3451 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
3452 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
3453
3454 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3455 Edu?</strong></p>
3456
3457 <ul>
3458   <li>Quick installation,</li>
3459   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
3460   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
3461   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
3462     single company,</li>
3463   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
3464     experience and problem solutions.</li>
3465 </ul>
3466
3467 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3468 Edu?</strong></p>
3469
3470 <ul>
3471   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
3472   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
3473   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
3474   working again reliably.
3475
3476   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
3477   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
3478   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
3479   as their base.
3480
3481   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
3482   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
3483   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
3484   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
3485   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
3486   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
3487
3488   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
3489   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
3490   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
3491   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
3492   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
3493   schemes.</li>
3494
3495   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
3496   compared to Debian.</li>
3497
3498 </ul>
3499
3500 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
3501 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
3502 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
3503 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
3504
3505 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3506
3507 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
3508 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
3509 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
3510 programming languages for teaching.</p>
3511
3512 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3513 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3514
3515 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
3516
3517 <ul>
3518
3519   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
3520     teaching and learning.</li>
3521
3522   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
3523     home, and at their working place without running into license or
3524     conversion problems.</li>
3525
3526   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
3527     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
3528     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
3529     science, not products.</li>
3530
3531   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
3532     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
3533
3534 </ul>
3535
3536       </div>
3537       <div class="tags">
3538
3539
3540         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3541
3542
3543       </div>
3544     </div>
3545     <div class="padding"></div>
3546
3547     <div class="entry">
3548       <div class="title">
3549         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
3550       </div>
3551       <div class="date">
3552         30th November 2013
3553       </div>
3554       <div class="body">
3555         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
3556 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
3557 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
3558 experiment with interesting network technology, the
3559 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
3560 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
3561 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
3562 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
3563 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
3564 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
3565 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
3566 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
3567 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
3568 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
3569 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
3570 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
3571 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
3572 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
3573 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
3574 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
3575
3576       </div>
3577       <div class="tags">
3578
3579
3580         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3581
3582
3583       </div>
3584     </div>
3585     <div class="padding"></div>
3586
3587     <div class="entry">
3588       <div class="title">
3589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
3590       </div>
3591       <div class="date">
3592         24th November 2013
3593       </div>
3594       <div class="body">
3595         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
3596 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
3597 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
3598 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
3599 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
3600 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
3601 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
3602 is working on.  I checked the
3603 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
3604 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
3605 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
3606 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
3607 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
3608 These are the release notes:</p>
3609
3610 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
3611
3612 <ul>
3613
3614   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3615    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3616    up.</li>
3617
3618   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
3619
3620   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3621    Matthias Klose.</li>
3622
3623   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3624    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
3625
3626   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3627    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
3628    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
3629
3630 </ul>
3631
3632 <p>You can
3633 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3634 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3635 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3636 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3637 include a testsuite check.</p>
3638
3639       </div>
3640       <div class="tags">
3641
3642
3643         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>.
3644
3645
3646       </div>
3647     </div>
3648     <div class="padding"></div>
3649
3650     <div class="entry">
3651       <div class="title">
3652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
3653       </div>
3654       <div class="date">
3655         21st November 2013
3656       </div>
3657       <div class="body">
3658         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
3659 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
3660 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
3661 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
3662 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
3663 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
3664 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
3665 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
3666 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
3667 TED talk
3668 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
3669 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
3670 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
3671
3672 <blockquote>
3673
3674 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
3675 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
3676 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
3677 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
3678 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
3679 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
3680 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
3681 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
3682 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
3683 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
3684 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
3685
3686 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
3687 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
3688 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
3689
3690 </blockquote>
3691
3692 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
3693 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
3694 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
3695 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
3696 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
3697 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
3698 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
3699 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
3700 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
3701
3702       </div>
3703       <div class="tags">
3704
3705
3706         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3707
3708
3709       </div>
3710     </div>
3711     <div class="padding"></div>
3712
3713     <div class="entry">
3714       <div class="title">
3715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
3716       </div>
3717       <div class="date">
3718         13th November 2013
3719       </div>
3720       <div class="body">
3721         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
3722 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
3723 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
3724 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
3725 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
3726 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
3727 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
3728 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
3729 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
3730 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
3731 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
3732 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
3733 right away. :)</p>
3734
3735       </div>
3736       <div class="tags">
3737
3738
3739         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3740
3741
3742       </div>
3743     </div>
3744     <div class="padding"></div>
3745
3746     <div class="entry">
3747       <div class="title">
3748         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
3749       </div>
3750       <div class="date">
3751         10th November 2013
3752       </div>
3753       <div class="body">
3754         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
3755 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
3756 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
3757 MR3040 as a mesh node using
3758 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
3759
3760 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
3761 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
3762 and downloaded
3763 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
3764 recommended firmware image</a>
3765 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
3766 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
3767 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
3768 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
3769 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
3770
3771 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
3772 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
3773 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
3774 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
3775 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
3776 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
3777 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
3778 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
3779 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
3780 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
3781 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
3782 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
3783 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
3784
3785 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
3786 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
3787 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
3788 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
3789 them:</p>
3790
3791 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
3792
3793 <pre>
3794
3795 config interface 'loopback'
3796         option ifname 'lo'
3797         option proto 'static'
3798         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
3799         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
3800
3801 config globals 'globals'
3802         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
3803
3804 config interface 'lan'
3805         option ifname 'eth0'
3806         option type 'bridge'
3807         option proto 'dhcp'
3808         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
3809         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
3810         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
3811         option ip6assign '60'
3812
3813 config interface 'mesh'
3814         option ifname 'adhoc0'
3815         option mtu '1528'
3816         option proto 'batadv'
3817         option mesh 'bat0'
3818 </pre>
3819
3820 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
3821 <pre>
3822
3823 config wifi-device 'radio0'
3824         option type 'mac80211'
3825         option channel '11'
3826         option hwmode '11ng'
3827         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
3828         option htmode 'HT20'
3829         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
3830         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
3831         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
3832         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
3833         option disabled '0'
3834
3835 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
3836         option device 'radio0'
3837         option ifname 'adhoc0'
3838         option network 'mesh'
3839         option encryption 'none'
3840         option mode 'adhoc'
3841         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
3842         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
3843 </pre>
3844 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
3845 <pre>
3846
3847 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
3848         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
3849         option 'aggregated_ogms'
3850         option 'ap_isolation'
3851         option 'bonding'
3852         option 'fragmentation'
3853         option 'gw_bandwidth'
3854         option 'gw_mode'
3855         option 'gw_sel_class'
3856         option 'log_level'
3857         option 'orig_interval'
3858         option 'vis_mode'
3859         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
3860         option 'distributed_arp_table'
3861         option 'network_coding'
3862         option 'hop_penalty'
3863
3864 # yet another batX instance
3865 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
3866 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
3867 </pre>
3868
3869 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
3870 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
3871 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
3872
3873       </div>
3874       <div class="tags">
3875
3876
3877         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3878
3879
3880       </div>
3881     </div>
3882     <div class="padding"></div>
3883
3884     <div class="entry">
3885       <div class="title">
3886         <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>
3887       </div>
3888       <div class="date">
3889          2nd November 2013
3890       </div>
3891       <div class="body">
3892         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
3893 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
3894 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
3895 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
3896 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
3897
3898 <p><pre>
3899 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
3900 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
3901 # Provides:          rsyslog
3902 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
3903 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
3904 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
3905 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
3906 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
3907 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
3908 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
3909 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
3910 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
3911 ### END INIT INFO
3912 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
3913 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
3914 </pre></p>
3915
3916 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3917 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
3918 info/comments.</p>
3919
3920 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
3921 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3922
3923 <p><pre>
3924 #!/bin/sh
3925
3926 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3927 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
3928 # and status_of_proc is working.
3929 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3930
3931 #
3932 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3933
3934 #
3935 do_start()
3936 {
3937         # Return
3938         #   0 if daemon has been started
3939         #   1 if daemon was already running
3940         #   2 if daemon could not be started
3941         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
3942                 || return 1
3943         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3944                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
3945                 || return 2
3946         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3947         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3948         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3949 }
3950
3951 #
3952 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3953 #
3954 do_stop()
3955 {
3956         # Return
3957         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
3958         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
3959         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
3960         #   other if a failure occurred
3961         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3962         RETVAL="$?"
3963         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
3964         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3965         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3966         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3967         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3968         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
3969         # sleep for some time.
3970         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
3971         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
3972         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3973         rm -f $PIDFILE
3974         return "$RETVAL"
3975 }
3976
3977 #
3978 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3979 #
3980 do_reload() {
3981         #
3982         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3983         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3984         # then implement that here.
3985         #
3986         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3987         return 0
3988 }
3989
3990 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3991 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
3992 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3993 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3994     script="$1"
3995     shift
3996     . $script
3997 else
3998     exit 0
3999 fi
4000
4001 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
4002 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
4003
4004 # Exit if the package is not installed
4005 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
4006
4007 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
4008 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
4009
4010 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
4011 . /lib/init/vars.sh
4012
4013 case "$1" in
4014   start)
4015         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
4016         do_start
4017         case "$?" in
4018                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4019                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4020         esac
4021         ;;
4022   stop)
4023         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
4024         do_stop
4025         case "$?" in
4026                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4027                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4028         esac
4029         ;;
4030   status)
4031         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
4032         ;;
4033   #reload|force-reload)
4034         #
4035         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
4036         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
4037         #
4038         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
4039         #do_reload
4040         #log_end_msg $?
4041         #;;
4042   restart|force-reload)
4043         #
4044         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
4045         # 'force-reload' alias
4046         #
4047         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
4048         do_stop
4049         case "$?" in
4050           0|1)
4051                 do_start
4052                 case "$?" in
4053                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
4054                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
4055                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
4056                 esac
4057                 ;;
4058           *)
4059                 # Failed to stop
4060                 log_end_msg 1
4061                 ;;
4062         esac
4063         ;;
4064   *)
4065         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
4066         exit 3
4067         ;;
4068 esac
4069
4070 :
4071 </pre></p>
4072
4073 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
4074 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
4075 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
4076 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
4077
4078 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
4079 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
4080 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
4081 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
4082 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
4083
4084       </div>
4085       <div class="tags">
4086
4087
4088         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>.
4089
4090
4091       </div>
4092     </div>
4093     <div class="padding"></div>
4094
4095     <div class="entry">
4096       <div class="title">
4097         <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>
4098       </div>
4099       <div class="date">
4100          1st November 2013
4101       </div>
4102       <div class="body">
4103         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
4104 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
4105 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
4106 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
4107 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
4108 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
4109 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
4110 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
4111 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
4112 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
4113 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
4114 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
4115
4116 <p>The source is now available from
4117 <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>
4118
4119       </div>
4120       <div class="tags">
4121
4122
4123         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4124
4125
4126       </div>
4127     </div>
4128     <div class="padding"></div>
4129
4130     <div class="entry">
4131       <div class="title">
4132         <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>
4133       </div>
4134       <div class="date">
4135         27th October 2013
4136       </div>
4137       <div class="body">
4138         <p>The
4139 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
4140 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
4141 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
4142 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
4143 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
4144 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
4145 of a plan to simplify the build system for
4146 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
4147 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
4148 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
4149 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
4150 Raspberry Pi.</p>
4151
4152 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
4153 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
4154 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
4155 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
4156 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
4157 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
4158 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
4159 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
4160 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
4161 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
4162 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
4163 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
4164 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
4165 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
4166 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
4167 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
4168 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
4169 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
4170 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
4171 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
4172 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
4173 available from
4174 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
4175 upstream project page</a>.</p>
4176
4177 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
4178 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
4179 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
4180 list:</p>
4181
4182 <p><pre>
4183 #!/bin/sh
4184 set -e # Exit on first error
4185 rootdir="$1"
4186 cd "$rootdir"
4187 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
4188 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
4189 EOF
4190 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
4191 # install a kernel somewhere too.
4192 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
4193     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4194 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4195 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
4196 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
4197 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
4198 </pre></p>
4199
4200 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
4201 to build the image:</p>
4202
4203 <pre>
4204 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
4205     --variant minbase \
4206     --arch armel \
4207     --distribution jessie \
4208     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
4209     --image test.img \
4210     --size 600M \
4211     --bootsize 64M \
4212     --boottype vfat \
4213     --log-level debug \
4214     --verbose \
4215     --no-kernel \
4216     --no-extlinux \
4217     --root-password raspberry \
4218     --hostname raspberrypi \
4219     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
4220     --customize `pwd`/customize \
4221     --package netbase \
4222     --package git-core \
4223     --package binutils \
4224     --package ca-certificates \
4225     --package wget \
4226     --package kmod
4227 </pre></p>
4228
4229 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
4230 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
4231 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
4232 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
4233 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
4234 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
4235 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
4236
4237 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
4238 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
4239 build dependency list.</p>
4240
4241 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
4242 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
4243 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
4244 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
4245
4246       </div>
4247       <div class="tags">
4248
4249
4250         Tags: <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>.
4251
4252
4253       </div>
4254     </div>
4255     <div class="padding"></div>
4256
4257     <div class="entry">
4258       <div class="title">
4259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
4260       </div>
4261       <div class="date">
4262         21st October 2013
4263       </div>
4264       <div class="body">
4265         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
4266 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
4267 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
4268 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
4269 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
4270 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
4271 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
4272 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
4273
4274 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
4275 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
4276 instead, I started playing with a
4277 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
4278 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
4279 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
4280 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
4281 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
4282 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
4283 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
4284 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
4285 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
4286 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
4287 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
4288 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
4289 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
4290 every client on the local network.</p>
4291
4292 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
4293 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
4294 and a script
4295 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
4296 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
4297 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
4298 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
4299 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
4300 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
4301 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
4302 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
4303 support.</p>
4304
4305 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
4306 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
4307
4308 <p><pre>
4309 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
4310     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
4311 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
4312 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
4313 %
4314 </pre></p>
4315
4316 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
4317 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
4318 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
4319 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
4320 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
4321 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
4322
4323 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
4324 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
4325 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
4326
4327 <p><table>
4328
4329 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
4330 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
4331 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
4332 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
4333 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
4334 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
4335
4336 </table></p>
4337
4338 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
4339 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
4340 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
4341 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
4342 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
4343 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
4344 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
4345
4346       </div>
4347       <div class="tags">
4348
4349
4350         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4351
4352
4353       </div>
4354     </div>
4355     <div class="padding"></div>
4356
4357     <div class="entry">
4358       <div class="title">
4359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
4360       </div>
4361       <div class="date">
4362         19th October 2013
4363       </div>
4364       <div class="body">
4365         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
4366 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
4367 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
4368 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
4369 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
4370 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
4371 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
4372 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
4373
4374       </div>
4375       <div class="tags">
4376
4377
4378         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
4379
4380
4381       </div>
4382     </div>
4383     <div class="padding"></div>
4384
4385     <div class="entry">
4386       <div class="title">
4387         <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>
4388       </div>
4389       <div class="date">
4390         15th October 2013
4391       </div>
4392       <div class="body">
4393         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
4394 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
4395 these. :)</p>
4396
4397 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
4398 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
4399 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
4400 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
4401 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
4402 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
4403 hope you will to. :)</p>
4404
4405 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
4406 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
4407 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
4408 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
4409 donated.  Are you next?</p>
4410
4411 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
4412 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
4413 statement under the heading
4414 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
4415 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
4416 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
4417 too.</p>
4418
4419       </div>
4420       <div class="tags">
4421
4422
4423         Tags: <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>.
4424
4425
4426       </div>
4427     </div>
4428     <div class="padding"></div>
4429
4430     <div class="entry">
4431       <div class="title">
4432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
4433       </div>
4434       <div class="date">
4435         11th October 2013
4436       </div>
4437       <div class="body">
4438         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
4439 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
4440 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
4441 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
4442 successful examples like
4443 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
4444 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
4445 (see
4446 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
4447 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
4448 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
4449 can be seen from their
4450 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
4451 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
4452 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
4453 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
4454 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
4455
4456 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
4457 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
4458 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
4459 my recent involvement in
4460 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
4461 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
4462 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
4463 when possible, given that most communication between people are
4464 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
4465 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
4466 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
4467 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
4468 important over the years.</p>
4469
4470 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
4471 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
4472 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
4473 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
4474 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
4475 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
4476 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
4477 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
4478 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
4479 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
4480 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
4481 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
4482 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
4483 speakers about this talk (from
4484 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
4485
4486 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
4487
4488 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
4489 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
4490 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
4491 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
4492 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
4493 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
4494 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
4495 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
4496 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
4497 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
4498 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
4499 that project (from
4500 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
4501
4502 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
4503
4504 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
4505 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
4506 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
4507 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
4508 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
4509 based community mesh networks.</p>
4510
4511 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
4512 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
4513 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
4514 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
4515 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
4516 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
4517 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
4518 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
4519 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
4520
4521 <p><table>
4522 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
4523 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
4524 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
4525 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
4526 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
4527 </table></p>
4528
4529 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
4530 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
4531 VillageTelco about
4532 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
4533 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
4534 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
4535 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
4536 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
4537 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
4538
4539 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
4540 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
4541 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
4542 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
4543
4544 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
4545 us on IRC, either channel
4546 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
4547 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
4548 irc.freenode.net.</p>
4549
4550 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
4551 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
4552 and Innovation called
4553 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
4554 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
4555 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
4556 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
4557 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
4558 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
4559 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
4560 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
4561
4562 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
4563 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
4564 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
4565 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
4566 mesh system.</p>
4567
4568       </div>
4569       <div class="tags">
4570
4571
4572         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4573
4574
4575       </div>
4576     </div>
4577     <div class="padding"></div>
4578
4579     <div class="entry">
4580       <div class="title">
4581         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
4582       </div>
4583       <div class="date">
4584          8th October 2013
4585       </div>
4586       <div class="body">
4587         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
4588 Salvador had published a
4589 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
4590 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
4591 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
4592 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
4593 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
4594 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
4595 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
4596 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
4597 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
4598 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
4599 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
4600 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
4601 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
4602 computers without hard drives by installing one central
4603 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
4604
4605 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
4606
4607 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
4608
4609 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
4610 me know. :)</p>
4611
4612       </div>
4613       <div class="tags">
4614
4615
4616         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4617
4618
4619       </div>
4620     </div>
4621     <div class="padding"></div>
4622
4623     <div class="entry">
4624       <div class="title">
4625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
4626       </div>
4627       <div class="date">
4628         29th September 2013
4629       </div>
4630       <div class="body">
4631         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
4632 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
4633 complete announcement text can be found at
4634 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
4635 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
4636
4637 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
4638 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
4639 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
4640 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
4641
4642       </div>
4643       <div class="tags">
4644
4645
4646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4647
4648
4649       </div>
4650     </div>
4651     <div class="padding"></div>
4652
4653     <div class="entry">
4654       <div class="title">
4655         <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>
4656       </div>
4657       <div class="date">
4658         27th September 2013
4659       </div>
4660       <div class="body">
4661         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
4662 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
4663 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
4664 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
4665
4666 <ul>
4667
4668 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
4669 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
4670
4671 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
4672 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
4673
4674 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
4675 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
4676 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
4677 (Youtube)</li>
4678
4679 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
4680 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
4681
4682 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
4683 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
4684
4685 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
4686 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
4687 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
4688
4689 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
4690 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
4691 (Youtube)</li>
4692
4693 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
4694 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
4695
4696 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
4697 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
4698
4699 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
4700 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
4701 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
4702
4703 </ul>
4704
4705 <p>A larger list is available from
4706 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
4707 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
4708
4709 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
4710 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
4711 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
4712 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
4713 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
4714 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
4715 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
4716 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
4717 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
4718 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4719 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4720
4721       </div>
4722       <div class="tags">
4723
4724
4725         Tags: <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>.
4726
4727
4728       </div>
4729     </div>
4730     <div class="padding"></div>
4731
4732     <div class="entry">
4733       <div class="title">
4734         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
4735       </div>
4736       <div class="date">
4737         16th September 2013
4738       </div>
4739       <div class="body">
4740         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4741 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
4742
4743 <blockquote>
4744 <p>Hi,</p>
4745
4746 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
4747 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4748 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
4749
4750 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
4751 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
4752 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
4753 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
4754
4755 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
4756 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
4757
4758 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
4759 compared to beta1:</p>
4760
4761 <ul>
4762
4763 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
4764 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
4765 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
4766 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
4767 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
4768 main server.</li>
4769 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
4770 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
4771 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
4772 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
4773 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
4774
4775 </ul>
4776
4777 <p>Where to get it:</p>
4778
4779 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4780
4781 <ul>
4782 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
4783 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
4784 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
4785 </ul>
4786
4787 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
4788
4789 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
4790 <ul>
4791 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
4792 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
4793 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
4794 </ul>
4795
4796 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
4797
4798 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
4799 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
4800 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
4801 as the other isos.</p>
4802
4803 <p>How to report bugs</p>
4804
4805 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
4806 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4807
4808
4809 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
4810
4811 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
4812 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4813 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
4814 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4815 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4816 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4817 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
4818 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
4819 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
4820 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
4821 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
4822 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
4823 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4824
4825 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4826 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4827 Squeeze release.</p>
4828
4829 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
4830
4831 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4832 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4833 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
4834 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
4835 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
4836 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
4837 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
4838 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
4839 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
4840 directory.</p>
4841
4842
4843 <p>cheers,
4844 <br>        Holger</p>
4845 </blockquote>
4846
4847       </div>
4848       <div class="tags">
4849
4850
4851         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4852
4853
4854       </div>
4855     </div>
4856     <div class="padding"></div>
4857
4858     <div class="entry">
4859       <div class="title">
4860         <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>
4861       </div>
4862       <div class="date">
4863         10th September 2013
4864       </div>
4865       <div class="body">
4866         <p>I was introduced to the
4867 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
4868 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
4869 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
4870 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
4871 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
4872 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
4873 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
4874 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
4875
4876 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
4877 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
4878 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
4879 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
4880 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
4881
4882 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
4883 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
4884 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
4885 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
4886 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
4887 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
4888 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
4889 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
4890 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
4891 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
4892 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
4893 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
4894 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
4895 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
4896 missing in Debian).</p>
4897
4898 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
4899 scripts
4900 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
4901 and a administrative web interface
4902 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
4903 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
4904 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
4905 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
4906 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
4907 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
4908 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
4909 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
4910 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
4911 this is really working yet, see
4912 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
4913 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
4914 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
4915 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
4916 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
4917 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
4918 with lots of half baked features.</p>
4919
4920 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
4921 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
4922 at.</p>
4923
4924 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
4925
4926 <ol>
4927
4928 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
4929 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
4930 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
4931 to the Debian installer:<p>
4932 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
4933
4934 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
4935 install on.</li>
4936
4937 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
4938 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
4939
4940 </ol>
4941
4942 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
4943
4944 <ol>
4945
4946 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
4947 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
4948 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
4949 <pre>
4950 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
4951 </pre></li>
4952 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
4953 <pre>
4954 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
4955    apt-key add -
4956 apt-get update
4957 apt-get install freedombox-setup
4958 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
4959 </pre></li>
4960 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
4961
4962 </ol>
4963
4964 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
4965 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
4966 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
4967 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
4968 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
4969
4970 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
4971 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
4972 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
4973 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
4974
4975 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
4976 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
4977 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
4978 irc.debian.org and the
4979 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
4980 mailing list</a>.</p>
4981
4982 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
4983 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
4984 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
4985 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
4986 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
4987 default password is 'secret'.</p>
4988
4989       </div>
4990       <div class="tags">
4991
4992
4993         Tags: <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>.
4994
4995
4996       </div>
4997     </div>
4998     <div class="padding"></div>
4999
5000     <div class="entry">
5001       <div class="title">
5002         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5003       </div>
5004       <div class="date">
5005         22nd August 2013
5006       </div>
5007       <div class="body">
5008         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5009 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
5010 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
5011
5012 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
5013
5014 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5015 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5016
5017 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5018
5019 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5020 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5021 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5022 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5023 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5024 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5025 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5026 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
5027 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5028 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5029 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5030 desktop contains
5031 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5032 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5033 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5034 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5035
5036 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
5037 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
5038 release.</p>
5039
5040 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5041 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5042 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5043 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5044 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
5045 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
5046 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
5047 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
5048 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
5049 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
5050 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
5051
5052 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5053
5054 <ul>
5055
5056 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
5057     work also without a attached tty.</li>
5058 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
5059     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
5060     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
5061     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
5062     required).</li>
5063
5064 </ul>
5065
5066 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5067
5068 <ul>
5069
5070 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
5071 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
5072 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
5073 stick ISO image.</li>
5074 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
5075 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
5076 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
5077     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
5078     cope with this.</li>
5079 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
5080 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
5081     empty password hashes.</li>
5082 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
5083     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
5084     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
5085
5086 </ul>
5087
5088 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5089
5090 <ul>
5091
5092 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
5093     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
5094 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
5095     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
5096
5097 </ul>
5098
5099 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5100
5101 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5102
5103 <ul>
5104
5105 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
5106
5107 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
5108
5109 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
5110
5111 </ul>
5112
5113 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
5114 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
5115
5116 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5117
5118 <ul>
5119
5120 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
5121 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
5122 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
5123
5124 </ul>
5125
5126 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
5127 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
5128
5129
5130 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5131
5132 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5133
5134       </div>
5135       <div class="tags">
5136
5137
5138         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5139
5140
5141       </div>
5142     </div>
5143     <div class="padding"></div>
5144
5145     <div class="entry">
5146       <div class="title">
5147         <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>
5148       </div>
5149       <div class="date">
5150         18th August 2013
5151       </div>
5152       <div class="body">
5153         <p>Earlier, I reported about
5154 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
5155 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
5156 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
5157 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
5158 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
5159 currently on the disk.</p>
5160
5161 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
5162 <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>
5163 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
5164 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
5165 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
5166 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
5167 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
5168 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
5169 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
5170 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
5171 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
5172 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
5173 the broken disks.</p>
5174
5175       </div>
5176       <div class="tags">
5177
5178
5179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5180
5181
5182       </div>
5183     </div>
5184     <div class="padding"></div>
5185
5186     <div class="entry">
5187       <div class="title">
5188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
5189       </div>
5190       <div class="date">
5191          2nd August 2013
5192       </div>
5193       <div class="body">
5194         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
5195 have worked on a Norwegian
5196 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
5197 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
5198 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
5199 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
5200 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
5201 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
5202 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
5203 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
5204 progress of the translation:</p>
5205
5206 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
5207
5208 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
5209 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
5210 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
5211 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
5212 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
5213 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
5214 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
5215 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
5216 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
5217 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
5218 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
5219
5220 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
5221 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
5222 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
5223 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
5224 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
5225 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
5226 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
5227 project files currently available from
5228 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
5229
5230 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
5231 the updated
5232 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
5233 and
5234 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
5235 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
5236 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
5237 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
5238
5239       </div>
5240       <div class="tags">
5241
5242
5243         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5244
5245
5246       </div>
5247     </div>
5248     <div class="padding"></div>
5249
5250     <div class="entry">
5251       <div class="title">
5252         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5253       </div>
5254       <div class="date">
5255         27th July 2013
5256       </div>
5257       <div class="body">
5258         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5259 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5260
5261 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
5262 2013-07-27</strong></p>
5263
5264 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5265 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5266
5267 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5268
5269 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5270 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5271 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5272 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5273 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5274 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5275 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5276 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5277 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5278 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5279 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5280 desktop contains
5281 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5282 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5283 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5284 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5285
5286 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5287 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5288 Squeeze release.</p>
5289
5290 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5291 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5292 release.</p>
5293
5294 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5295
5296 <ul>
5297
5298 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
5299    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
5300 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
5301    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
5302    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
5303    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
5304    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
5305 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
5306 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
5307 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
5308    crash bugs.</li>
5309
5310 </ul>
5311
5312 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5313
5314 <ul>
5315
5316 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
5317    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
5318 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
5319    netinst CD.</li>
5320 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
5321    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
5322 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
5323    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
5324    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
5325 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
5326    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
5327    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
5328 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
5329    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
5330    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
5331 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
5332    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
5333 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
5334
5335 </ul>
5336
5337 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5338
5339 <ul>
5340
5341 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
5342 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
5343     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
5344 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
5345
5346 </ul>
5347
5348 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5349
5350 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5351
5352 <ul>
5353
5354 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
5355
5356 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
5357
5358 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
5359
5360 </ul>
5361
5362 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
5363 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
5364
5365 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5366
5367 <ul>
5368
5369 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
5370 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
5371 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
5372
5373 </ul>
5374
5375 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
5376 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
5377
5378
5379 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5380
5381 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5382
5383       </div>
5384       <div class="tags">
5385
5386
5387         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5388
5389
5390       </div>
5391     </div>
5392     <div class="padding"></div>
5393
5394     <div class="entry">
5395       <div class="title">
5396         <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>
5397       </div>
5398       <div class="date">
5399         17th July 2013
5400       </div>
5401       <div class="body">
5402         <p>Today I switched to
5403 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
5404 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
5405 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
5406 <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
5407 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
5408 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
5409 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
5410 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
5411 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
5412 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
5413 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
5414 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
5415 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
5416 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
5417 station from now on.</p>
5418
5419 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
5420 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
5421 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
5422 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
5423 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
5424 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
5425 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
5426 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
5427 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
5428 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
5429 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
5430 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
5431
5432 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
5433 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
5434 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
5435 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
5436 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
5437 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
5438 parameters are tuned:</p>
5439
5440 <ul>
5441
5442 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
5443     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
5444
5445 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
5446     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
5447     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
5448
5449 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
5450     systems.</li>
5451
5452 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
5453     /etc/fstab.</li>
5454
5455 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
5456
5457 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
5458     cron.daily).</li>
5459
5460 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
5461     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
5462
5463 </ul>
5464
5465 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
5466 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
5467 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
5468 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
5469 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
5470 from getting the data on the disk (see
5471 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
5472 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
5473 right thing to do.</p>
5474
5475 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
5476 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
5477 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
5478
5479 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
5480 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
5481 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
5482 instead of during my work.</p>
5483
5484 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
5485 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
5486
5487 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
5488 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
5489 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
5490
5491 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
5492 there.</p>
5493
5494 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
5495 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
5496 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
5497 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
5498 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
5499 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
5500 back.</p>
5501
5502       </div>
5503       <div class="tags">
5504
5505
5506         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5507
5508
5509       </div>
5510     </div>
5511     <div class="padding"></div>
5512
5513     <div class="entry">
5514       <div class="title">
5515         <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>
5516       </div>
5517       <div class="date">
5518         10th July 2013
5519       </div>
5520       <div class="body">
5521         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
5522 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
5523 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
5524 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
5525 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
5526 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
5527 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
5528 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
5529
5530 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
5531 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
5532 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
5533 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
5534 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
5535 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
5536 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
5537 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
5538 lock up when I download a new
5539 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
5540 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
5541 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
5542
5543 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5544 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
5545 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5546 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
5547 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5548 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5549
5550 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5551 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
5552 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5553 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
5554 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5555 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5556
5557 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
5558 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
5559 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
5560 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
5561 exist).</p>
5562
5563       </div>
5564       <div class="tags">
5565
5566
5567         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5568
5569
5570       </div>
5571     </div>
5572     <div class="padding"></div>
5573
5574     <div class="entry">
5575       <div class="title">
5576         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
5577       </div>
5578       <div class="date">
5579          9th July 2013
5580       </div>
5581       <div class="body">
5582         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
5583 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
5584 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
5585 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
5586 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5587 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
5588 Bitraf</a>.</p>
5589
5590 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
5591 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
5592 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
5593 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
5594 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
5595
5596       </div>
5597       <div class="tags">
5598
5599
5600         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>.
5601
5602
5603       </div>
5604     </div>
5605     <div class="padding"></div>
5606
5607     <div class="entry">
5608       <div class="title">
5609         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
5610       </div>
5611       <div class="date">
5612          5th July 2013
5613       </div>
5614       <div class="body">
5615         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
5616 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
5617 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
5618 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
5619 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
5620 ended up picking a
5621 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
5622 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
5623 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
5624 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
5625 on that below.</p>
5626
5627 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5628 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5629 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5630 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5631 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5632 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
5633 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
5634 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
5635 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
5636
5637 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
5638 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
5639 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
5640 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
5641 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
5642 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
5643 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
5644
5645 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
5646 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
5647
5648 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
5649 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
5650 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
5651 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
5652 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
5653 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
5654 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
5655 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
5656 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
5657 kernel developers as
5658 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
5659 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
5660 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
5661 Lenovo forums, both for
5662 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
5663 2012-11-10</a> and for
5664 <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
5665 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
5666 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
5667 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
5668 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
5669 There is even a
5670 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
5671 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
5672 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
5673
5674 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
5675 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
5676 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
5677 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
5678 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
5679 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
5680 fixed. :)</p>
5681
5682       </div>
5683       <div class="tags">
5684
5685
5686         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5687
5688
5689       </div>
5690     </div>
5691     <div class="padding"></div>
5692
5693     <div class="entry">
5694       <div class="title">
5695         <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>
5696       </div>
5697       <div class="date">
5698          4th July 2013
5699       </div>
5700       <div class="body">
5701         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
5702 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
5703 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
5704 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
5705 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
5706 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
5707 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
5708 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
5709 with an expencive door stop.</p>
5710
5711 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5712 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5713 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5714 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5715 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5716 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
5717 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
5718
5719 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
5720 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
5721 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
5722 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
5723 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
5724 new laptop now. :)</p>
5725
5726 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
5727
5728       </div>
5729       <div class="tags">
5730
5731
5732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5733
5734
5735       </div>
5736     </div>
5737     <div class="padding"></div>
5738
5739     <div class="entry">
5740       <div class="title">
5741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5742       </div>
5743       <div class="date">
5744          3rd July 2013
5745       </div>
5746       <div class="body">
5747         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5748 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5749
5750 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
5751 2013-07-03</strong></p>
5752
5753 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5754 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5755
5756 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5757
5758 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5759 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5760 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5761 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5762 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5763 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5764 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5765 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5766 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5767 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5768 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5769 desktop contains
5770 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5771 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5772 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5773 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5774
5775 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5776 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5777 Squeeze release.</p>
5778
5779 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5780 <ul>
5781   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
5782   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
5783     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
5784     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
5785   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
5786     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
5787     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
5788   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
5789     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
5790     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
5791     too.</li>
5792   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
5793     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
5794 </ul>
5795 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5796 <ul>
5797   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
5798   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
5799   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
5800     up for some language options.</li>
5801   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
5802   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
5803   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
5804     d-i is doing it.</li>
5805   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
5806     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
5807   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
5808     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
5809     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
5810   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
5811     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
5812   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
5813   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
5814     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
5815   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
5816     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
5817 </ul>
5818 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5819 <ul>
5820   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
5821     available yet (698840).</li>
5822   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
5823 </ul>
5824 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5825
5826 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5827 <ul>
5828   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
5829   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
5830   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
5831 </ul>
5832
5833 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
5834 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
5835
5836 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5837 <ul>
5838   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
5839   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
5840   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
5841 </ul>
5842
5843 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
5844 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
5845
5846 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5847
5848 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5849
5850       </div>
5851       <div class="tags">
5852
5853
5854         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5855
5856
5857       </div>
5858     </div>
5859     <div class="padding"></div>
5860
5861     <div class="entry">
5862       <div class="title">
5863         <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>
5864       </div>
5865       <div class="date">
5866         25th June 2013
5867       </div>
5868       <div class="body">
5869         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
5870 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
5871 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
5872 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
5873 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
5874 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
5875 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
5876 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
5877 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
5878 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
5879 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
5880
5881 <p><pre>
5882 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5883 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
5884 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
5885 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
5886 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
5887 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
5888 firmware-ipw2x00
5889 firmware-ipw2x00
5890 Preconfiguring packages ...
5891 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
5892 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
5893 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
5894 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
5895 #
5896 </pre></p>
5897
5898 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
5899 printed instead:</p>
5900
5901 <p><pre>
5902 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5903 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
5904 #
5905 </pre></p>
5906
5907 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
5908 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
5909
5910 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
5911 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
5912 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
5913 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
5914 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
5915 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
5916 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
5917 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
5918 machine.</p>
5919
5920 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
5921 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
5922 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
5923 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
5924 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
5925 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
5926
5927       </div>
5928       <div class="tags">
5929
5930
5931         Tags: <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>.
5932
5933
5934       </div>
5935     </div>
5936     <div class="padding"></div>
5937
5938     <div class="entry">
5939       <div class="title">
5940         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
5941       </div>
5942       <div class="date">
5943         22nd June 2013
5944       </div>
5945       <div class="body">
5946         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5947 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
5948 which check that services are running, working, and return the
5949 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
5950 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
5951 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
5952 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
5953 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
5954 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
5955
5956 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
5957 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
5958 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
5959 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
5960 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
5961 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
5962 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
5963 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
5964 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
5965 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
5966 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
5967 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
5968 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
5969 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
5970
5971 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
5972 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
5973 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
5974 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
5975 the problem.</p>
5976
5977 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
5978 please join us on
5979 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
5980 irc.debian.org</a> and the
5981 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
5982 list.</p>
5983
5984       </div>
5985       <div class="tags">
5986
5987
5988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5989
5990
5991       </div>
5992     </div>
5993     <div class="padding"></div>
5994
5995     <div class="entry">
5996       <div class="title">
5997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
5998       </div>
5999       <div class="date">
6000         17th June 2013
6001       </div>
6002       <div class="body">
6003         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
6004 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
6005 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
6006 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
6007 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
6008 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
6009 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
6010 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
6011
6012 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6013
6014 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
6015 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
6016 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
6017 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
6018 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
6019 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
6020 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
6021 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
6022 field.</p>
6023
6024 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
6025 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
6026 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
6027 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
6028 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
6029 the only one we have in our country.</p>
6030
6031 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6032 project?</strong></p>
6033
6034 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
6035 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
6036 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
6037 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
6038 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
6039 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
6040 ways to contribute.</p>
6041
6042 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
6043 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
6044 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
6045 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
6046 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
6047 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
6048 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
6049 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
6050 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
6051 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
6052
6053 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6054 Edu?</strong></p>
6055
6056 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
6057 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
6058 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
6059 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
6060 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
6061 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
6062 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
6063 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
6064
6065 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
6066 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
6067 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
6068 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
6069 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
6070 project.</p>
6071
6072 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6073 Edu?</strong></p>
6074
6075 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
6076 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
6077 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
6078 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
6079 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
6080 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
6081 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
6082 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
6083 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
6084
6085 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
6086 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
6087 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
6088 on.</p>
6089
6090 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6091
6092 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
6093 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
6094 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
6095 Enlightenment project a lot!),
6096 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
6097 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
6098 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
6099 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
6100 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
6101
6102 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6103 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6104
6105 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
6106 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
6107 that:</p>
6108
6109 <ul>
6110
6111 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
6112
6113 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
6114     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
6115     of teenagers more?</li>
6116
6117 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
6118     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
6119     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
6120     them!)</li>
6121
6122 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
6123     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
6124     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
6125
6126 </ul>
6127
6128 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
6129 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
6130 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
6131 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
6132 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
6133
6134       </div>
6135       <div class="tags">
6136
6137
6138         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6139
6140
6141       </div>
6142     </div>
6143     <div class="padding"></div>
6144
6145     <div class="entry">
6146       <div class="title">
6147         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
6148       </div>
6149       <div class="date">
6150         12th June 2013
6151       </div>
6152       <div class="body">
6153         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
6154 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6155 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
6156 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
6157 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
6158 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
6159
6160 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6161
6162 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
6163 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
6164 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
6165
6166 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
6167 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
6168 each other.</p>
6169
6170 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6171 project?</strong></p>
6172
6173 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
6174 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
6175 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
6176 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
6177 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
6178 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
6179 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
6180 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
6181 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
6182 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
6183 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
6184 we'll get there one day.</p>
6185
6186 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6187 Edu?</strong></p>
6188
6189 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
6190 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
6191 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
6192 very high quality work.</p>
6193
6194 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
6195 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
6196 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
6197 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
6198 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
6199
6200 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6201 Edu?</strong></p>
6202
6203 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
6204 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
6205 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
6206
6207 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
6208 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
6209 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
6210 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
6211 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
6212 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
6213 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
6214 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
6215 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
6216 currently.</p>
6217
6218 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
6219 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
6220 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
6221 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
6222 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
6223 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
6224 autonomous.</p>
6225
6226 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6227
6228 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
6229 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
6230 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
6231 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
6232 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
6233
6234 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
6235 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
6236 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
6237 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
6238 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
6239 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
6240 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
6241 X.</p>
6242
6243 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
6244 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
6245 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
6246 it :p)
6247
6248 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6249 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6250
6251 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
6252 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
6253 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
6254 that.</p>
6255
6256 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
6257 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
6258 advantage of that.</p>
6259
6260 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
6261 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
6262 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
6263 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
6264 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
6265 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
6266 best solution for them.</p>
6267
6268 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
6269 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
6270 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
6271
6272       </div>
6273       <div class="tags">
6274
6275
6276         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6277
6278
6279       </div>
6280     </div>
6281     <div class="padding"></div>
6282
6283     <div class="entry">
6284       <div class="title">
6285         <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>
6286       </div>
6287       <div class="date">
6288         11th June 2013
6289       </div>
6290       <div class="body">
6291         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
6292 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
6293 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
6294 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
6295 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
6296 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
6297 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
6298 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
6299 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
6300 i915 driver used by the
6301 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6302 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
6303
6304 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
6305 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
6306 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
6307 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
6308 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
6309
6310 <pre>
6311 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
6312 update-initramfs -u -k all
6313 </pre>
6314
6315 <p>Since March 2012 there is
6316 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
6317 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
6318 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
6319 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
6320 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
6321 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
6322 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
6323 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
6324 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
6325 number.</p>
6326
6327 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
6328 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
6329
6330 <p><pre>
6331 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
6332     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
6333     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
6334  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
6335  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
6336     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
6337  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
6338     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
6339  Latency: 0
6340  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
6341  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
6342  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
6343  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
6344  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
6345  Capabilities: <access denied>
6346  Kernel driver in use: i915
6347 </pre></p>
6348
6349 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
6350
6351 <p><pre>
6352 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
6353        ...
6354         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
6355         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
6356        ...
6357 }
6358 </pre></p>
6359
6360 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
6361 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
6362 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
6363 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
6364 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
6365 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
6366 yet shown up in
6367 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
6368 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
6369 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
6370 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
6371 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
6372 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
6373
6374 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
6375 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
6376 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
6377 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
6378 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
6379 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
6380 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
6381 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
6382 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
6383 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
6384 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
6385 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
6386
6387 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
6388 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
6389 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
6390 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
6391 backlight.</p>
6392
6393       </div>
6394       <div class="tags">
6395
6396
6397         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6398
6399
6400       </div>
6401     </div>
6402     <div class="padding"></div>
6403
6404     <div class="entry">
6405       <div class="title">
6406         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6407       </div>
6408       <div class="date">
6409         10th June 2013
6410       </div>
6411       <div class="body">
6412         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6413 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6414
6415 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
6416 2013-06-10</strong></p>
6417
6418 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
6419 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6420
6421 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6422
6423 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6424 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6425 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6426 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6427 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6428 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6429 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6430 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6431 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6432 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6433 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6434 desktop contains
6435 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6436 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6437 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6438 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6439
6440 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6441 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6442 Squeeze release.</p>
6443
6444 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6445
6446 <ul>
6447
6448 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
6449 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
6450 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
6451 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
6452 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
6453
6454 </ul>
6455
6456 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6457
6458 <ul>
6459
6460 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
6461 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
6462 <li>New Romanian translation.
6463 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
6464 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
6465 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
6466 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
6467 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
6468 <li>More testsuite tests.
6469 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
6470 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
6471
6472 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
6473 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
6474
6475 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
6476 them up with GOsa².</li>
6477
6478 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
6479
6480 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
6481 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
6482 entered password). </li>
6483
6484 </ul>
6485
6486 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6487
6488 <ul>
6489
6490 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
6491
6492 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6493 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
6494 missing import feature).</li>
6495
6496 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
6497
6498 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
6499 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
6500 unfixed.</li>
6501
6502 </ul>
6503
6504 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6505
6506 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6507
6508 <ul>
6509
6510 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
6511
6512 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
6513
6514 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
6515
6516 </ul>
6517
6518 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
6519 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
6520
6521 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6522
6523 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6524
6525       </div>
6526       <div class="tags">
6527
6528
6529         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6530
6531
6532       </div>
6533     </div>
6534     <div class="padding"></div>
6535
6536     <div class="entry">
6537       <div class="title">
6538         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
6539       </div>
6540       <div class="date">
6541          5th June 2013
6542       </div>
6543       <div class="body">
6544         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
6545 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
6546 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
6547 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
6548 the project:
6549
6550 <ol>
6551
6552 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
6553   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
6554   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
6555   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
6556   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
6557
6558 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
6559   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
6560   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
6561   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
6562   #698840</a>.</li>
6563
6564 </ol>
6565
6566 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
6567 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
6568 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
6569
6570       </div>
6571       <div class="tags">
6572
6573
6574         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6575
6576
6577       </div>
6578     </div>
6579     <div class="padding"></div>
6580
6581     <div class="entry">
6582       <div class="title">
6583         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
6584       </div>
6585       <div class="date">
6586          4th June 2013
6587       </div>
6588       <div class="body">
6589         <p>It has been a while since my last English
6590 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6591 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
6592 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
6593 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
6594 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
6595
6596 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6597
6598 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
6599 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
6600 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
6601 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
6602
6603 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
6604 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
6605 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
6606
6607 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6608 project?</strong></p>
6609
6610 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
6611 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
6612 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
6613 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
6614 manual.
6615
6616 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
6617 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
6618 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
6619 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
6620
6621 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
6622 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
6623 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
6624 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
6625 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
6626 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
6627 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
6628 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
6629 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
6630 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
6631
6632 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
6633 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
6634 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
6635 beautiful project.</p>
6636
6637 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6638 Edu?</strong></p>
6639
6640 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
6641 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
6642 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
6643
6644 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
6645 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
6646 of educational free software.</p>
6647
6648 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6649 Edu?</strong></p>
6650
6651 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
6652 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
6653 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
6654 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
6655 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
6656
6657 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
6658 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
6659 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
6660 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
6661 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
6662 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
6663 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
6664 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
6665
6666 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6667
6668 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
6669 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
6670 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
6671 also using the mathematical software
6672 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
6673 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
6674 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
6675
6676 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
6677 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
6678 statistics?</strong></p>
6679
6680 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
6681 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
6682 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
6683 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
6684
6685 <ul>
6686
6687 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
6688 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
6689 constructions in planar geometry
6690
6691 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
6692 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
6693 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
6694
6695 </ul>
6696
6697 <p>I like also
6698 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
6699 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
6700 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
6701
6702 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6703 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6704
6705 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
6706
6707 <ul>
6708
6709 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
6710
6711 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
6712     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
6713     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
6714
6715 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
6716
6717 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
6718     system.</li>
6719
6720 </ul>
6721
6722       </div>
6723       <div class="tags">
6724
6725
6726         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6727
6728
6729       </div>
6730     </div>
6731     <div class="padding"></div>
6732
6733     <div class="entry">
6734       <div class="title">
6735         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
6736       </div>
6737       <div class="date">
6738          1st June 2013
6739       </div>
6740       <div class="body">
6741         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6742 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
6743 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
6744 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
6745 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
6746 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
6747 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
6748 program.</p>
6749
6750 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
6751
6752 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
6753 <p>
6754 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
6755 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
6756 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
6757 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
6758 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6759 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
6760 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
6761 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
6762 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
6763 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
6764 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
6765 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
6766 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
6767 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
6768 </p>
6769
6770 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
6771 <p>
6772 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
6773 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
6774 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
6775 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
6776 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
6777 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
6778 </p>
6779
6780 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
6781 <p>
6782 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
6783 </p>
6784
6785 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
6786 <p>
6787 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
6788 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
6789 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
6790 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
6791 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
6792 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
6793 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
6794 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
6795 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
6796 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
6797 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
6798 </p>
6799
6800 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
6801 <p>
6802 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6803 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
6804 </p>
6805
6806 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
6807 <p>
6808 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
6809 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
6810 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
6811 </p>
6812
6813 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
6814 <p>
6815 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6816 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
6817 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
6818 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
6819 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
6820 </p>
6821
6822 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
6823 <p>
6824 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
6825 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
6826 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6827 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
6828 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
6829 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
6830 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
6831 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
6832 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
6833 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
6834 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
6835 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
6836 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
6837 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
6838 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
6839 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
6840 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
6841 </p>
6842
6843 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
6844 <p>
6845 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6846 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
6847 </p>
6848
6849 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
6850 <p>
6851 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
6852 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
6853 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
6854 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6855 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
6856 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
6857 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
6858 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
6859 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
6860 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
6861 </p>
6862
6863 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
6864 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
6865 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
6866 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
6867 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
6868 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
6869 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
6870
6871       </div>
6872       <div class="tags">
6873
6874
6875         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6876
6877
6878       </div>
6879     </div>
6880     <div class="padding"></div>
6881
6882     <div class="entry">
6883       <div class="title">
6884         <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>
6885       </div>
6886       <div class="date">
6887         27th May 2013
6888       </div>
6889       <div class="body">
6890         <p>Two days ago, I asked
6891 <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
6892 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
6893 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
6894 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
6895 and Windows 8.</p>
6896
6897 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
6898 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
6899 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
6900 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
6901 enough to tell.</p>
6902
6903 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
6904 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
6905 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
6906 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
6907 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
6908 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
6909 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
6910 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
6911 to follow.</p>
6912
6913 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
6914 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
6915 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
6916 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
6917 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
6918 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
6919 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
6920 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
6921
6922 <p>I've updated the
6923 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
6924 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
6925 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
6926 machine.</p>
6927
6928 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
6929 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
6930
6931       </div>
6932       <div class="tags">
6933
6934
6935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6936
6937
6938       </div>
6939     </div>
6940     <div class="padding"></div>
6941
6942     <div class="entry">
6943       <div class="title">
6944         <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>
6945       </div>
6946       <div class="date">
6947         25th May 2013
6948       </div>
6949       <div class="body">
6950         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
6951 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
6952 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
6953 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
6954 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
6955 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
6956
6957 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
6958 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
6959 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
6960 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
6961 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
6962 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
6963 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
6964 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
6965 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
6966 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
6967
6968 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
6969 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6970 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
6971 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
6972 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
6973 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
6974
6975 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
6976 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
6977 on new Laptops?</p>
6978
6979       </div>
6980       <div class="tags">
6981
6982
6983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6984
6985
6986       </div>
6987     </div>
6988     <div class="padding"></div>
6989
6990     <div class="entry">
6991       <div class="title">
6992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
6993       </div>
6994       <div class="date">
6995         17th May 2013
6996       </div>
6997       <div class="body">
6998         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
6999 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
7000 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
7001 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
7002 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
7003 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
7004 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
7005 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
7006 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
7007 donate some money</a>.
7008
7009 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
7010 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
7011 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
7012 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
7013 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
7014
7015 <p>The script,
7016 <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/>
7017 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
7018 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
7019 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
7020
7021 <ol>
7022
7023 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
7024 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
7025 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
7026     our configuration.</li>
7027 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
7028     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
7029     according to the profile specified in the config above,
7030     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
7031 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
7032     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
7033 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
7034
7035 </ol>
7036
7037 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
7038 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
7039 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
7040 the needed packages.</p>
7041
7042 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
7043 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
7044 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
7045 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
7046 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
7047 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
7048
7049 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
7050 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
7051 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
7052
7053 <p><pre>
7054 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
7055 DESKTOP="lxde"
7056 </pre></p>
7057
7058 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
7059 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
7060 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
7061 boot.</p>
7062
7063       </div>
7064       <div class="tags">
7065
7066
7067         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>.
7068
7069
7070       </div>
7071     </div>
7072     <div class="padding"></div>
7073
7074     <div class="entry">
7075       <div class="title">
7076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7077       </div>
7078       <div class="date">
7079         14th May 2013
7080       </div>
7081       <div class="body">
7082         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7083 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
7084 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7085
7086 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
7087 2013-05-14</strong></p>
7088
7089 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
7090 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
7091 codename "Wheezy".</p>
7092
7093 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7094
7095 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
7096 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
7097 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
7098 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
7099 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
7100 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
7101 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
7102 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
7103
7104 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
7105 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
7106 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
7107
7108 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7109 <ul>
7110   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
7111     default.</li>
7112   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
7113   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
7114   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
7115     ibus-anthy.</li>
7116 </ul>
7117
7118 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7119 <ul>
7120
7121   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
7122     reliability improvements.</li>
7123   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
7124     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
7125   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
7126     problems.</li>
7127   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
7128     direct:// URL.</li>
7129   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
7130   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
7131   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
7132   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
7133     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
7134   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
7135     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
7136 </ul>
7137
7138 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7139 <ul>
7140
7141   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
7142     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
7143     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
7144   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
7145   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7146     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
7147   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
7148   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
7149   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
7150     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
7151   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
7152     password submission problem
7153     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
7154
7155 </ul>
7156
7157 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7158
7159 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7160 <ul>
7161
7162   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
7163   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
7164   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
7165
7166 </ul>
7167
7168 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
7169
7170 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
7171
7172 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7173
7174 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7175
7176       </div>
7177       <div class="tags">
7178
7179
7180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7181
7182
7183       </div>
7184     </div>
7185     <div class="padding"></div>
7186
7187     <div class="entry">
7188       <div class="title">
7189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
7190       </div>
7191       <div class="date">
7192         11th May 2013
7193       </div>
7194       <div class="body">
7195         <P>In January,
7196 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
7197 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
7198 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
7199 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
7200 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
7201 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
7202 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
7203 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
7204 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
7205 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
7206 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
7207 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
7208
7209 <p><table>
7210 <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>
7211 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
7212 <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>
7213 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
7214 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
7215 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
7216 <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>
7217 <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>
7218 <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>
7219 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
7220 </table></p>
7221
7222 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
7223 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
7224 available in experimental.</p>
7225
7226 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
7227 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
7228 for LEGO designers.</p>
7229
7230       </div>
7231       <div class="tags">
7232
7233
7234         Tags: <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>.
7235
7236
7237       </div>
7238     </div>
7239     <div class="padding"></div>
7240
7241     <div class="entry">
7242       <div class="title">
7243         <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>
7244       </div>
7245       <div class="date">
7246          5th May 2013
7247       </div>
7248       <div class="body">
7249         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
7250 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
7251 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
7252 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
7253 soon.</p>
7254
7255 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
7256 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
7257 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
7258 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
7259 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
7260 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
7261 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
7262 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
7263 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
7264 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
7265 Edu.</a>
7266
7267 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
7268 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
7269 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
7270 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
7271 follow.<p>
7272
7273       </div>
7274       <div class="tags">
7275
7276
7277         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>.
7278
7279
7280       </div>
7281     </div>
7282     <div class="padding"></div>
7283
7284     <div class="entry">
7285       <div class="title">
7286         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7287       </div>
7288       <div class="date">
7289         26th April 2013
7290       </div>
7291       <div class="body">
7292         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
7293 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
7294 announcement:</p>
7295
7296 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
7297 2013-04-26</strong></p>
7298
7299 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
7300 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7301
7302 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7303
7304 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7305 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7306 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7307 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
7308 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7309 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7310 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7311 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7312 installed via the network.</p>
7313
7314 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
7315 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
7316 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
7317
7318 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7319
7320 <ul>
7321 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
7322   <ul>
7323      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
7324      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
7325          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
7326          manual.)</li>
7327      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
7328      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
7329      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
7330      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
7331      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
7332      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
7333      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
7334      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
7335      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
7336      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
7337      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
7338      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
7339          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
7340          manual</a> for more details.</li>
7341      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
7342          installation.</li>
7343      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
7344          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
7345   </ul></li>
7346 </ul>
7347
7348 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
7349 <ul>
7350 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
7351     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
7352     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
7353 </ul>
7354
7355 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
7356 <ul>
7357 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
7358     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
7359     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
7360 </ul>
7361
7362 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7363 <ul>
7364 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
7365     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
7366     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
7367 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
7368     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
7369     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
7370 </ul>
7371
7372 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
7373 <ul>
7374 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
7375     yet.</li>
7376 </ul>
7377
7378 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
7379
7380 <ul>
7381 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
7382     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
7383     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
7384 </ul>
7385
7386 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7387
7388 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
7389 <ul>
7390 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
7391 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
7392 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
7393 </ul>
7394
7395 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
7396
7397 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
7398
7399 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7400
7401 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7402
7403       </div>
7404       <div class="tags">
7405
7406
7407         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7408
7409
7410       </div>
7411     </div>
7412     <div class="padding"></div>
7413
7414     <div class="entry">
7415       <div class="title">
7416         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
7417       </div>
7418       <div class="date">
7419         16th April 2013
7420       </div>
7421       <div class="body">
7422         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
7423 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
7424 Details about the gathering can be found
7425 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
7426 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
7427 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
7428 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
7429 weekend.</p>
7430
7431 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
7432 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
7433 Edu release.</p>
7434
7435 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
7436
7437       </div>
7438       <div class="tags">
7439
7440
7441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7442
7443
7444       </div>
7445     </div>
7446     <div class="padding"></div>
7447
7448     <div class="entry">
7449       <div class="title">
7450         <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>
7451       </div>
7452       <div class="date">
7453          3rd April 2013
7454       </div>
7455       <div class="body">
7456         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
7457 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
7458 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
7459 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
7460
7461 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
7462 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
7463 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
7464 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
7465 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
7466 BTS. :)</p>
7467
7468       </div>
7469       <div class="tags">
7470
7471
7472         Tags: <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>.
7473
7474
7475       </div>
7476     </div>
7477     <div class="padding"></div>
7478
7479     <div class="entry">
7480       <div class="title">
7481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
7482       </div>
7483       <div class="date">
7484         26th March 2013
7485       </div>
7486       <div class="body">
7487         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
7488 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
7489 font you use when printing.</p>
7490
7491 <p>Three years ago,
7492 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
7493 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
7494 changed their default front from
7495 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
7496 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
7497 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
7498 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
7499 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
7500 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
7501 prints.</p>
7502
7503 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
7504 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
7505 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
7506 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
7507 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
7508 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
7509 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
7510 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
7511 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
7512 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
7513 depend on the documents printed.</p>
7514
7515 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
7516 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
7517 and save some money in the process.</p>
7518
7519 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
7520 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
7521 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
7522 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
7523 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
7524 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
7525 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
7526 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
7527 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
7528
7529       </div>
7530       <div class="tags">
7531
7532
7533         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7534
7535
7536       </div>
7537     </div>
7538     <div class="padding"></div>
7539
7540     <div class="entry">
7541       <div class="title">
7542         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
7543       </div>
7544       <div class="date">
7545         24th March 2013
7546       </div>
7547       <div class="body">
7548         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
7549 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
7550 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
7551 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
7552 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
7553 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
7554 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
7555 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
7556 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
7557 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
7558 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
7559 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
7560
7561 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
7562 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
7563 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
7564 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
7565 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
7566 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
7567 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
7568 all I had to do was to use the
7569 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
7570 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
7571 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
7572 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
7573 xsltproc/fop (aka
7574 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
7575 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
7576 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
7577 technical detail.</p>
7578
7579 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
7580 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
7581 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
7582 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
7583 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
7584 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
7585
7586 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
7587 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
7588 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
7589 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
7590 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
7591 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
7592 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
7593 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
7594 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
7595
7596 <p><blockquote><pre>
7597 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7598 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7599   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
7600     &lt;hr/&gt;
7601   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7602 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7603 </pre></blockquote></p>
7604
7605 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
7606
7607 <p><blockquote><pre>
7608 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7609 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7610   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
7611     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
7612       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
7613     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
7614   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7615 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7616 </pre></blockquote></p>
7617
7618 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
7619 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
7620 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
7621 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
7622 enough.</p>
7623
7624 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
7625 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
7626 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
7627 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
7628 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
7629 look like this:</p>
7630
7631 <p><blockquote><pre>
7632 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7633 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7634   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
7635     &lt;br/&gt;
7636   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7637 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7638 </pre></blockquote></p>
7639
7640 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
7641
7642 <p><blockquote><pre>
7643 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7644 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
7645   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
7646   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
7647     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
7648   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7649 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7650 </pre></blockquote></p>
7651
7652 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
7653 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
7654 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
7655 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
7656 page.</p>
7657
7658 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
7659 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
7660 github</a>
7661 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
7662 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
7663 days.</p>
7664
7665       </div>
7666       <div class="tags">
7667
7668
7669         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
7670
7671
7672       </div>
7673     </div>
7674     <div class="padding"></div>
7675
7676     <div class="entry">
7677       <div class="title">
7678         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
7679       </div>
7680       <div class="date">
7681         17th March 2013
7682       </div>
7683       <div class="body">
7684         <p>Via
7685 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
7686 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
7687 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
7688 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
7689 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
7690 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
7691 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
7692
7693 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
7694 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
7695
7696 <blockquote>
7697 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
7698 </blockquote>
7699
7700 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
7701
7702 <blockquote>
7703 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
7704 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
7705 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
7706 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
7707 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
7708 </blockquote>
7709
7710 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
7711 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
7712 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
7713 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
7714
7715 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
7716 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
7717
7718 <blockquote>
7719 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
7720 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
7721 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
7722 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
7723 </blockquote>
7724
7725 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
7726 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
7727 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
7728 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
7729 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
7730
7731 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
7732 embedding:</p>
7733
7734 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
7735
7736       </div>
7737       <div class="tags">
7738
7739
7740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7741
7742
7743       </div>
7744     </div>
7745     <div class="padding"></div>
7746
7747     <div class="entry">
7748       <div class="title">
7749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
7750       </div>
7751       <div class="date">
7752          8th March 2013
7753       </div>
7754       <div class="body">
7755         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
7756 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
7757 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
7758 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
7759 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
7760 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
7761 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
7762
7763 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
7764
7765 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
7766 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
7767
7768 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
7769 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
7770 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
7771 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
7772 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
7773 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
7774
7775 <p>Images are available for download at
7776 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
7777
7778 <p>md5sums:
7779 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
7780 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
7781 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
7782
7783 <p>sha1sums:
7784 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
7785 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
7786 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
7787
7788 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
7789
7790 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
7791 2013-03-03:</p>
7792
7793 <ul>
7794   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
7795   <ul>
7796         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
7797         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
7798   </ul></li>
7799   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
7800   <ul>
7801         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
7802         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
7803   </ul></li>
7804   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
7805      <ul>
7806         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
7807         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
7808         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
7809                 Closes: #664596</li>
7810         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
7811                 Closes: #664976</li>
7812         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
7813            <ul>
7814                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
7815                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
7816            </ul></li>
7817         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
7818            <ul>
7819                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
7820                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
7821                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
7822                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
7823                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
7824            </ul></li>
7825         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
7826     </ul>
7827   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
7828     <ul>
7829         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
7830     </ul></li>
7831 </ul>
7832
7833 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
7834 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
7835 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
7836 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
7837
7838 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
7839 mailinglist
7840 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
7841 </p></blockquote>
7842
7843 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
7844
7845       </div>
7846       <div class="tags">
7847
7848
7849         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7850
7851
7852       </div>
7853     </div>
7854     <div class="padding"></div>
7855
7856     <div class="entry">
7857       <div class="title">
7858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
7859       </div>
7860       <div class="date">
7861          3rd March 2013
7862       </div>
7863       <div class="body">
7864         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
7865 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
7866 support using
7867 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
7868 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
7869 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
7870 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
7871 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
7872 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
7873 using the GNU LGPL, and
7874 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
7875
7876 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
7877 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
7878 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
7879 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
7880 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
7881 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
7882
7883 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
7884 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
7885 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
7886 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
7887 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
7888 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
7889 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
7890 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
7891 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
7892 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
7893 signal distribution is handled using
7894 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
7895 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
7896 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
7897 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
7898 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
7899 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
7900 them up a bit more first.</p>
7901
7902 <p>The development is coordinated on the
7903 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
7904 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
7905 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
7906 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
7907 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
7908 development.</p>
7909
7910       </div>
7911       <div class="tags">
7912
7913
7914         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7915
7916
7917       </div>
7918     </div>
7919     <div class="padding"></div>
7920
7921     <div class="entry">
7922       <div class="title">
7923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
7924       </div>
7925       <div class="date">
7926         27th February 2013
7927       </div>
7928       <div class="body">
7929         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
7930 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
7931 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
7932 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
7933 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
7934 (where I am the chair of the board) and
7935 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
7936 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
7937 GNU», with this description:
7938
7939 <p><blockquote>
7940 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
7941 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
7942 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
7943 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
7944 </blockquote></p>
7945
7946 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
7947 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
7948 am really curious how many will show up.  See
7949 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
7950 page</a> for the location details.</p>
7951
7952       </div>
7953       <div class="tags">
7954
7955
7956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7957
7958
7959       </div>
7960     </div>
7961     <div class="padding"></div>
7962
7963     <div class="entry">
7964       <div class="title">
7965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
7966       </div>
7967       <div class="date">
7968         15th February 2013
7969       </div>
7970       <div class="body">
7971         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
7972 now a great source of free maps available from
7973 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
7974 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
7975 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
7976 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
7977 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
7978 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
7979 page for descriptions).</p>
7980
7981 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
7982 map you can just edit the
7983 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
7984 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
7985
7986       </div>
7987       <div class="tags">
7988
7989
7990         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
7991
7992
7993       </div>
7994     </div>
7995     <div class="padding"></div>
7996
7997     <div class="entry">
7998       <div class="title">
7999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
8000       </div>
8001       <div class="date">
8002         12th February 2013
8003       </div>
8004       <div class="body">
8005         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
8006 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
8007 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
8008 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
8009 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
8010 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
8011 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
8012 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
8013 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
8014 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
8015 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
8016 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
8017 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
8018 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
8019 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
8020 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
8021
8022 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
8023 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
8024 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
8025 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
8026 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
8027 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
8028 fields:</p>
8029
8030 <p><pre>
8031 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8032 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8033 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
8034 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8035 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8036 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8037 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8038 </pre></p>
8039
8040 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
8041 answer regarding
8042 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
8043 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
8044 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
8045 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
8046
8047 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
8048
8049 <p><pre>
8050 BEGIN:VCARD
8051 VERSION:2.1
8052 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
8053 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
8054 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
8055 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
8056 REV:20130212T095000Z
8057 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8058 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8059 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8060 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8061 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8062 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8063 END:VCARD
8064 </pre></p>
8065
8066 <p>The resulting QR code created using
8067 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
8068 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
8069 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
8070 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
8071 system.</p>
8072
8073 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
8074
8075 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
8076 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
8077 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
8078 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
8079
8080 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
8081 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
8082
8083       </div>
8084       <div class="tags">
8085
8086
8087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8088
8089
8090       </div>
8091     </div>
8092     <div class="padding"></div>
8093
8094     <div class="entry">
8095       <div class="title">
8096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
8097       </div>
8098       <div class="date">
8099         10th February 2013
8100       </div>
8101       <div class="body">
8102         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
8103
8104 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
8105 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
8106 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
8107 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
8108 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
8109 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
8110 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
8111 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
8112 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
8113 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
8114 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
8115
8116 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
8117 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
8118 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
8119 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
8120 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
8121 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
8122 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
8123 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
8124 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
8125 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
8126 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
8127 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
8128 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
8129 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
8130 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
8131 ones own
8132 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
8133 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
8134 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
8135 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
8136 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
8137 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
8138 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
8139 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
8140 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
8141 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
8142 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
8143
8144 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
8145 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
8146 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
8147 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
8148 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
8149 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
8150
8151 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
8152 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
8153 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
8154
8155       </div>
8156       <div class="tags">
8157
8158
8159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8160
8161
8162       </div>
8163     </div>
8164     <div class="padding"></div>
8165
8166     <div class="entry">
8167       <div class="title">
8168         <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>
8169       </div>
8170       <div class="date">
8171          2nd February 2013
8172       </div>
8173       <div class="body">
8174         <p>My
8175 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
8176 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
8177 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
8178 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
8179 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
8180 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
8181 version too.</p>
8182
8183 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
8184 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
8185 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
8186 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
8187 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
8188 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
8189 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
8190 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
8191
8192 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
8193 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
8194 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
8195 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
8196 it. :)</p>
8197
8198 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8199 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8200 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8201
8202       </div>
8203       <div class="tags">
8204
8205
8206         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>.
8207
8208
8209       </div>
8210     </div>
8211     <div class="padding"></div>
8212
8213     <div class="entry">
8214       <div class="title">
8215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
8216       </div>
8217       <div class="date">
8218         22nd January 2013
8219       </div>
8220       <div class="body">
8221         <p>Yesterday, I
8222 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
8223 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
8224 pluggable hardware devices, which I
8225 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
8226 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
8227 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
8228 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
8229 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
8230 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
8231 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
8232 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
8233 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
8234 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
8235
8236 <pre>
8237 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
8238 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
8239 </pre>
8240
8241 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
8242 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
8243 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
8244 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
8245
8246 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
8247 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
8248 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
8249 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
8250 word.</p>
8251
8252 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
8253 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
8254 process.</p>
8255
8256 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
8257 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
8258
8259       </div>
8260       <div class="tags">
8261
8262
8263         Tags: <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>.
8264
8265
8266       </div>
8267     </div>
8268     <div class="padding"></div>
8269
8270     <div class="entry">
8271       <div class="title">
8272         <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>
8273       </div>
8274       <div class="date">
8275         21st January 2013
8276       </div>
8277       <div class="body">
8278         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
8279 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
8280 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
8281 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
8282 it, fetch the
8283 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
8284 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
8285 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
8286 autostart script.</p>
8287
8288 <p>The design is simple:</p>
8289
8290 <ul>
8291
8292 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
8293 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
8294
8295 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
8296 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
8297 initially did.</li>
8298
8299 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
8300 the APT database, a database
8301 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
8302 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
8303
8304 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
8305 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
8306 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
8307 package or packages.</li>
8308
8309 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
8310 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
8311
8312 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
8313 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
8314
8315 </ul>
8316
8317 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
8318 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
8319 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
8320 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
8321
8322 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
8323 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
8324 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
8325 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
8326 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
8327
8328 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
8329 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
8330 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
8331 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
8332 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
8333 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
8334 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
8335 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
8336
8337 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
8338 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
8339 '<tt>svn checkout
8340 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
8341 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
8342 devscripts package.</p>
8343
8344 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
8345 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
8346 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
8347 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
8348 instructions</a> for details.</p>
8349
8350       </div>
8351       <div class="tags">
8352
8353
8354         Tags: <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>.
8355
8356
8357       </div>
8358     </div>
8359     <div class="padding"></div>
8360
8361     <div class="entry">
8362       <div class="title">
8363         <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>
8364       </div>
8365       <div class="date">
8366         19th January 2013
8367       </div>
8368       <div class="body">
8369         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
8370 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
8371 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
8372 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
8373 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
8374 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
8375 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
8376 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
8377 not a durable solution.
8378
8379 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
8380 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
8381
8382 <ul>
8383
8384 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
8385   than A4).</li>
8386 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
8387 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
8388 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
8389 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
8390 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
8391 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
8392 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
8393 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
8394 size).</li>
8395 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
8396   X.org packages.</li>
8397 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
8398   the time).
8399
8400 </ul>
8401
8402 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
8403 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
8404 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
8405 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
8406 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
8407 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
8408 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
8409 still be useful.</p>
8410
8411 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
8412 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
8413 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
8414 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
8415 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
8416 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
8417
8418       </div>
8419       <div class="tags">
8420
8421
8422         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8423
8424
8425       </div>
8426     </div>
8427     <div class="padding"></div>
8428
8429     <div class="entry">
8430       <div class="title">
8431         <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>
8432       </div>
8433       <div class="date">
8434         18th January 2013
8435       </div>
8436       <div class="body">
8437         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
8438 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
8439 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
8440 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
8441 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
8442 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
8443 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
8444
8445 <pre>
8446 #!/usr/bin/python
8447 import sys
8448 import apt
8449 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8450     cache = apt.Cache()
8451     cache.open(None)
8452     thepkgs = []
8453     for pkg in cache:
8454         version = pkg.candidate
8455         if version is None:
8456             version = pkg.installed
8457         if version is None:
8458             continue
8459         record = version.record
8460         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
8461             continue
8462         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
8463         for t in mime_types:
8464             t = t.rstrip().strip()
8465             if t == mimetype:
8466                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
8467     return thepkgs
8468 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
8469 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
8470     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
8471 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
8472 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8473     print "  %s" %pkg
8474 </pre>
8475
8476 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
8477
8478 <pre>
8479 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
8480 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
8481   gecko-mediaplayer
8482 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
8483 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
8484   browser-plugin-gnash
8485 %
8486 </pre>
8487
8488 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
8489 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
8490 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
8491 anyone working on adding it?</p>
8492
8493 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
8494 request for icweasel support for this feature is
8495 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
8496 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
8497 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
8498 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
8499
8500       </div>
8501       <div class="tags">
8502
8503
8504         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8505
8506
8507       </div>
8508     </div>
8509     <div class="padding"></div>
8510
8511     <div class="entry">
8512       <div class="title">
8513         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
8514       </div>
8515       <div class="date">
8516         16th January 2013
8517       </div>
8518       <div class="body">
8519         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
8520 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
8521 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
8522 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
8523 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
8524 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
8525 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
8526 downloaded by the browser.</p>
8527
8528 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
8529 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
8530 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
8531 can be found on the
8532 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
8533 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
8534 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
8535 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
8536 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
8537
8538 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
8539
8540 <pre>
8541   count MIME type
8542   ----- -----------------------
8543      32 text/plain
8544      30 audio/mpeg
8545      29 image/png
8546      28 image/jpeg
8547      27 application/ogg
8548      26 audio/x-mp3
8549      25 image/tiff
8550      25 image/gif
8551      22 image/bmp
8552      22 audio/x-wav
8553      20 audio/x-flac
8554      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8555      18 video/x-ms-asf
8556      18 audio/x-musepack
8557      18 audio/x-mpeg
8558      18 application/x-ogg
8559      17 video/mpeg
8560      17 audio/x-scpls
8561      17 audio/ogg
8562      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8563 </pre>
8564
8565 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
8566
8567 <pre>
8568   count MIME type
8569   ----- -----------------------
8570      33 text/plain
8571      32 image/png
8572      32 image/jpeg
8573      29 audio/mpeg
8574      27 image/gif
8575      26 image/tiff
8576      26 application/ogg
8577      25 audio/x-mp3
8578      22 image/bmp
8579      21 audio/x-wav
8580      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8581      19 audio/x-mpeg
8582      18 video/mpeg
8583      18 audio/x-scpls
8584      18 audio/x-flac
8585      18 application/x-ogg
8586      17 video/x-ms-asf
8587      17 text/html
8588      17 audio/x-musepack
8589      16 image/x-xbitmap
8590 </pre>
8591
8592 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
8593
8594 <pre>
8595   count MIME type
8596   ----- -----------------------
8597      31 text/plain
8598      31 image/png
8599      31 image/jpeg
8600      29 audio/mpeg
8601      28 application/ogg
8602      27 image/gif
8603      26 image/tiff
8604      26 audio/x-mp3
8605      23 audio/x-wav
8606      22 image/bmp
8607      21 audio/x-flac
8608      20 audio/x-mpegurl
8609      19 audio/x-mpeg
8610      18 video/x-ms-asf
8611      18 video/mpeg
8612      18 audio/x-scpls
8613      18 application/x-ogg
8614      17 audio/x-musepack
8615      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8616      16 video/x-msvideo
8617 </pre>
8618
8619 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
8620 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
8621 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
8622 issues.</p>
8623
8624 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
8625 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
8626
8627       </div>
8628       <div class="tags">
8629
8630
8631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8632
8633
8634       </div>
8635     </div>
8636     <div class="padding"></div>
8637
8638     <div class="entry">
8639       <div class="title">
8640         <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>
8641       </div>
8642       <div class="date">
8643         15th January 2013
8644       </div>
8645       <div class="body">
8646         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
8647 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
8648 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
8649 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
8650 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
8651 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
8652 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
8653 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
8654 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
8655 packages.</p>
8656
8657 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
8658 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
8659 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
8660 modalias.</p>
8661
8662 <p><blockquote>
8663 Package: package-name
8664 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
8665 </blockquote></p>
8666
8667 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
8668 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
8669
8670 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
8671 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
8672
8673 <p><blockquote>
8674 Package: cheese
8675 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
8676 </blockquote></p>
8677
8678 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
8679 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
8680
8681 <p><blockquote>
8682 Package: pcmciautils
8683 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
8684 </blockquote></p>
8685
8686 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
8687 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
8688
8689 <p><blockquote>
8690 Package: colorhug-client
8691 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
8692 </blockquote></p>
8693
8694 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8695 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8696 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
8697
8698 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8699 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8700 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8701 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8702 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
8703 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8704 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
8705 Raring.</p>
8706
8707 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8708 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8709 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
8710 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
8711 try the
8712 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
8713 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8714 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8715 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
8716
8717 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8718 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
8719
8720 <p><blockquote>
8721 % ./hw-support-lookup
8722 <br>yubikey-personalization
8723 <br>%
8724 </blockquote></p>
8725
8726 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8727 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
8728
8729 <p><blockquote>
8730 % ./hw-support-lookup
8731 <br>pcmciautils
8732 <br>%
8733 </blockquote></p>
8734
8735 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
8736 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
8737 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
8738
8739 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
8740 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
8741 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
8742 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
8743 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
8744 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
8745 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
8746 see if it work.</p>
8747
8748 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8749 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8750 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8751 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8752
8753       </div>
8754       <div class="tags">
8755
8756
8757         Tags: <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>.
8758
8759
8760       </div>
8761     </div>
8762     <div class="padding"></div>
8763
8764     <div class="entry">
8765       <div class="title">
8766         <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>
8767       </div>
8768       <div class="date">
8769         14th January 2013
8770       </div>
8771       <div class="body">
8772         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
8773 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
8774 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
8775 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
8776 in
8777 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8778 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
8779
8780 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
8781
8782 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
8783 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
8784 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
8785 &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;,
8786 &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
8787 &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;.
8788
8789 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
8790 this shell script:</p>
8791
8792 <pre>
8793 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
8794 </pre>
8795
8796 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
8797 using modinfo:</p>
8798
8799 <pre>
8800 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
8801 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
8802 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
8803 %
8804 </pre>
8805
8806 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
8807
8808 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
8809 Bridge memory controller:</p>
8810
8811 <p><blockquote>
8812 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
8813 </blockquote></p>
8814
8815 <p>This represent these values:</p>
8816
8817 <pre>
8818  v   00008086  (vendor)
8819  d   00002770  (device)
8820  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
8821  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
8822  bc  06        (bus class)
8823  sc  00        (bus subclass)
8824  i   00        (interface)
8825 </pre>
8826
8827 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
8828 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
8829 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
8830 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
8831
8832 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
8833 means.</p>
8834
8835 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
8836
8837 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
8838 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
8839
8840 <p><blockquote>
8841 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
8842 </blockquote></p>
8843
8844 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
8845
8846 <pre>
8847  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
8848  p    0001  (device product)
8849  d    0206  (bcddevice)
8850  dc     09  (device class)
8851  dsc    00  (device subclass)
8852  dp     00  (device protocol)
8853  ic     09  (interface class)
8854  isc    00  (interface subclass)
8855  ip     00  (interface protocol)
8856 </pre>
8857
8858 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
8859 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
8860 these alias entries show up:</p>
8861
8862 <p><blockquote>
8863 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
8864 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
8865 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
8866 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
8867 </blockquote></p>
8868
8869 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
8870 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
8871 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
8872
8873 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
8874
8875 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
8876 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
8877
8878 <p><blockquote>
8879 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8880 </blockquote></p>
8881
8882 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
8883
8884 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
8885
8886 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
8887 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
8888 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
8889
8890 <p><blockquote>
8891 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
8892 </blockquote></p>
8893
8894 <p>The values present are</p>
8895
8896 <pre>
8897  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
8898  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
8899  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
8900  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
8901  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
8902  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
8903  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
8904  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
8905  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
8906  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
8907  ct   10             (chassis type)
8908  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
8909 </pre>
8910
8911 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
8912 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
8913
8914 <pre>
8915   3 Desktop
8916   4 Low Profile Desktop
8917   5 Pizza Box
8918   6 Mini Tower
8919   7 Tower
8920   8 Portable
8921   9 Laptop
8922  10 Notebook
8923  11 Hand Held
8924  12 Docking Station
8925  13 All In One
8926  14 Sub Notebook
8927  15 Space-saving
8928  16 Lunch Box
8929  17 Main Server Chassis
8930  18 Expansion Chassis
8931  19 Sub Chassis
8932  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
8933  21 Peripheral Chassis
8934  22 RAID Chassis
8935  23 Rack Mount Chassis
8936  24 Sealed-case PC
8937  25 Multi-system
8938  26 CompactPCI
8939  27 AdvancedTCA
8940  28 Blade
8941  29 Blade Enclosing
8942 </pre>
8943
8944 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
8945 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
8946 claim it is a desktop.</p>
8947
8948 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
8949
8950 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
8951 test machine:</p>
8952
8953 <p><blockquote>
8954 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
8955 </blockquote></p>
8956
8957 <p>The values present are</p>
8958
8959 <pre>
8960   ty  01  (type)
8961   pr  00  (prototype)
8962   id  00  (id)
8963   ex  00  (extra)
8964 </pre>
8965
8966 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
8967 the valid values are.</p>
8968
8969 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
8970
8971 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
8972 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
8973 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
8974 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
8975 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
8976 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
8977 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
8978
8979 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
8980
8981 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
8982 one can use the following shell script:</p>
8983
8984 <pre>
8985   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
8986     echo "$id" ; \
8987     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
8988   done
8989 </pre>
8990
8991 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
8992 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
8993
8994 <pre>
8995   acpi:ACPI0003:
8996     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
8997   acpi:device:
8998   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
8999   acpi:IBM0068:
9000     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
9001     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
9002     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
9003     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
9004   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9005     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
9006     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
9007     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
9008   [...]
9009 </pre>
9010
9011 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9012 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9013 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9014 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9015
9016 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
9017 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
9018 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
9019
9020       </div>
9021       <div class="tags">
9022
9023
9024         Tags: <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>.
9025
9026
9027       </div>
9028     </div>
9029     <div class="padding"></div>
9030
9031     <div class="entry">
9032       <div class="title">
9033         <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>
9034       </div>
9035       <div class="date">
9036         10th January 2013
9037       </div>
9038       <div class="body">
9039         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
9040 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
9041 Launcher and updated the Debian package
9042 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
9043 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
9044 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
9045 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
9046 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
9047 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
9048 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
9049 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
9050 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
9051 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
9052 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
9053 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
9054 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
9055 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
9056 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
9057
9058       </div>
9059       <div class="tags">
9060
9061
9062         Tags: <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>.
9063
9064
9065       </div>
9066     </div>
9067     <div class="padding"></div>
9068
9069     <div class="entry">
9070       <div class="title">
9071         <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>
9072       </div>
9073       <div class="date">
9074          9th January 2013
9075       </div>
9076       <div class="body">
9077         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
9078 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
9079 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
9080 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
9081 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
9082 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
9083 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
9084 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
9085 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
9086 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
9087 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
9088
9089 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
9090 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
9091 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
9092 simple:
9093
9094 <ul>
9095
9096 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
9097   starting when a user log in.</li>
9098
9099 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
9100   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
9101
9102 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
9103   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
9104   packages.</li>
9105
9106 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
9107   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
9108
9109 </ul>
9110
9111 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
9112 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
9113 discover database to find packages and
9114 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
9115 packages.</p>
9116
9117 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
9118 draft package is now checked into
9119 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9120 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
9121 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
9122 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
9123 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
9124 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
9125 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
9126 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
9127 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
9128 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
9129 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
9130 because of the freeze).</p>
9131
9132 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
9133 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
9134 inserted):</p>
9135
9136 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
9137
9138 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
9139 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
9140 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
9141
9142 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
9143 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
9144 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
9145 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
9146 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
9147 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
9148 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
9149
9150 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
9151 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
9152 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
9153 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
9154 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
9155 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
9156 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
9157 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
9158 not be installed?</p>
9159
9160 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
9161 please send me an email. :)</p>
9162
9163       </div>
9164       <div class="tags">
9165
9166
9167         Tags: <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>.
9168
9169
9170       </div>
9171     </div>
9172     <div class="padding"></div>
9173
9174     <div class="entry">
9175       <div class="title">
9176         <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>
9177       </div>
9178       <div class="date">
9179          2nd January 2013
9180       </div>
9181       <div class="body">
9182         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
9183 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
9184 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
9185 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
9186 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
9187 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
9188 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
9189 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
9190 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
9191 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
9192
9193 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
9194 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
9195 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
9196
9197       </div>
9198       <div class="tags">
9199
9200
9201         Tags: <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>.
9202
9203
9204       </div>
9205     </div>
9206     <div class="padding"></div>
9207
9208     <div class="entry">
9209       <div class="title">
9210         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9211       </div>
9212       <div class="date">
9213         28th December 2012
9214       </div>
9215       <div class="body">
9216         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
9217 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9218 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
9219 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
9220 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
9221 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
9222 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
9223 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
9224 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
9225 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
9226 followed by many others. :)</p>
9227
9228 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
9229 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
9230 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
9231 you want to donate to the project.</p>
9232
9233       </div>
9234       <div class="tags">
9235
9236
9237         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9238
9239
9240       </div>
9241     </div>
9242     <div class="padding"></div>
9243
9244     <div class="entry">
9245       <div class="title">
9246         <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>
9247       </div>
9248       <div class="date">
9249         25th December 2012
9250       </div>
9251       <div class="body">
9252         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
9253 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
9254
9255 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
9256 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
9257 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
9258 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
9259 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
9260 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
9261 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
9262 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
9263 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
9264 name.</p>
9265
9266 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
9267 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
9268 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
9269
9270 <blockquote><pre>
9271 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
9272 cd bitcoin
9273 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
9274 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
9275 </pre></blockquote>
9276
9277 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
9278 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
9279 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
9280 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
9281 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
9282 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
9283 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
9284 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
9285 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
9286
9287 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9288 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9289 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9290
9291       </div>
9292       <div class="tags">
9293
9294
9295         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>.
9296
9297
9298       </div>
9299     </div>
9300     <div class="padding"></div>
9301
9302     <div class="entry">
9303       <div class="title">
9304         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
9305       </div>
9306       <div class="date">
9307         21st December 2012
9308       </div>
9309       <div class="body">
9310         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
9311 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
9312 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
9313 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
9314 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
9315 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
9316 is now maintained by a
9317 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
9318 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
9319 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
9320 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
9321 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
9322 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
9323 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
9324 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
9325 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
9326 Corallo in a
9327 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
9328 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
9329 Debian package.</p>
9330
9331 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
9332 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
9333 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
9334 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
9335 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
9336 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
9337 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
9338 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
9339 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
9340 new version to unstable.
9341
9342 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
9343 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
9344 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
9345 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
9346 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
9347 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
9348 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
9349 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
9350 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
9351 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
9352 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
9353 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
9354 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
9355 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
9356 have not tested them.</p>
9357
9358 <p>My
9359 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
9360 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
9361 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
9362 years ago, as can be
9363 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
9364 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
9365 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
9366 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
9367 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
9368 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
9369 the same address as last time,
9370 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9371
9372       </div>
9373       <div class="tags">
9374
9375
9376         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>.
9377
9378
9379       </div>
9380     </div>
9381     <div class="padding"></div>
9382
9383     <div class="entry">
9384       <div class="title">
9385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
9386       </div>
9387       <div class="date">
9388         18th December 2012
9389       </div>
9390       <div class="body">
9391         <p>A few days ago I came across
9392 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
9393 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
9394 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
9395 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
9396 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
9397 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
9398 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
9399 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
9400 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
9401
9402 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
9403 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
9404 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
9405 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
9406
9407 <blockquote><pre>
9408 2004-05-27 Book Store
9409       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
9410       Liabilities:Visa
9411 </pre></blockquote>
9412
9413 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
9414 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
9415 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
9416 Spang</a>,
9417 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
9418 Keen</a>,
9419 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
9420 Cantino</a> and
9421 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
9422 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
9423 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
9424 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
9425 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
9426
9427 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
9428 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
9429 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
9430 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
9431 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
9432
9433 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
9434 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
9435 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
9436 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
9437 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
9438 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
9439 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
9440 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
9441 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
9442
9443       </div>
9444       <div class="tags">
9445
9446
9447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9448
9449
9450       </div>
9451     </div>
9452     <div class="padding"></div>
9453
9454     <div class="entry">
9455       <div class="title">
9456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
9457       </div>
9458       <div class="date">
9459          6th December 2012
9460       </div>
9461       <div class="body">
9462         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
9463 Oslo</a>, we use the
9464 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
9465 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
9466 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
9467 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
9468 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
9469 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
9470 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
9471 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
9472 Python.</p>
9473
9474 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
9475 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
9476 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
9477 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
9478 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
9479 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
9480
9481 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
9482 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
9483 user currently logged in:</p>
9484
9485 <blockquote><pre>
9486 #!/usr/bin/env python
9487 import getpass
9488 import xmlrpclib
9489 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
9490 username = getpass.getuser()
9491 password = getpass.getpass()
9492 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
9493 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
9494 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
9495 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
9496 result = server.logout(sessionid)
9497 print result
9498 </pre></blockquote>
9499
9500 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
9501 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
9502
9503       </div>
9504       <div class="tags">
9505
9506
9507         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
9508
9509
9510       </div>
9511     </div>
9512     <div class="padding"></div>
9513
9514     <div class="entry">
9515       <div class="title">
9516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
9517       </div>
9518       <div class="date">
9519         17th November 2012
9520       </div>
9521       <div class="body">
9522         <p>While working on a
9523 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
9524 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
9525 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
9526 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
9527 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
9528 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
9529
9530 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
9531 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
9532 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
9533 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
9534 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
9535 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
9536 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
9537 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
9538 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
9539 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
9540 arguments.</p>
9541
9542 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
9543 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
9544 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
9545 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
9546 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
9547 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
9548 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
9549 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
9550
9551 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
9552 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
9553 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
9554 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
9555 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
9556 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
9557 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
9558 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
9559 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
9560 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
9561 correct right holder.</p>
9562
9563 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
9564 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
9565 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
9566 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
9567 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
9568 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
9569 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
9570 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
9571 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
9572 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
9573 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
9574 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
9575 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
9576 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
9577
9578 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
9579 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
9580 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
9581
9582 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
9583 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
9584
9585       </div>
9586       <div class="tags">
9587
9588
9589         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
9590
9591
9592       </div>
9593     </div>
9594     <div class="padding"></div>
9595
9596     <div class="entry">
9597       <div class="title">
9598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
9599       </div>
9600       <div class="date">
9601         14th November 2012
9602       </div>
9603       <div class="body">
9604         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
9605 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9606 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
9607 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
9608 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
9609 the people behind the German
9610 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
9611 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
9612 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
9613
9614 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9615
9616 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
9617 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
9618 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
9619
9620 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
9621 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
9622 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
9623 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
9624 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
9625 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
9626
9627 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
9628 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
9629 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
9630 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
9631 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
9632 relationship management and the communication processes in the
9633 project.</p>
9634
9635 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
9636 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
9637 and a yoga teacher.</p>
9638
9639 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9640 project?</strong></p>
9641
9642 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
9643
9644 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
9645 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
9646 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
9647 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
9648 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
9649 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
9650 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
9651 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
9652 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
9653 parents.</p>
9654
9655 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
9656 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
9657 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
9658 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
9659 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
9660 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
9661 Germany.</p>
9662
9663 <p>For information about our school project you can read
9664 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
9665 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
9666
9667 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9668 Edu?</strong></p>
9669
9670 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
9671 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
9672
9673 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
9674 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
9675 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
9676 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
9677 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
9678 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
9679 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
9680 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
9681 teachers, parents...</p>
9682
9683 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9684 Edu?</strong></p>
9685
9686 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
9687 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9688
9689 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
9690 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
9691 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
9692 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
9693 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9694
9695 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
9696 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
9697 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
9698 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
9699 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
9700 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
9701 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9702
9703 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9704
9705 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
9706 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
9707 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
9708 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
9709
9710 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9711 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9712
9713 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
9714 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
9715 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
9716 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
9717 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
9718
9719 <ul>
9720
9721 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
9722 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
9723 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
9724
9725 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
9726 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
9727 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
9728 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
9729 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
9730 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
9731 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
9732
9733 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
9734 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
9735 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
9736 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
9737
9738 </ul>
9739
9740       </div>
9741       <div class="tags">
9742
9743
9744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9745
9746
9747       </div>
9748     </div>
9749     <div class="padding"></div>
9750
9751     <div class="entry">
9752       <div class="title">
9753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
9754       </div>
9755       <div class="date">
9756          4th November 2012
9757       </div>
9758       <div class="body">
9759         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
9760 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
9761 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
9762 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
9763 see how a member of the bitcoin community
9764 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
9765 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
9766 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
9767 competition.  My thoughts go to the
9768 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
9769 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
9770 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
9771 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
9772 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
9773
9774 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
9775 that the community already seem to have
9776 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
9777 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
9778 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
9779 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
9780 wealth is available.</p>
9781
9782       </div>
9783       <div class="tags">
9784
9785
9786         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9787
9788
9789       </div>
9790     </div>
9791     <div class="padding"></div>
9792
9793     <div class="entry">
9794       <div class="title">
9795         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
9796       </div>
9797       <div class="date">
9798         26th October 2012
9799       </div>
9800       <div class="body">
9801         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
9802 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
9803 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
9804 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
9805 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
9806 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
9807 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
9808 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
9809 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
9810 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
9811 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
9812 it every time.</p>
9813
9814 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
9815 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
9816 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
9817 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
9818 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
9819 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
9820 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
9821 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
9822 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
9823 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
9824 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
9825 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
9826
9827 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
9828 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
9829 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
9830 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
9831 article: First the unplanned outage:
9832
9833 <blockquote><pre>
9834 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
9835 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
9836 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
9837 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
9838 Duration:    40 minutes
9839 Scope:       Exchange 2003
9840 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
9841              a cluster failover.
9842
9843 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
9844              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
9845 Technician:  [xxx]
9846 </pre></blockquote>
9847
9848 Next the planned outage:
9849
9850 <blockquote><pre>
9851 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
9852 Severity:    Major (Planned)
9853 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
9854 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
9855 Duration:    10 hours
9856 Scope:       H2 Transport
9857 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
9858              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
9859              4510s.
9860 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
9861              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
9862              connectivity.
9863 Technician:  [xxx]
9864 </pre></blockquote>
9865
9866 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
9867 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
9868 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
9869 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
9870 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
9871 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
9872 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
9873
9874 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
9875 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
9876 university too.  We do register
9877 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
9878 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
9879 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
9880 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
9881 for other sites to consider too?</p>
9882
9883       </div>
9884       <div class="tags">
9885
9886
9887         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
9888
9889
9890       </div>
9891     </div>
9892     <div class="padding"></div>
9893
9894     <div class="entry">
9895       <div class="title">
9896         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
9897       </div>
9898       <div class="date">
9899         22nd October 2012
9900       </div>
9901       <div class="body">
9902         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
9903 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
9904 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
9905 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
9906 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
9907 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
9908 background information is available in Norwegian from
9909 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
9910 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
9911 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
9912 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
9913 willing to
9914 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
9915 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
9916 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
9917 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
9918 sounded like
9919 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
9920 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
9921 later.</p>
9922
9923 <p>And thought this action is
9924 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
9925 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
9926 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
9927 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
9928 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
9929 rights.</p>
9930
9931 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
9932 unacceptable terms.  For example
9933 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
9934 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
9935 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
9936 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
9937 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
9938
9939 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
9940 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
9941 restored the account of the user, as reported by
9942 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
9943 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
9944 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
9945 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
9946 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
9947 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
9948 reading two opinions from
9949 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
9950 Phipps</a> and
9951 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
9952 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
9953 details about the original story.</p>
9954
9955       </div>
9956       <div class="tags">
9957
9958
9959         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
9960
9961
9962       </div>
9963     </div>
9964     <div class="padding"></div>
9965
9966     <div class="entry">
9967       <div class="title">
9968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
9969       </div>
9970       <div class="date">
9971         18th October 2012
9972       </div>
9973       <div class="body">
9974         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
9975 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
9976 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
9977 across a marvellous drawing by
9978 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
9979 visualising some of what is going on.
9980
9981 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
9982 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
9983
9984 <blockquote>
9985 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
9986 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
9987 </blockquote>
9988
9989 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
9990 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
9991 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
9992 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
9993 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
9994 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
9995
9996       </div>
9997       <div class="tags">
9998
9999
10000         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
10001
10002
10003       </div>
10004     </div>
10005     <div class="padding"></div>
10006
10007     <div class="entry">
10008       <div class="title">
10009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
10010       </div>
10011       <div class="date">
10012         12th October 2012
10013       </div>
10014       <div class="body">
10015         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
10016 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
10017 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
10018 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
10019 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
10020 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
10021 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
10022 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
10023 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
10024 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
10025 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
10026 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
10027 matter".</p>
10028
10029 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
10030 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
10031 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
10032 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
10033 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
10034 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
10035 to argue its side.</p>
10036
10037 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
10038 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
10039 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
10040 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
10041
10042 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
10043 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
10044 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
10045
10046       </div>
10047       <div class="tags">
10048
10049
10050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
10051
10052
10053       </div>
10054     </div>
10055     <div class="padding"></div>
10056
10057     <div class="entry">
10058       <div class="title">
10059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
10060       </div>
10061       <div class="date">
10062          3rd October 2012
10063       </div>
10064       <div class="body">
10065         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
10066 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
10067 the computer science book collection available in his local
10068 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
10069 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
10070 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
10071 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
10072 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
10073 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
10074 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
10075 recently published books.</p>
10076
10077 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
10078 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
10079 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
10080 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
10081 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
10082 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
10083 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
10084 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
10085 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
10086 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
10087 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
10088 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
10089 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
10090 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
10091 for the library that evening.</p>
10092
10093 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
10094 going to know that for example
10095 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
10096 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
10097 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
10098 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
10099 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
10100 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
10101 book right away.</p>
10102
10103       </div>
10104       <div class="tags">
10105
10106
10107         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10108
10109
10110       </div>
10111     </div>
10112     <div class="padding"></div>
10113
10114     <div class="entry">
10115       <div class="title">
10116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
10117       </div>
10118       <div class="date">
10119         23rd September 2012
10120       </div>
10121       <div class="body">
10122         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
10123 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
10124 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
10125 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
10126 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
10127 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
10128
10129 When I started, I
10130 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
10131 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
10132 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
10133 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
10134 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
10135 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
10136 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
10137
10138 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
10139
10140 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
10141 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
10142 the project files currently available from
10143 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10144
10145 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10146 the updated
10147 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10148 and
10149 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10150 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10151 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10152 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10153
10154       </div>
10155       <div class="tags">
10156
10157
10158         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
10159
10160
10161       </div>
10162     </div>
10163     <div class="padding"></div>
10164
10165     <div class="entry">
10166       <div class="title">
10167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
10168       </div>
10169       <div class="date">
10170         17th September 2012
10171       </div>
10172       <div class="body">
10173         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
10174 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10175 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
10176 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
10177 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
10178 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
10179 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
10180
10181 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10182
10183 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
10184 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
10185 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
10186 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
10187 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
10188 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
10189 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
10190 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
10191 training is anyway very important</p>
10192
10193 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
10194 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
10195 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
10196 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
10197 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
10198
10199 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10200 project?</strong></p>
10201
10202 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
10203 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
10204 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
10205 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
10206 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
10207 hole.</p>
10208
10209 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10210 Edu?</strong></p>
10211
10212 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
10213 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
10214 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
10215 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
10216 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
10217 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
10218 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
10219 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
10220 hassle.</p>
10221
10222 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10223 Edu?</strong></p>
10224
10225 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
10226 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
10227 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
10228 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
10229 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
10230 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
10231 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
10232 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
10233
10234 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10235
10236 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
10237 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
10238 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
10239 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
10240 has the same...</p>
10241
10242 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
10243 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
10244 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
10245 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
10246
10247 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10248 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10249
10250 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
10251 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
10252 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
10253
10254 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
10255 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
10256 don't.</p>
10257
10258 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
10259 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
10260 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
10261 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
10262 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
10263 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
10264 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
10265
10266       </div>
10267       <div class="tags">
10268
10269
10270         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10271
10272
10273       </div>
10274     </div>
10275     <div class="padding"></div>
10276
10277     <div class="entry">
10278       <div class="title">
10279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
10280       </div>
10281       <div class="date">
10282         15th September 2012
10283       </div>
10284       <div class="body">
10285         <p>After the
10286 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
10287 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
10288 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
10289 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
10290 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
10291 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
10292 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
10293 was
10294 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
10295 formal working group should be formed.</p>
10296
10297 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
10298 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
10299 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
10300 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
10301 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
10302 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
10303 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
10304 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
10305
10306 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
10307 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
10308 IETF.</p>
10309
10310       </div>
10311       <div class="tags">
10312
10313
10314         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10315
10316
10317       </div>
10318     </div>
10319     <div class="padding"></div>
10320
10321     <div class="entry">
10322       <div class="title">
10323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
10324       </div>
10325       <div class="date">
10326         12th September 2012
10327       </div>
10328       <div class="body">
10329         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
10330 publication of of
10331 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
10332 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
10333 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
10334 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
10335 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
10336 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
10337 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
10338 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
10339 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
10340 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
10341
10342 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
10343 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
10344 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
10345 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
10346
10347 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
10348 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
10349
10350       </div>
10351       <div class="tags">
10352
10353
10354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10355
10356
10357       </div>
10358     </div>
10359     <div class="padding"></div>
10360
10361     <div class="entry">
10362       <div class="title">
10363         <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>
10364       </div>
10365       <div class="date">
10366          7th September 2012
10367       </div>
10368       <div class="body">
10369         <p>As I
10370 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
10371 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
10372 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
10373 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
10374 repository for the project</a>.</p>
10375
10376 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
10377 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
10378 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
10379 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
10380
10381 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
10382 PostScript formats at
10383 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
10384 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
10385
10386       </div>
10387       <div class="tags">
10388
10389
10390         Tags: <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>.
10391
10392
10393       </div>
10394     </div>
10395     <div class="padding"></div>
10396
10397     <div class="entry">
10398       <div class="title">
10399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
10400       </div>
10401       <div class="date">
10402         23rd August 2012
10403       </div>
10404       <div class="body">
10405         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
10406 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
10407 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
10408 revisit the great site
10409 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
10410 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
10411 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
10412
10413       </div>
10414       <div class="tags">
10415
10416
10417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10418
10419
10420       </div>
10421     </div>
10422     <div class="padding"></div>
10423
10424     <div class="entry">
10425       <div class="title">
10426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
10427       </div>
10428       <div class="date">
10429         17th August 2012
10430       </div>
10431       <div class="body">
10432         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
10433 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
10434 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
10435 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
10436 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
10437 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
10438 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
10439 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
10440 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
10441 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
10442 summer I
10443 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
10444 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
10445 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
10446
10447 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
10448 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
10449 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
10450 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
10451 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
10452 progress:</p>
10453
10454 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
10455
10456 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
10457 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
10458 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
10459 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
10460 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
10461 english version of the docbook source.</p>
10462
10463 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
10464 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
10465 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
10466 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
10467 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
10468 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
10469 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
10470 project files currently available from <a
10471 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10472
10473 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10474 the updated
10475 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10476 and
10477 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10478 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10479 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10480 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10481
10482       </div>
10483       <div class="tags">
10484
10485
10486         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
10487
10488
10489       </div>
10490     </div>
10491     <div class="padding"></div>
10492
10493     <div class="entry">
10494       <div class="title">
10495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
10496       </div>
10497       <div class="date">
10498         10th August 2012
10499       </div>
10500       <div class="body">
10501         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
10502 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
10503 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
10504 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
10505 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
10506 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
10507 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
10508 case for the language
10509 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
10510 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
10511
10512 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
10513 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
10514 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
10515 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
10516 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
10517
10518 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
10519 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
10520 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
10521 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
10522 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
10523 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
10524 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
10525 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
10526 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
10527 alias for 'nb'.</p>
10528
10529 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
10530 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
10531 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
10532 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
10533 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
10534 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
10535 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
10536 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
10537 at the same time. :(</p>
10538
10539 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
10540 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
10541 processors. :(</p>
10542
10543 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
10544
10545       </div>
10546       <div class="tags">
10547
10548
10549         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
10550
10551
10552       </div>
10553     </div>
10554     <div class="padding"></div>
10555
10556     <div class="entry">
10557       <div class="title">
10558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
10559       </div>
10560       <div class="date">
10561         31st July 2012
10562       </div>
10563       <div class="body">
10564         <p>I tried to send this text to the
10565 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
10566 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
10567 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
10568 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
10569 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
10570 out.</p>
10571
10572 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
10573 learning curve at the moment.</p>
10574
10575 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
10576 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
10577 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
10578 available from
10579 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
10580 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
10581 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
10582 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
10583 Squeeze.</p>
10584
10585 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
10586 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
10587 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
10588 problems.</p>
10589
10590 <ul>
10591
10592 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
10593    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
10594    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
10595    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
10596    index references spanning several pages (See
10597    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
10598    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
10599    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
10600
10601 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
10602    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
10603    #683163</a>).</li>
10604
10605 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
10606    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
10607    footnote and text body, see
10608    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
10609    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
10610    refs listed are not right).</li>
10611
10612 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
10613
10614 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
10615    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
10616
10617 </ul>
10618
10619 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
10620 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
10621 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
10622
10623 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
10624
10625       </div>
10626       <div class="tags">
10627
10628
10629         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
10630
10631
10632       </div>
10633     </div>
10634     <div class="padding"></div>
10635
10636     <div class="entry">
10637       <div class="title">
10638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
10639       </div>
10640       <div class="date">
10641         21st July 2012
10642       </div>
10643       <div class="body">
10644         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
10645 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
10646 norwegian version</a> of the book
10647 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
10648 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
10649 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
10650 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
10651 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10652
10653 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
10654 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
10655 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
10656 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
10657 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
10658 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
10659 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
10660 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
10661 print. :)</p>
10662
10663 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
10664 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
10665 language.</p>
10666
10667       </div>
10668       <div class="tags">
10669
10670
10671         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10672
10673
10674       </div>
10675     </div>
10676     <div class="padding"></div>
10677
10678     <div class="entry">
10679       <div class="title">
10680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
10681       </div>
10682       <div class="date">
10683         16th July 2012
10684       </div>
10685       <div class="body">
10686         <p>I am currently working on a
10687 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
10688 to translate</a> the book
10689 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
10690 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
10691 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
10692 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
10693 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
10694 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
10695 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10696
10697 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
10698 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
10699 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
10700 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
10701 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
10702 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
10703 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
10704 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
10705 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
10706
10707       </div>
10708       <div class="tags">
10709
10710
10711         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10712
10713
10714       </div>
10715     </div>
10716     <div class="padding"></div>
10717
10718     <div class="entry">
10719       <div class="title">
10720         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
10721       </div>
10722       <div class="date">
10723          9th July 2012
10724       </div>
10725       <div class="body">
10726         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10727 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
10728 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
10729 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
10730 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
10731 to adjust and scale the just released
10732 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10733 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
10734 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
10735
10736 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10737
10738 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
10739 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
10740 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
10741 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
10742 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
10743 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
10744 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
10745 perspective when working with IT.</p>
10746
10747 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10748 project?</strong></p>
10749
10750 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
10751 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
10752 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
10753 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
10754 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
10755 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
10756
10757 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10758 Edu?</strong></p>
10759
10760 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
10761 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
10762 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
10763 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
10764 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
10765 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
10766 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
10767 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
10768 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
10769 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
10770 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
10771 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
10772 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
10773 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
10774 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
10775 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
10776 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
10777 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
10778 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
10779 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
10780 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
10781 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
10782 quicker to update.
10783
10784 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10785 Edu?</strong></p>
10786
10787 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
10788 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
10789 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
10790 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
10791 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
10792 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
10793
10794 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
10795 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
10796 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
10797 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
10798 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
10799 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
10800 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
10801 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
10802 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
10803 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
10804 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
10805 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
10806 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
10807 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
10808 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
10809
10810 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
10811 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
10812 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
10813 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
10814 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
10815 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
10816 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
10817 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
10818
10819 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
10820 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
10821 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
10822 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
10823 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
10824 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
10825 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
10826 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
10827 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
10828 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
10829 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
10830 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
10831 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
10832 sound file.</p>
10833
10834 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
10835 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
10836 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
10837 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
10838 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
10839 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
10840 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
10841 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
10842 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
10843
10844 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10845
10846 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
10847 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
10848 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
10849 )</p>
10850
10851 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10852 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10853
10854 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
10855 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
10856 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
10857 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
10858 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
10859 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
10860 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
10861 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
10862 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
10863 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
10864 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
10865 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
10866 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
10867 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
10868 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
10869
10870 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
10871 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
10872 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
10873 management with Airtime</a>,
10874 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
10875 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
10876 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
10877 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
10878 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
10879
10880       </div>
10881       <div class="tags">
10882
10883
10884         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10885
10886
10887       </div>
10888     </div>
10889     <div class="padding"></div>
10890
10891     <div class="entry">
10892       <div class="title">
10893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
10894       </div>
10895       <div class="date">
10896          8th July 2012
10897       </div>
10898       <div class="body">
10899         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
10900 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
10901 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
10902 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
10903 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
10904 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
10905 Steinberg in his blog post
10906 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
10907 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
10908 spending of your tax money.</p>
10909
10910 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
10911 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
10912 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
10913 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
10914 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
10915 purchases.</p>
10916
10917       </div>
10918       <div class="tags">
10919
10920
10921         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10922
10923
10924       </div>
10925     </div>
10926     <div class="padding"></div>
10927
10928     <div class="entry">
10929       <div class="title">
10930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
10931       </div>
10932       <div class="date">
10933          7th July 2012
10934       </div>
10935       <div class="body">
10936         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10937 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
10938 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
10939 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
10940 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
10941 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
10942 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
10943 receive.  The software is
10944
10945 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
10946 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
10947 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
10948 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
10949 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
10950 Windows</a>.</p>
10951
10952 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
10953 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
10954
10955 <p><ul>
10956
10957   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
10958     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
10959
10960   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
10961     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
10962     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
10963     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
10964     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
10965     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
10966     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
10967     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
10968     </li>
10969
10970   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
10971     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
10972
10973   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
10974     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
10975
10976   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
10977     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
10978
10979   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
10980
10981   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
10982     formats </li>
10983
10984   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
10985     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
10986     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
10987     (as separate sets)</li>
10988
10989   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
10990     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
10991     percentage)</li>
10992
10993   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
10994     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
10995     memory):
10996     <ul>
10997       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
10998       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
10999       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
11000       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
11001       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
11002       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
11003       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
11004       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
11005       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
11006       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
11007           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
11008           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
11009           activity)</li>
11010       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
11011       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
11012     </ul></li>
11013
11014   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
11015     <ul>
11016       <li>Break periods</li>
11017       <li>For teacher(s):
11018         <ul>
11019           <li>Not available periods</li>
11020           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
11021           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11022           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11023           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11024           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11025
11026           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11027             days per week</li>
11028         </ul></li>
11029       <li>For students (sets):
11030         <ul>
11031           <li>Not available periods</li>
11032           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
11033           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11034           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11035           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11036           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11037
11038           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11039             days per week</li>
11040         </ul></li>
11041       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
11042         <ul>
11043           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
11044           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
11045           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
11046           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
11047           <li>End(s) students day</li>
11048           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
11049           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
11050             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
11051           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
11052           <li>Not overlapping</li>
11053           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
11054           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
11055         </ul></li>
11056     </ul></li>
11057
11058   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
11059     <ul>
11060       <li>Room not available periods</li>
11061       <li>For teacher(s):
11062         <ul>
11063           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11064           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11065           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11066         </ul>
11067       </li>
11068
11069       <li>For students (sets):
11070         <ul>
11071           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11072           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11073           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11074         </ul>
11075       </li>
11076       <li>Preferred room(s):
11077         <ul>
11078           <li>For a subject</li>
11079           <li>For an activity tag</li>
11080           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
11081           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
11082         </ul>
11083       </li>
11084
11085       <li>For a set of activities:
11086         <ul>
11087           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
11088         </ul>
11089       </li>
11090     </ul>
11091   </li>
11092 </ul></p>
11093
11094 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
11095 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
11096 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
11097 manually, check it out.
11098
11099 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
11100 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
11101 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
11102 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
11103 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
11104 section</a>.</p>
11105
11106       </div>
11107       <div class="tags">
11108
11109
11110         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11111
11112
11113       </div>
11114     </div>
11115     <div class="padding"></div>
11116
11117     <div class="entry">
11118       <div class="title">
11119         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
11120       </div>
11121       <div class="date">
11122          3rd July 2012
11123       </div>
11124       <div class="body">
11125         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
11126 project (Norwegian version of
11127 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
11128 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
11129 a problem with the municipalities using
11130 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
11131 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
11132 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
11133 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
11134 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
11135 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
11136 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
11137 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
11138 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
11139 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
11140 the From: header.</p>
11141
11142 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
11143 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
11144 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
11145 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
11146 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
11147 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
11148 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
11149 behaviour.</p>
11150
11151 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
11152 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
11153 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
11154 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
11155 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
11156 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
11157 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
11158
11159       </div>
11160       <div class="tags">
11161
11162
11163         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11164
11165
11166       </div>
11167     </div>
11168     <div class="padding"></div>
11169
11170     <div class="entry">
11171       <div class="title">
11172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
11173       </div>
11174       <div class="date">
11175         26th June 2012
11176       </div>
11177       <div class="body">
11178         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
11179 another interview with the people behind
11180 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
11181 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
11182 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
11183 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
11184 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
11185 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11186 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11187
11188 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11189
11190 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
11191 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
11192 ICT in schools</p>
11193
11194 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11195 project?</strong></p>
11196
11197 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
11198 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
11199 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
11200 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
11201
11202 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11203 Edu?</strong></p>
11204
11205 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
11206 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
11207 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
11208 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
11209
11210 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11211 Edu?</strong></p>
11212
11213 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
11214 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
11215 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
11216 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
11217 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
11218 technologies in school.</p>
11219
11220 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11221
11222 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
11223 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
11224 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
11225
11226 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11227 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11228
11229 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
11230 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
11231 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
11232 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
11233
11234 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
11235 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
11236 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
11237
11238 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
11239 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
11240 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
11241 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
11242 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
11243 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
11244 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
11245 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
11246 working there.</p>
11247
11248       </div>
11249       <div class="tags">
11250
11251
11252         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11253
11254
11255       </div>
11256     </div>
11257     <div class="padding"></div>
11258
11259     <div class="entry">
11260       <div class="title">
11261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
11262       </div>
11263       <div class="date">
11264         24th June 2012
11265       </div>
11266       <div class="body">
11267         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
11268 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
11269 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
11270 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
11271 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
11272 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
11273 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
11274 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
11275 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
11276 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
11277 missing in my book.</p>
11278
11279 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
11280 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
11281 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
11282 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
11283 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
11284 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
11285 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
11286
11287       </div>
11288       <div class="tags">
11289
11290
11291         Tags: <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>.
11292
11293
11294       </div>
11295     </div>
11296     <div class="padding"></div>
11297
11298     <div class="entry">
11299       <div class="title">
11300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
11301       </div>
11302       <div class="date">
11303         11th June 2012
11304       </div>
11305       <div class="body">
11306         <p>During my work on
11307 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
11308 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
11309 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
11310 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
11311 explanation.</p>
11312
11313 <p><ul>
11314
11315 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
11316 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
11317 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
11318 system depend on tasksel tasks in
11319 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
11320 installation.</li>
11321
11322 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
11323 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
11324 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
11325 at least try to enable it for these services:
11326 <ul>
11327
11328   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
11329     quotas.</li>
11330   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
11331   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
11332   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
11333   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
11334   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
11335
11336 </ul></li>
11337
11338 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
11339 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
11340 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
11341 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
11342
11343 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
11344 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
11345 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
11346
11347 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
11348 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
11349 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
11350 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
11351 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
11352 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
11353
11354 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
11355 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
11356 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
11357 in Wheezy.
11358
11359 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
11360 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
11361 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
11362
11363 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
11364 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
11365 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
11366 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
11367
11368 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
11369 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
11370 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
11371 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
11372
11373 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
11374 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
11375 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
11376
11377 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
11378 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
11379 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
11380
11381 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
11382 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
11383 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
11384 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
11385 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
11386
11387 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
11388 <ul>
11389
11390 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
11391 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
11392 <li>and probably more?</li>
11393 </ul></li>
11394
11395 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
11396 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
11397 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
11398 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
11399 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
11400 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
11401 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
11402 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
11403
11404
11405 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
11406 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
11407 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
11408 use.</li>
11409
11410 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
11411 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
11412 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
11413 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
11414 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
11415
11416 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
11417 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
11418 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
11419 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
11420 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
11421 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
11422
11423 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
11424 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
11425 There are at least three implementations,
11426 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
11427 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
11428 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
11429 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
11430 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
11431 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
11432 given room.</li>
11433
11434 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
11435 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
11436 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
11437 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
11438 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
11439 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
11440 investigated.</li>
11441
11442 </ul></p>
11443
11444 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
11445 version.</p>
11446
11447       </div>
11448       <div class="tags">
11449
11450
11451         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11452
11453
11454       </div>
11455     </div>
11456     <div class="padding"></div>
11457
11458     <div class="entry">
11459       <div class="title">
11460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
11461       </div>
11462       <div class="date">
11463          9th June 2012
11464       </div>
11465       <div class="body">
11466         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
11467 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
11468 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
11469 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
11470 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
11471 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
11472 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
11473 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
11474 be willing to pay for.</p>
11475
11476 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
11477 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
11478 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
11479 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
11480 Orwell</a>.</p>
11481
11482       </div>
11483       <div class="tags">
11484
11485
11486         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
11487
11488
11489       </div>
11490     </div>
11491     <div class="padding"></div>
11492
11493     <div class="entry">
11494       <div class="title">
11495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
11496       </div>
11497       <div class="date">
11498          6th June 2012
11499       </div>
11500       <div class="body">
11501         <p>A few days ago
11502 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
11503 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
11504 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
11505 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
11506 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
11507 code for HP, Dell and IBM
11508 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
11509 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
11510 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
11511 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
11512 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
11513
11514 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
11515 output:
11516
11517 <blockquote><pre>
11518 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
11519 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
11520 %
11521 </pre></blockquote>
11522
11523 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
11524 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
11525 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
11526
11527       </div>
11528       <div class="tags">
11529
11530
11531         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11532
11533
11534       </div>
11535     </div>
11536     <div class="padding"></div>
11537
11538     <div class="entry">
11539       <div class="title">
11540         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
11541       </div>
11542       <div class="date">
11543          2nd June 2012
11544       </div>
11545       <div class="body">
11546         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
11547 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11548 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
11549 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
11550 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11551 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11552
11553 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11554
11555 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
11556 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
11557 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
11558 by Angela).</p>
11559
11560 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
11561 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
11562 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
11563 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
11564 becoming an osteopath.</p>
11565
11566 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
11567 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
11568 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
11569 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
11570 skills with communication skills.</p>
11571
11572 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11573 project?</strong></p>
11574
11575 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
11576 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
11577 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
11578 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
11579 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
11580
11581 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
11582 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
11583 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
11584 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
11585 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
11586 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
11587 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
11588 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
11589 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
11590
11591 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
11592 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
11593 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
11594
11595 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
11596
11597 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
11598 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
11599 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
11600 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
11601 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
11602 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
11603 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
11604 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
11605 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
11606 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
11607 point.</p>
11608
11609 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
11610 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
11611 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
11612 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
11613 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
11614 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
11615
11616 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
11617 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
11618 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
11619 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
11620 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
11621 spare time.</p>
11622
11623 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
11624 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
11625 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
11626 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
11627 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
11628
11629 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
11630 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
11631 avoidance do exist.</p>
11632
11633 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
11634 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
11635 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
11636 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
11637 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
11638 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
11639 and probably a gain for all.</p>
11640
11641 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11642 Edu?</strong></p>
11643
11644 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
11645 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
11646 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
11647 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
11648 project communication, honest communication within the group of
11649 developers, etc.</p>
11650
11651 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11652 Edu?</strong></p>
11653
11654 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
11655
11656 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
11657 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
11658 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
11659 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
11660 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
11661 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
11662 contribute).</p>
11663
11664 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
11665 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
11666 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
11667 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
11668 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
11669 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
11670 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
11671 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
11672 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
11673 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
11674
11675 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11676
11677 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
11678
11679 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
11680 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
11681 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
11682
11683 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
11684 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
11685 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
11686 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
11687
11688 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
11689 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
11690 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
11691 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
11692 whiteboard.</p>
11693
11694 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
11695
11696 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11697 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11698
11699 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
11700 enrol people.</p>
11701
11702       </div>
11703       <div class="tags">
11704
11705
11706         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11707
11708
11709       </div>
11710     </div>
11711     <div class="padding"></div>
11712
11713     <div class="entry">
11714       <div class="title">
11715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
11716       </div>
11717       <div class="date">
11718          1st June 2012
11719       </div>
11720       <div class="body">
11721         <p>A few years ago I wrote
11722 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
11723 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
11724 I have learned from colleges here at the
11725 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
11726 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
11727 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
11728 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
11729 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
11730
11731 <p><pre>
11732 use strict;
11733 use warnings;
11734 use SOAP::Lite;
11735 use Data::Dumper;
11736 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
11737 my $App = 'test';
11738 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
11739 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
11740 my $s = SOAP::Lite
11741     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
11742     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
11743     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
11744     ;
11745 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
11746     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
11747     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
11748     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
11749 );
11750 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
11751 </pre></p>
11752
11753 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
11754
11755 <p><pre>
11756 $VAR1 = {
11757           'Asset' => {
11758                      'Entitlements' => {
11759                                        'EntitlementData' => [
11760                                                             {
11761                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
11762                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
11763                                                               'Provider' => '',
11764                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
11765                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
11766                                                             },
11767                                                             {
11768                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
11769                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
11770                                                               'Provider' => '',
11771                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
11772                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
11773                                                             },
11774                                                             {
11775                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
11776                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
11777                                                               'Provider' => '',
11778                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
11779                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
11780                                                             }
11781                                                           ]
11782                                      },
11783                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
11784                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
11785                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
11786                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
11787                                           'Buid' => '2323',
11788                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
11789                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
11790                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
11791                                         }
11792                    }
11793         };
11794 </pre></p>
11795
11796 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
11797 service outside the
11798 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
11799 documentation</a>, and according to
11800 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
11801 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
11802 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
11803
11804 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
11805 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
11806
11807       </div>
11808       <div class="tags">
11809
11810
11811         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11812
11813
11814       </div>
11815     </div>
11816     <div class="padding"></div>
11817
11818     <div class="entry">
11819       <div class="title">
11820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
11821       </div>
11822       <div class="date">
11823         31st May 2012
11824       </div>
11825       <div class="body">
11826         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
11827 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
11828 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
11829 running Debian Squeeze, where
11830 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
11831 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
11832 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
11833 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
11834 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
11835 another day.</p>
11836
11837 <p>After calibration, I get a
11838 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
11839 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
11840 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
11841 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
11842 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
11843 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
11844 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
11845 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
11846 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
11847 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
11848 and a simple</p>
11849
11850 <p><pre>
11851 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
11852 </pre></p>
11853
11854 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
11855 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
11856 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
11857 enough for now.</p>
11858
11859       </div>
11860       <div class="tags">
11861
11862
11863         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11864
11865
11866       </div>
11867     </div>
11868     <div class="padding"></div>
11869
11870     <div class="entry">
11871       <div class="title">
11872         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
11873       </div>
11874       <div class="date">
11875         27th May 2012
11876       </div>
11877       <div class="body">
11878         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
11879 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11880 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
11881 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
11882 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
11883 since then, helping to make sure the
11884 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11885 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
11886
11887 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11888
11889 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
11890 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
11891 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
11892 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
11893 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
11894 our computer network.</p>
11895
11896 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
11897 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
11898 (4 months).</p>
11899
11900 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11901 project?</strong></p>
11902
11903 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
11904 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
11905 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
11906 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
11907 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
11908 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
11909 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
11910 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
11911 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
11912 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
11913 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
11914 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
11915 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
11916 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
11917
11918 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11919 Edu?</strong></p>
11920
11921 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
11922 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
11923 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
11924 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
11925 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
11926 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
11927 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
11928 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
11929
11930 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11931 Edu?</strong></p>
11932
11933 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
11934 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
11935 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
11936 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
11937 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
11938 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
11939 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
11940 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
11941 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
11942 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
11943 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
11944 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
11945
11946 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11947
11948 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
11949 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
11950 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
11951
11952 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11953 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11954
11955 <p><ol>
11956
11957 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
11958 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
11959 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
11960 developing.</li>
11961
11962 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
11963 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
11964 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
11965 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
11966 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
11967
11968 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
11969 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
11970 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
11971
11972 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
11973 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
11974 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
11975 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
11976
11977 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
11978 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
11979 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
11980
11981 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
11982
11983 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
11984 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
11985 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
11986 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
11987
11988 </ol></p>
11989
11990       </div>
11991       <div class="tags">
11992
11993
11994         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11995
11996
11997       </div>
11998     </div>
11999     <div class="padding"></div>
12000
12001     <div class="entry">
12002       <div class="title">
12003         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
12004       </div>
12005       <div class="date">
12006         26th May 2012
12007       </div>
12008       <div class="body">
12009         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
12010 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
12011 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
12012 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
12013 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
12014
12015 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
12016 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
12017 comment:</p>
12018
12019 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
12020 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
12021 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
12022 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
12023 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
12024 </blockquote></p>
12025
12026 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
12027 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
12028 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
12029 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
12030 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
12031 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
12032 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
12033 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
12034 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
12035 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
12036 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
12037 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
12038 of wasted effort.</p>
12039
12040 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
12041 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
12042 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
12043
12044 <p>See
12045 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
12046 and
12047 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
12048 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
12049 </blockquote></p>
12050
12051       </div>
12052       <div class="tags">
12053
12054
12055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12056
12057
12058       </div>
12059     </div>
12060     <div class="padding"></div>
12061
12062     <div class="entry">
12063       <div class="title">
12064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
12065       </div>
12066       <div class="date">
12067         18th May 2012
12068       </div>
12069       <div class="body">
12070         <p>In january, I
12071 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
12072 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
12073 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
12074 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
12075 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
12076 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
12077 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
12078 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
12079 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
12080 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
12081
12082 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
12083 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
12084 drivers. :)</p>
12085
12086       </div>
12087       <div class="tags">
12088
12089
12090         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12091
12092
12093       </div>
12094     </div>
12095     <div class="padding"></div>
12096
12097     <div class="entry">
12098       <div class="title">
12099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
12100       </div>
12101       <div class="date">
12102         13th May 2012
12103       </div>
12104       <div class="body">
12105         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
12106 publish another interview with the people behind
12107 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
12108 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
12109 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
12110 details get right before release.
12111
12112 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12113
12114 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
12115 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
12116 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
12117 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
12118 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
12119 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
12120 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
12121 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
12122
12123 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
12124 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
12125 home since 2006.</p>
12126
12127 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12128 project?</strong></p>
12129
12130 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
12131 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
12132 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
12133 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
12134 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
12135 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
12136
12137 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
12138 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
12139 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
12140 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
12141 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
12142 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
12143 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
12144 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
12145 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
12146 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
12147 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
12148 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
12149 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
12150 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
12151 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
12152 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
12153
12154 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12155 Edu?</strong></p>
12156
12157 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
12158 for me as today.</p>
12159
12160 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
12161
12162 <p><ul>
12163
12164 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
12165 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
12166
12167 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
12168 cost.</li>
12169
12170 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
12171 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
12172 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
12173 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
12174 server</li>
12175
12176 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
12177 school.</li>
12178
12179 </ul></p>
12180
12181 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
12182 came up in this way:</p>
12183
12184 <p><ul>
12185
12186 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
12187 now.</li>
12188
12189 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
12190 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
12191 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
12192
12193 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
12194 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
12195 interfaces used in the past.</li>
12196
12197 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
12198 different needs.</li>
12199
12200 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
12201
12202 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
12203 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
12204 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
12205
12206 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
12207 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
12208
12209 </ul></p>
12210
12211 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12212 Edu?</strong></p>
12213
12214 <p><ul>
12215
12216 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
12217 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
12218 whole municipality areas.</li>
12219
12220 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
12221 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
12222 politicians.</li>
12223
12224 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
12225
12226 </ul></p>
12227
12228 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12229
12230 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
12231 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
12232 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
12233 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
12234 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
12235 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
12236
12237 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
12238 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
12239 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
12240 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
12241 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
12242
12243 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12244 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12245
12246 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
12247 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
12248 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
12249
12250       </div>
12251       <div class="tags">
12252
12253
12254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12255
12256
12257       </div>
12258     </div>
12259     <div class="padding"></div>
12260
12261     <div class="entry">
12262       <div class="title">
12263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
12264       </div>
12265       <div class="date">
12266         30th April 2012
12267       </div>
12268       <div class="body">
12269         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
12270 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
12271
12272 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
12273 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
12274 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
12275 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
12276 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
12277 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
12278 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
12279 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
12280 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
12281 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
12282 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
12283 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
12284 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
12285 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
12286 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
12287 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
12288
12289 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
12290 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
12291 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
12292 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
12293 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
12294 finally found a Danish supplier
12295 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
12296 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
12297 days ago.</p>
12298
12299 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
12300 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
12301 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
12302 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
12303 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
12304 toys.</p>
12305
12306       </div>
12307       <div class="tags">
12308
12309
12310         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12311
12312
12313       </div>
12314     </div>
12315     <div class="padding"></div>
12316
12317     <div class="entry">
12318       <div class="title">
12319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
12320       </div>
12321       <div class="date">
12322         26th April 2012
12323       </div>
12324       <div class="body">
12325         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
12326 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
12327 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
12328 that the video editor application included with
12329 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
12330 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
12331 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
12332
12333 <p><blockquote>
12334 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
12335 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
12336 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
12337 </blockquote></p>
12338
12339 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
12340
12341 <p><blockquote>
12342 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
12343 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
12344 </blockquote></p>
12345
12346 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
12347 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
12348 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
12349 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
12350 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
12351 video.  AMR is
12352 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
12353 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
12354 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
12355 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
12356 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
12357 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
12358 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
12359
12360 <p>I know why I prefer
12361 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
12362 standards</a> also for video.</p>
12363
12364       </div>
12365       <div class="tags">
12366
12367
12368         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12369
12370
12371       </div>
12372     </div>
12373     <div class="padding"></div>
12374
12375     <div class="entry">
12376       <div class="title">
12377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
12378       </div>
12379       <div class="date">
12380         19th April 2012
12381       </div>
12382       <div class="body">
12383         <p>Here in Norway, the
12384 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
12385 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
12386 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
12387 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
12388 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
12389 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
12390 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
12391 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
12392 on the same level.</p>
12393
12394 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
12395 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
12396 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
12397 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
12398 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
12399 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
12400 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
12401 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
12402 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
12403 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
12404 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
12405 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
12406 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
12407 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
12408 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
12409 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
12410 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
12411 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
12412
12413 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
12414 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
12415 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
12416 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
12417 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
12418 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
12419 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
12420 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
12421
12422 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
12423 from Simon Phipps
12424 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
12425 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
12426
12427 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
12428 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
12429 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
12430 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
12431 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
12432 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
12433 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
12434 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
12435 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
12436
12437       </div>
12438       <div class="tags">
12439
12440
12441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12442
12443
12444       </div>
12445     </div>
12446     <div class="padding"></div>
12447
12448     <div class="entry">
12449       <div class="title">
12450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
12451       </div>
12452       <div class="date">
12453         15th April 2012
12454       </div>
12455       <div class="body">
12456         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
12457 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
12458 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
12459 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
12460 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
12461 up in the recently released
12462 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
12463 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12464
12465 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12466
12467 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
12468 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
12469 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
12470 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
12471 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
12472 information technology and science/technology.</p>
12473
12474 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12475 project?</strong></p>
12476
12477 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
12478 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
12479 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
12480 contributing.</p>
12481
12482 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12483 Edu?</strong></p>
12484
12485 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
12486 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
12487 Debian Project!</p>
12488
12489 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12490 Edu?</strong></p>
12491
12492 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
12493 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
12494 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
12495 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
12496 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
12497 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
12498 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
12499
12500 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
12501 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
12502
12503 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12504
12505 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
12506 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
12507 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
12508 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
12509
12510 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12511 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12512
12513 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
12514 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
12515 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
12516 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
12517 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
12518 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
12519 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
12520
12521 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
12522 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
12523 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
12524 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
12525 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
12526 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
12527 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
12528 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
12529
12530       </div>
12531       <div class="tags">
12532
12533
12534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12535
12536
12537       </div>
12538     </div>
12539     <div class="padding"></div>
12540
12541     <div class="entry">
12542       <div class="title">
12543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
12544       </div>
12545       <div class="date">
12546          8th April 2012
12547       </div>
12548       <div class="body">
12549         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
12550 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
12551 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
12552 contributor to the
12553 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
12554 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
12555
12556 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12557
12558 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
12559 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
12560
12561 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12562 project?</strong></p>
12563
12564 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
12565 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
12566 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
12567 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
12568 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
12569 "localisation".</p>
12570
12571 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12572 Edu?</strong></p>
12573
12574 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12575 Edu?</strong></p>
12576
12577 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
12578 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
12579 education system.</p>
12580
12581 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
12582 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
12583 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
12584 money on the latest hardware.</p>
12585
12586 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12587
12588 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
12589 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
12590 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
12591
12592 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12593 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12594
12595 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
12596 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
12597 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
12598
12599       </div>
12600       <div class="tags">
12601
12602
12603         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12604
12605
12606       </div>
12607     </div>
12608     <div class="padding"></div>
12609
12610     <div class="entry">
12611       <div class="title">
12612         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
12613       </div>
12614       <div class="date">
12615          6th April 2012
12616       </div>
12617       <div class="body">
12618         <p>Recently I have spent time with
12619 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
12620 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
12621 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
12622 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
12623 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
12624 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
12625 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
12626 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
12627
12628 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
12629 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
12630 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
12631 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
12632 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
12633 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
12634 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
12635 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
12636
12637 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
12638 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
12639 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
12640 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
12641 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
12642 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
12643 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
12644 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
12645
12646 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
12647 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
12648 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
12649 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
12650 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
12651 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
12652 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
12653 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
12654 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
12655 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
12656
12657 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
12658 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
12659 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
12660 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
12661
12662 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
12663 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
12664
12665       </div>
12666       <div class="tags">
12667
12668
12669         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12670
12671
12672       </div>
12673     </div>
12674     <div class="padding"></div>
12675
12676     <div class="entry">
12677       <div class="title">
12678         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
12679       </div>
12680       <div class="date">
12681          5th April 2012
12682       </div>
12683       <div class="body">
12684         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
12685 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
12686 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
12687 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
12688 for schools.  Check out his article
12689 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
12690 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
12691
12692       </div>
12693       <div class="tags">
12694
12695
12696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12697
12698
12699       </div>
12700     </div>
12701     <div class="padding"></div>
12702
12703     <div class="entry">
12704       <div class="title">
12705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
12706       </div>
12707       <div class="date">
12708          1st April 2012
12709       </div>
12710       <div class="body">
12711         <p>Germany is a core area for the
12712 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12713 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
12714 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
12715
12716 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12717
12718 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
12719 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
12720 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
12721 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
12722 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
12723 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
12724 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
12725 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
12726
12727 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
12728 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
12729 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
12730 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
12731 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
12732 the end of April this year.</p>
12733
12734 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12735 project?</strong></p>
12736
12737 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
12738 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
12739 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
12740 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
12741 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
12742 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
12743 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
12744 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
12745 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
12746 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
12747 Skolelinux.</p>
12748
12749 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
12750 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
12751 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
12752 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
12753 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
12754 the admin teachers.</p>
12755
12756 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12757 Edu?</strong></p>
12758
12759 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
12760 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
12761 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
12762
12763 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
12764 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
12765 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
12766 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
12767 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
12768
12769 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12770 Edu?</strong></p>
12771
12772 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
12773
12774 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12775
12776 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
12777 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
12778 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
12779 LibreOffice.</p>
12780
12781 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12782 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12783
12784 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
12785 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
12786 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
12787
12788       </div>
12789       <div class="tags">
12790
12791
12792         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12793
12794
12795       </div>
12796     </div>
12797     <div class="padding"></div>
12798
12799     <div class="entry">
12800       <div class="title">
12801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
12802       </div>
12803       <div class="date">
12804         25th March 2012
12805       </div>
12806       <div class="body">
12807         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
12808
12809 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
12810 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
12811 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
12812 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
12813 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
12814 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
12815 and download as a
12816 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
12817 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
12818
12819 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
12820   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
12821     <p>Download video as
12822       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
12823 </video></p>
12824
12825       </div>
12826       <div class="tags">
12827
12828
12829         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12830
12831
12832       </div>
12833     </div>
12834     <div class="padding"></div>
12835
12836     <div class="entry">
12837       <div class="title">
12838         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
12839       </div>
12840       <div class="date">
12841         19th March 2012
12842       </div>
12843       <div class="body">
12844         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
12845 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
12846 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
12847 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
12848 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
12849
12850 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12851
12852 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
12853 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
12854 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
12855 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
12856 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
12857 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
12858 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
12859 installations.</p>
12860
12861 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12862 project?</strong></p>
12863
12864 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
12865 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
12866 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
12867 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
12868 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
12869 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
12870 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
12871 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
12872 these things we decided to try it.</p>
12873
12874 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12875 Edu?</strong></p>
12876
12877 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
12878 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
12879 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
12880 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
12881 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
12882 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
12883 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
12884 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
12885
12886 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12887 Edu?</strong></p>
12888
12889 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
12890 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
12891 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
12892 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
12893 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
12894
12895 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12896
12897 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
12898 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
12899 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
12900 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
12901 that counts...)</p>
12902
12903 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12904 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12905
12906 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
12907 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
12908 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
12909 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
12910 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
12911 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
12912 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
12913 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
12914 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
12915 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
12916 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
12917
12918 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
12919 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
12920 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
12921
12922       </div>
12923       <div class="tags">
12924
12925
12926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12927
12928
12929       </div>
12930     </div>
12931     <div class="padding"></div>
12932
12933     <div class="entry">
12934       <div class="title">
12935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
12936       </div>
12937       <div class="date">
12938         16th March 2012
12939       </div>
12940       <div class="body">
12941         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
12942 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
12943 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
12944 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
12945
12946 <ol>
12947
12948 <li>The documentation is written in a
12949 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
12950 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
12951 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
12952 docbook XML.</li>
12953
12954 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
12955 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
12956 with the translated text.</li>
12957
12958 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
12959 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
12960 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
12961 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
12962 images.</li>
12963
12964 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
12965 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
12966
12967 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
12968 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
12969
12970 </ol>
12971
12972 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
12973 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
12974 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
12975 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
12976 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
12977
12978 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
12979 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
12980 package</a>.</p>
12981
12982       </div>
12983       <div class="tags">
12984
12985
12986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12987
12988
12989       </div>
12990     </div>
12991     <div class="padding"></div>
12992
12993     <div class="entry">
12994       <div class="title">
12995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
12996       </div>
12997       <div class="date">
12998         11th March 2012
12999       </div>
13000       <div class="body">
13001         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
13002 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
13003 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13004 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
13005 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
13006 you have not done so already.</p>
13007
13008 <p>I plan to present the new version at
13009 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
13010 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
13011 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
13012
13013       </div>
13014       <div class="tags">
13015
13016
13017         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13018
13019
13020       </div>
13021     </div>
13022     <div class="padding"></div>
13023
13024     <div class="entry">
13025       <div class="title">
13026         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
13027       </div>
13028       <div class="date">
13029          9th March 2012
13030       </div>
13031       <div class="body">
13032         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
13033 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
13034 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13035 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
13036 more international audience.</p>
13037
13038 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13039 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
13040 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
13041 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
13042 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
13043 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
13044 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
13045
13046
13047 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13048
13049 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
13050 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
13051 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
13052 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
13053 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
13054 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
13055 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
13056 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
13057 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
13058 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
13059 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
13060
13061 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13062 project?</strong></p>
13063
13064 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
13065 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
13066 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
13067 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
13068 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
13069 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
13070 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
13071 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
13072 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
13073 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
13074 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
13075 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
13076 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
13077
13078 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13079 Edu?</strong></p>
13080
13081 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
13082 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
13083 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
13084 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
13085 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
13086 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
13087 Japan.</p>
13088
13089 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13090 Edu?</strong></p>
13091
13092 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
13093 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
13094 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
13095 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
13096 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
13097 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
13098 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
13099 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
13100 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
13101 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
13102 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
13103 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
13104 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
13105 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
13106 help.</p>
13107
13108 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13109
13110 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
13111 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
13112 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
13113 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
13114 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
13115 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
13116 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
13117 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
13118 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
13119 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
13120 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
13121
13122 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13123 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13124
13125 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
13126 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
13127 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
13128 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
13129 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
13130 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
13131 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
13132 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
13133 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
13134 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
13135 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
13136 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
13137
13138       </div>
13139       <div class="tags">
13140
13141
13142         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13143
13144
13145       </div>
13146     </div>
13147     <div class="padding"></div>
13148
13149     <div class="entry">
13150       <div class="title">
13151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
13152       </div>
13153       <div class="date">
13154          7th March 2012
13155       </div>
13156       <div class="body">
13157         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13158
13159 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
13160 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
13161 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
13162 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
13163 download as a
13164 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
13165 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13166
13167 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13168   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
13169     <p>Download video as
13170       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13171 </video></p>
13172
13173       </div>
13174       <div class="tags">
13175
13176
13177         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13178
13179
13180       </div>
13181     </div>
13182     <div class="padding"></div>
13183
13184     <div class="entry">
13185       <div class="title">
13186         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13187       </div>
13188       <div class="date">
13189          4th March 2012
13190       </div>
13191       <div class="body">
13192         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
13193 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13194 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13195 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
13196 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
13197 need a software solution for your school.</p>
13198
13199       </div>
13200       <div class="tags">
13201
13202
13203         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13204
13205
13206       </div>
13207     </div>
13208     <div class="padding"></div>
13209
13210     <div class="entry">
13211       <div class="title">
13212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
13213       </div>
13214       <div class="date">
13215          3rd March 2012
13216       </div>
13217       <div class="body">
13218         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
13219 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
13220 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
13221 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
13222 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
13223 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
13224 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
13225 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
13226 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
13227 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
13228 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
13229 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
13230 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
13231 year...</p>
13232
13233 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
13234 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
13235 name,
13236 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
13237 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
13238 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
13239 mean). I've been following
13240 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
13241 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
13242 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
13243 Check it out. :)</p>
13244
13245       </div>
13246       <div class="tags">
13247
13248
13249         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13250
13251
13252       </div>
13253     </div>
13254     <div class="padding"></div>
13255
13256     <div class="entry">
13257       <div class="title">
13258         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13259       </div>
13260       <div class="date">
13261         27th February 2012
13262       </div>
13263       <div class="body">
13264         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
13265 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13266 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
13267 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
13268 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
13269 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
13270 need a software solution for your school.</p>
13271
13272       </div>
13273       <div class="tags">
13274
13275
13276         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13277
13278
13279       </div>
13280     </div>
13281     <div class="padding"></div>
13282
13283     <div class="entry">
13284       <div class="title">
13285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13286       </div>
13287       <div class="date">
13288         19th February 2012
13289       </div>
13290       <div class="body">
13291         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
13292 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
13293 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13294 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13295 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
13296 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
13297 solution for your school.</p>
13298
13299       </div>
13300       <div class="tags">
13301
13302
13303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13304
13305
13306       </div>
13307     </div>
13308     <div class="padding"></div>
13309
13310     <div class="entry">
13311       <div class="title">
13312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
13313       </div>
13314       <div class="date">
13315         14th February 2012
13316       </div>
13317       <div class="body">
13318         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
13319 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
13320 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
13321 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
13322 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
13323 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
13324 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
13325 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
13326 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
13327
13328 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
13329 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
13330 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
13331 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
13332 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
13333
13334 <blockquote><pre>
13335 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
13336 do
13337     printf "Failed disk $d: "
13338     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
13339 done
13340 </blockquote></pre>
13341
13342 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
13343 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
13344
13345 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
13346
13347 <blockquote><pre>
13348 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
13349 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
13350 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
13351 </blockquote></pre>
13352
13353 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
13354 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
13355 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
13356 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
13357 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
13358 mounted inside my box.</p>
13359
13360 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
13361 Software RAID in the
13362 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
13363 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
13364 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
13365 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
13366 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
13367 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
13368
13369       </div>
13370       <div class="tags">
13371
13372
13373         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
13374
13375
13376       </div>
13377     </div>
13378     <div class="padding"></div>
13379
13380     <div class="entry">
13381       <div class="title">
13382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13383       </div>
13384       <div class="date">
13385         13th February 2012
13386       </div>
13387       <div class="body">
13388         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
13389 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
13390 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
13391 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
13392 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
13393 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
13394 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
13395 change the global proxy setting by editing
13396 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
13397 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
13398
13399 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
13400 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
13401 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
13402
13403 <blockquote><pre>
13404 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
13405 {
13406    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
13407        isPlainHostName(host) ||
13408        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
13409       return "DIRECT";
13410    else
13411       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
13412 }
13413 </pre></blockquote>
13414
13415 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
13416
13417 <blockquote><pre>
13418 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
13419 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
13420 </pre></blockquote>
13421
13422 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
13423 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
13424 would be used for
13425 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
13426 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
13427 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
13428 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
13429 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
13430 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
13431 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
13432 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
13433 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
13434 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
13435
13436 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
13437 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
13438 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
13439 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
13440 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
13441 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
13442
13443 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
13444 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
13445 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
13446 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
13447 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
13448 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
13449 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
13450 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
13451 the network setup changes.</p>
13452
13453 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
13454 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
13455 draft</a> and a
13456 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
13457 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
13458
13459       </div>
13460       <div class="tags">
13461
13462
13463         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13464
13465
13466       </div>
13467     </div>
13468     <div class="padding"></div>
13469
13470     <div class="entry">
13471       <div class="title">
13472         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
13473       </div>
13474       <div class="date">
13475          5th February 2012
13476       </div>
13477       <div class="body">
13478         <p>Since the Lenny version of
13479 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
13480 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
13481 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
13482 in the morning.  This is done using the
13483 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
13484
13485 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
13486 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
13487 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
13488 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
13489 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
13490 the
13491 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
13492 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
13493 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
13494 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
13495 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
13496
13497 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
13498 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
13499 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
13500 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
13501 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
13502 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
13503 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
13504
13505 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
13506 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
13507 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
13508 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
13509 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
13510
13511       </div>
13512       <div class="tags">
13513
13514
13515         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13516
13517
13518       </div>
13519     </div>
13520     <div class="padding"></div>
13521
13522     <div class="entry">
13523       <div class="title">
13524         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13525       </div>
13526       <div class="date">
13527          4th February 2012
13528       </div>
13529       <div class="body">
13530         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
13531 publish the third beta version of
13532 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13533 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
13534 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
13535 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
13536 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
13537 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
13538 on the project announcement list.</p>
13539
13540 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
13541 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
13542
13543 <ul>
13544
13545 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
13546   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
13547   the installation.</li>
13548
13549 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
13550   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
13551
13552 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
13553   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
13554   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
13555
13556 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
13557   for the local system administrator is created during installation
13558   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
13559   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
13560   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
13561   up to date on the system.</li>
13562
13563 </ul>
13564
13565 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
13566 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
13567 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
13568 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
13569
13570 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
13571 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
13572 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
13573 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
13574 will see you there?</p>
13575
13576       </div>
13577       <div class="tags">
13578
13579
13580         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13581
13582
13583       </div>
13584     </div>
13585     <div class="padding"></div>
13586
13587     <div class="entry">
13588       <div class="title">
13589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
13590       </div>
13591       <div class="date">
13592         27th January 2012
13593       </div>
13594       <div class="body">
13595         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
13596 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
13597 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13598 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
13599 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
13600 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
13601 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
13602
13603 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
13604 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
13605 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
13606 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
13607 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
13608 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
13609 not taken care of by this.</p>
13610
13611 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
13612 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
13613 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
13614 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
13615 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
13616 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
13617 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
13618 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
13619 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
13620 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
13621 firmware packages.</p>
13622
13623 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
13624 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
13625 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
13626 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
13627 initrd with extra firmware, the
13628 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
13629 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
13630 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
13631
13632 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
13633 network cards working.  For this,
13634 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
13635 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
13636 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
13637
13638 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
13639 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
13640 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
13641
13642 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
13643 try.</p>
13644
13645       </div>
13646       <div class="tags">
13647
13648
13649         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13650
13651
13652       </div>
13653     </div>
13654     <div class="padding"></div>
13655
13656     <div class="entry">
13657       <div class="title">
13658         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
13659       </div>
13660       <div class="date">
13661         25th January 2012
13662       </div>
13663       <div class="body">
13664         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
13665 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
13666 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
13667 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
13668 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
13669
13670 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
13671 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
13672 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
13673 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
13674 this is done, log on to the central server and run
13675 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
13676 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
13677 will look similar to this:</p>
13678
13679 <p><blockquote><pre>
13680 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
13681 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
13682 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
13683
13684 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
13685
13686 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13687 enter password: *******
13688 %
13689 </pre></blockquote></p>
13690
13691 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
13692 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
13693 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
13694 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
13695 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
13696 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
13697 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
13698 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
13699 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
13700 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
13701 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
13702 automatically.</p>
13703
13704 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
13705 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
13706
13707 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
13708 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
13709 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
13710
13711       </div>
13712       <div class="tags">
13713
13714
13715         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
13716
13717
13718       </div>
13719     </div>
13720     <div class="padding"></div>
13721
13722     <div class="entry">
13723       <div class="title">
13724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
13725       </div>
13726       <div class="date">
13727         10th January 2012
13728       </div>
13729       <div class="body">
13730         <p>In the Squeeze version of
13731 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
13732 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
13733 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
13734 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
13735 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
13736 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
13737 first time.</p>
13738
13739 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
13740 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
13741 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
13742 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
13743
13744 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
13745 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
13746 new setting.</p>
13747
13748 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
13749 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
13750 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
13751
13752       </div>
13753       <div class="tags">
13754
13755
13756         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13757
13758
13759       </div>
13760     </div>
13761     <div class="padding"></div>
13762
13763     <div class="entry">
13764       <div class="title">
13765         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13766       </div>
13767       <div class="date">
13768          7th January 2012
13769       </div>
13770       <div class="body">
13771         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
13772 the second beta version of
13773 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
13774 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
13775 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
13776 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
13777 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
13778 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
13779 on the project announcement list.</p>
13780
13781       </div>
13782       <div class="tags">
13783
13784
13785         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13786
13787
13788       </div>
13789     </div>
13790     <div class="padding"></div>
13791
13792     <div class="entry">
13793       <div class="title">
13794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
13795       </div>
13796       <div class="date">
13797          3rd January 2012
13798       </div>
13799       <div class="body">
13800         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
13801 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
13802 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
13803 interesting.</p>
13804
13805 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
13806 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
13807 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
13808 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
13809 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
13810 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
13811 wrap up its tasks.</p>
13812
13813 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
13814 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
13815 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
13816 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
13817 because I was typing.</P>
13818
13819 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
13820 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
13821 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
13822 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
13823 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
13824 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
13825 generate entropy.</p>
13826
13827 <p>The fix is in
13828 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
13829 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
13830 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
13831 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
13832
13833       </div>
13834       <div class="tags">
13835
13836
13837         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13838
13839
13840       </div>
13841     </div>
13842     <div class="padding"></div>
13843
13844     <div class="entry">
13845       <div class="title">
13846         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
13847       </div>
13848       <div class="date">
13849         21st November 2011
13850       </div>
13851       <div class="body">
13852         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
13853 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
13854 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
13855 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
13856 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
13857 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
13858 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
13859 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
13860 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
13861 the tools to do so.</p>
13862
13863 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
13864 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
13865 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
13866 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
13867
13868 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
13869 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
13870 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
13871 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
13872 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
13873 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
13874 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
13875 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
13876
13877 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
13878 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
13879 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
13880
13881 <p><pre>
13882 #!/usr/bin/perl
13883 use strict;
13884 use warnings;
13885 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
13886 BEGIN {
13887     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
13888     my %rhelmodules = (
13889         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
13890         );
13891     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
13892         eval "use $module;";
13893         if ($@) {
13894             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
13895             system("yum install -y $pkg");
13896             eval "use $module;";
13897         }
13898     }
13899 }
13900 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
13901
13902 upgrade_dell();
13903
13904 exit 0;
13905
13906 sub run_firmware_script {
13907     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
13908     unless ($script) {
13909         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
13910         exit 1
13911     }
13912     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
13913
13914     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
13915         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
13916     } else {
13917         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
13918     }
13919 }
13920
13921 sub run_firmware_scripts {
13922     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
13923     # Run firmware packages
13924     for my $dir (@dirs) {
13925         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
13926         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
13927         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
13928             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
13929             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
13930         }
13931         closedir $dh;
13932     }
13933 }
13934
13935 sub download {
13936     my $url = shift;
13937     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
13938     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
13939 }
13940
13941 sub upgrade_dell {
13942     my @dirs;
13943     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13944     chomp $product;
13945
13946     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
13947
13948         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
13949         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
13950
13951         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
13952             CLEANUP => 1
13953             );
13954         chdir($tmpdir);
13955         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
13956         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
13957         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
13958         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
13959         my $fwopts = "-q";
13960         if (@paths) {
13961             for my $url (@paths) {
13962                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
13963             }
13964             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
13965         } else {
13966             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13967             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13968         }
13969         chdir('/');
13970     } else {
13971         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13972         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13973     }
13974 }
13975
13976 sub fetch_dell_fw {
13977     my $path = shift;
13978     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
13979     download($url);
13980 }
13981
13982 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
13983 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
13984 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
13985 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
13986     my $filename = shift;
13987
13988     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13989     chomp $product;
13990     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
13991
13992     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
13993
13994     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
13995     my @paths;
13996     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
13997         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
13998         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
13999         my $oscode;
14000         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
14001             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
14002         } else {
14003             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
14004         }
14005         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
14006         {
14007             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
14008         }
14009     }
14010     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
14011         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
14012
14013         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
14014         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
14015
14016         my $cpath = $component->{path};
14017         for my $path (@paths) {
14018             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
14019                 push(@paths, $cpath);
14020             }
14021         }
14022     }
14023     return @paths;
14024 }
14025 </pre>
14026
14027 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
14028 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
14029 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
14030 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
14031 outdated.</p>
14032
14033       </div>
14034       <div class="tags">
14035
14036
14037         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14038
14039
14040       </div>
14041     </div>
14042     <div class="padding"></div>
14043
14044     <div class="entry">
14045       <div class="title">
14046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
14047       </div>
14048       <div class="date">
14049          7th October 2011
14050       </div>
14051       <div class="body">
14052         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
14053 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
14054 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
14055 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
14056 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
14057 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
14058 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
14059 models.</p>
14060
14061 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
14062 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
14063 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
14064 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
14065
14066 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
14067 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
14068 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
14069 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
14070 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
14071 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
14072 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
14073 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
14074 distributed.</p>
14075
14076 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
14077
14078 <ul>
14079
14080 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
14081   other relevant equipment.</li>
14082
14083 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
14084
14085 </ul>
14086
14087 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
14088 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
14089 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
14090 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
14091 books available.</p>
14092
14093 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
14094 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
14095 libraries. :)</p>
14096
14097       </div>
14098       <div class="tags">
14099
14100
14101         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
14102
14103
14104       </div>
14105     </div>
14106     <div class="padding"></div>
14107
14108     <div class="entry">
14109       <div class="title">
14110         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
14111       </div>
14112       <div class="date">
14113         17th September 2011
14114       </div>
14115       <div class="body">
14116         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
14117 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
14118 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
14119 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
14120 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
14121 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
14122 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
14123 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
14124
14125 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
14126
14127 <blockquote><pre>
14128 #!/bin/sh
14129 # apt-get install lsdvd
14130 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
14131 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
14132 </pre></blockquote>
14133
14134 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
14135 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
14136 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
14137 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
14138
14139 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
14140 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
14141 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
14142 back as an ISO.
14143
14144 <blockquote><pre>
14145 #!/bin/sh
14146 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
14147 set -e
14148 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
14149 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
14150 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
14151 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
14152 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
14153 </pre></blockquote>
14154
14155 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
14156
14157 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
14158 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
14159 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
14160 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
14161 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
14162
14163 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
14164 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
14165 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
14166 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
14167 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
14168 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
14169
14170       </div>
14171       <div class="tags">
14172
14173
14174         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14175
14176
14177       </div>
14178     </div>
14179     <div class="padding"></div>
14180
14181     <div class="entry">
14182       <div class="title">
14183         <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>
14184       </div>
14185       <div class="date">
14186          4th August 2011
14187       </div>
14188       <div class="body">
14189         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
14190 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
14191 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
14192 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
14193 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
14194 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
14195 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
14196 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
14197 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
14198
14199 <p><blockquote>
14200 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
14201 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
14202 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
14203 </blockquote></p>
14204
14205 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
14206 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
14207 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
14208 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
14209 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
14210 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
14211 hard to explain.</p>
14212
14213 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
14214 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
14215 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
14216 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
14217 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
14218 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
14219 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
14220 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
14221 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
14222 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
14223 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
14224 mode).</p>
14225
14226 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
14227 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
14228 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
14229 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
14230 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
14231 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
14232 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
14233 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
14234 after visiting single user mode.</p>
14235
14236 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
14237 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
14238 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
14239 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
14240 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
14241 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
14242 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
14243 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
14244
14245 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
14246 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
14247 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
14248
14249       </div>
14250       <div class="tags">
14251
14252
14253         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>.
14254
14255
14256       </div>
14257     </div>
14258     <div class="padding"></div>
14259
14260     <div class="entry">
14261       <div class="title">
14262         <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>
14263       </div>
14264       <div class="date">
14265         30th July 2011
14266       </div>
14267       <div class="body">
14268         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
14269 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
14270 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
14271 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
14272 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
14273 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
14274 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
14275 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
14276 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
14277 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
14278 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
14279 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
14280 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
14281
14282 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
14283 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
14284 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
14285 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
14286 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
14287 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
14288 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
14289 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
14290 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
14291
14292 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
14293 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
14294 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
14295 is presented.</p>
14296
14297 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
14298 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
14299 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
14300 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
14301 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
14302 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
14303 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
14304 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
14305 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
14306 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
14307 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
14308 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
14309 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
14310 find time to push this forward.</p>
14311
14312       </div>
14313       <div class="tags">
14314
14315
14316         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>.
14317
14318
14319       </div>
14320     </div>
14321     <div class="padding"></div>
14322
14323     <div class="entry">
14324       <div class="title">
14325         <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>
14326       </div>
14327       <div class="date">
14328         29th July 2011
14329       </div>
14330       <div class="body">
14331         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
14332 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
14333 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
14334 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
14335 issues.</p>
14336
14337 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
14338 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
14339 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
14340
14341 <ol>
14342
14343 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
14344 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
14345 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
14346 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
14347 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
14348 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
14349 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
14350 Debian.</li>
14351
14352 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
14353 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
14354 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
14355 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
14356 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
14357 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
14358 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
14359 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
14360 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
14361 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
14362 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
14363 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
14364 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
14365
14366 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
14367 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
14368 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
14369 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
14370 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
14371 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
14372 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
14373 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
14374 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
14375 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
14376
14377 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
14378 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
14379 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
14380 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
14381 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
14382 latter behaviour.</li>
14383
14384 </ol>
14385
14386 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
14387 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
14388 it do not matter much.</p>
14389
14390 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
14391 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
14392 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
14393
14394       </div>
14395       <div class="tags">
14396
14397
14398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14399
14400
14401       </div>
14402     </div>
14403     <div class="padding"></div>
14404
14405     <div class="entry">
14406       <div class="title">
14407         <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>
14408       </div>
14409       <div class="date">
14410         26th July 2011
14411       </div>
14412       <div class="body">
14413         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
14414 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
14415 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
14416 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
14417 security support for a few years.</p>
14418
14419 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
14420 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
14421 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
14422 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
14423 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
14424 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
14425 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
14426 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
14427 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
14428 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
14429 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
14430 easier in the future.</p>
14431
14432 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
14433 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
14434 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
14435 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
14436 do not have time for.</p>
14437
14438       </div>
14439       <div class="tags">
14440
14441
14442         Tags: <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>.
14443
14444
14445       </div>
14446     </div>
14447     <div class="padding"></div>
14448
14449     <div class="entry">
14450       <div class="title">
14451         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
14452       </div>
14453       <div class="date">
14454         20th June 2011
14455       </div>
14456       <div class="body">
14457         <p>Reading
14458 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
14459 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
14460 parts of the
14461 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
14462 and
14463 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
14464 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
14465 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
14466 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
14467
14468       </div>
14469       <div class="tags">
14470
14471
14472         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
14473
14474
14475       </div>
14476     </div>
14477     <div class="padding"></div>
14478
14479     <div class="entry">
14480       <div class="title">
14481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
14482       </div>
14483       <div class="date">
14484         30th April 2011
14485       </div>
14486       <div class="body">
14487         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
14488 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
14489 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
14490 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
14491 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
14492 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
14493 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
14494 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
14495 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
14496 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
14497
14498 <p>Where is it?  Visit
14499 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
14500 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
14501 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
14502 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
14503
14504       </div>
14505       <div class="tags">
14506
14507
14508         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
14509
14510
14511       </div>
14512     </div>
14513     <div class="padding"></div>
14514
14515     <div class="entry">
14516       <div class="title">
14517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
14518       </div>
14519       <div class="date">
14520         29th April 2011
14521       </div>
14522       <div class="body">
14523         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
14524 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
14525 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
14526 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
14527 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
14528 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
14529 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
14530 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
14531 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
14532 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
14533 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
14534 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
14535 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
14536
14537 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
14538 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
14539 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
14540 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
14541 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
14542 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
14543 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
14544 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
14545 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
14546 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
14547 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
14548 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
14549 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
14550
14551 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
14552 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
14553 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
14554 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
14555 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
14556 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
14557 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
14558 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
14559 it.</p>
14560
14561 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
14562 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
14563 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
14564 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
14565 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
14566 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
14567 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
14568
14569 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
14570 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
14571 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
14572 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
14573 and range= options.</p>
14574
14575 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
14576 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
14577 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
14578 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
14579 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
14580 to best handle this.  I've noticed
14581 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
14582 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
14583 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
14584 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
14585
14586 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
14587 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
14588 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
14589 discussions instead of only
14590 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
14591 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
14592 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
14593 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
14594 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
14595 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
14596
14597       </div>
14598       <div class="tags">
14599
14600
14601         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
14602
14603
14604       </div>
14605     </div>
14606     <div class="padding"></div>
14607
14608     <div class="entry">
14609       <div class="title">
14610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
14611       </div>
14612       <div class="date">
14613          6th April 2011
14614       </div>
14615       <div class="body">
14616         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
14617 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
14618 A few days ago the project
14619 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
14620 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
14621 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
14622 into Gnash.</p>
14623
14624       </div>
14625       <div class="tags">
14626
14627
14628         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14629
14630
14631       </div>
14632     </div>
14633     <div class="padding"></div>
14634
14635     <div class="entry">
14636       <div class="title">
14637         <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>
14638       </div>
14639       <div class="date">
14640          3rd April 2011
14641       </div>
14642       <div class="body">
14643         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
14644 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
14645 update in English.</p>
14646
14647 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
14648 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
14649 of the British service
14650 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
14651 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
14652 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
14653 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
14654 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
14655 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
14656 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
14657 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
14658 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
14659 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
14660 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
14661 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
14662 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
14663
14664 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
14665 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
14666 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
14667 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
14668 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
14669 public infrastructure.</p>
14670
14671 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
14672 such service?</p>
14673
14674       </div>
14675       <div class="tags">
14676
14677
14678         Tags: <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>.
14679
14680
14681       </div>
14682     </div>
14683     <div class="padding"></div>
14684
14685     <div class="entry">
14686       <div class="title">
14687         <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>
14688       </div>
14689       <div class="date">
14690         28th January 2011
14691       </div>
14692       <div class="body">
14693         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
14694 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
14695 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
14696 available on the Internet, and check our locally
14697 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
14698 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
14699 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
14700 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
14701 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
14702 out which security holes were present in our free software
14703 collection.</p>
14704
14705 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
14706 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
14707 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
14708 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
14709 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
14710 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
14711 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
14712 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
14713 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
14714 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
14715 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
14716 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
14717 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
14718 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
14719 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
14720 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
14721
14722 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
14723 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
14724 check out, one could look up
14725 <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
14726 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
14727 The most recent one is
14728 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
14729 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
14730 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
14731
14732 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
14733 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
14734 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
14735 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
14736 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
14737 security issues out.</p>
14738
14739 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
14740 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
14741 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
14742 RHEL is providing
14743 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
14744 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
14745 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
14746
14747 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
14748 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
14749 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
14750 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
14751 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
14752 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
14753 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
14754 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
14755 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
14756 established soon.</p>
14757
14758 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
14759 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
14760 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
14761 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
14762 for their packages.</p>
14763
14764       </div>
14765       <div class="tags">
14766
14767
14768         Tags: <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>.
14769
14770
14771       </div>
14772     </div>
14773     <div class="padding"></div>
14774
14775     <div class="entry">
14776       <div class="title">
14777         <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>
14778       </div>
14779       <div class="date">
14780         23rd January 2011
14781       </div>
14782       <div class="body">
14783         <p>In the
14784 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
14785 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
14786 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
14787 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
14788 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
14789 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
14790 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
14791 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
14792 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
14793 one of my machines like this:</p>
14794
14795 <pre>
14796 loaded modules:
14797 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
14798 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
14799 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
14800 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
14801 10de:03ec pata_amd
14802 10de:03f6 sata_nv
14803 1022:1103 k8temp
14804 109e:036e bttv
14805 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
14806 11ab:4364 sky2
14807 </pre>
14808
14809 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
14810 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
14811
14812 <pre>
14813 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
14814     echo loaded pci modules:
14815     (
14816         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
14817         for address in * ; do
14818             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
14819                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
14820                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
14821                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
14822                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
14823                     echo "$id $module"
14824                 fi
14825             fi
14826         done
14827     )
14828     echo
14829 fi
14830 </pre>
14831
14832 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
14833 mappings:</p>
14834
14835 <pre>
14836 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
14837     echo loaded usb modules:
14838     (
14839         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
14840         for address in * ; do
14841             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
14842                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
14843                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
14844                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
14845                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
14846                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
14847                         echo "$id $module"
14848                     fi
14849                 fi
14850             fi
14851         done
14852     )
14853     echo
14854 fi
14855 </pre>
14856
14857 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
14858 well.</p>
14859
14860       </div>
14861       <div class="tags">
14862
14863
14864         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14865
14866
14867       </div>
14868     </div>
14869     <div class="padding"></div>
14870
14871     <div class="entry">
14872       <div class="title">
14873         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
14874       </div>
14875       <div class="date">
14876         16th January 2011
14877       </div>
14878       <div class="body">
14879         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
14880 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
14881 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
14882 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
14883 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
14884 the Wikipedia article on
14885 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
14886 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
14887 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
14888 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
14889 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
14890 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
14891 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
14892 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
14893 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
14894 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
14895 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
14896 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
14897
14898 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
14899 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
14900 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
14901 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
14902 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
14903 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
14904 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
14905 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
14906 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
14907 from last week</a>.</p>
14908
14909 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
14910 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
14911 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
14912 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
14913 was without royalties and license terms, check out
14914 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
14915 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
14916
14917 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
14918 available from
14919 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
14920 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
14921 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
14922
14923 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
14924 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
14925 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
14926 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
14927
14928       </div>
14929       <div class="tags">
14930
14931
14932         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14933
14934
14935       </div>
14936     </div>
14937     <div class="padding"></div>
14938
14939     <div class="entry">
14940       <div class="title">
14941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
14942       </div>
14943       <div class="date">
14944         12th January 2011
14945       </div>
14946       <div class="body">
14947         <p>Today I discovered
14948 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
14949 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
14950 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
14951 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
14952 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
14953 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
14954 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
14955 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
14956 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
14957 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
14958 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
14959 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
14960 on the Google announcement is available from
14961 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
14962 A good read. :)</p>
14963
14964 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
14965 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
14966 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
14967 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
14968 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
14969 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
14970 browsers support H.264, and others support
14971 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
14972 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
14973 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
14974 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
14975 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
14976 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
14977 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
14978 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
14979
14980 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
14981 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
14982 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
14983 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
14984 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
14985 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
14986 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
14987
14988 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
14989 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
14990 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
14991 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
14992 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
14993 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
14994 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
14995
14996 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
14997 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
14998 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
14999 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
15000 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
15001 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
15002 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
15003
15004 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
15005 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
15006 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
15007 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
15008 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
15009 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
15010 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
15011 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
15012 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
15013 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
15014 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
15015 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
15016 I guess time will tell.</p>
15017
15018 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
15019 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
15020 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
15021
15022       </div>
15023       <div class="tags">
15024
15025
15026         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15027
15028
15029       </div>
15030     </div>
15031     <div class="padding"></div>
15032
15033     <div class="entry">
15034       <div class="title">
15035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
15036       </div>
15037       <div class="date">
15038         30th December 2010
15039       </div>
15040       <div class="body">
15041         <p>After trying to
15042 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
15043 Ogg Theora</a> to
15044 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
15045 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
15046 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
15047 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
15048 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
15049 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
15050 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
15051
15052 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
15053 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
15054 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
15055 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
15056 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
15057 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
15058 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
15059
15060 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
15061 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
15062
15063       </div>
15064       <div class="tags">
15065
15066
15067         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15068
15069
15070       </div>
15071     </div>
15072     <div class="padding"></div>
15073
15074     <div class="entry">
15075       <div class="title">
15076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
15077       </div>
15078       <div class="date">
15079         27th December 2010
15080       </div>
15081       <div class="body">
15082         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
15083 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
15084 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
15085 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
15086 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
15087 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
15088 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
15089 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
15090
15091 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
15092 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
15093 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
15094 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
15095 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
15096 page</a>.</p>
15097
15098 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
15099 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
15100 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
15101 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
15102 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
15103 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
15104 specification on equal terms.</p>
15105
15106 <blockquote>
15107
15108 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
15109 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
15110 open standard:</p>
15111
15112 <ul>
15113
15114 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
15115 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
15116 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
15117 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
15118
15119 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
15120 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
15121 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
15122 nominal fee.</li>
15123
15124 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
15125 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
15126 free basis.</li>
15127
15128 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
15129
15130 </ul>
15131 </blockquote>
15132
15133 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
15134 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
15135 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
15136 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
15137 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
15138 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
15139 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
15140
15141 <blockquote>
15142
15143 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
15144
15145 <ol>
15146
15147 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
15148 tilgængelig.</li>
15149
15150 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
15151 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
15152
15153 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
15154 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
15155
15156 </ol>
15157
15158 </blockquote>
15159
15160 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
15161 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
15162
15163 <blockquote>
15164
15165 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
15166
15167 <ol>
15168
15169 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
15170 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
15171
15172 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
15173 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
15174 Standard themselves;</li>
15175
15176 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
15177 any party or in any business model;</li>
15178
15179 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
15180 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
15181 parties;</li>
15182
15183 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
15184 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
15185 parties.</li>
15186
15187 </ol>
15188
15189 </blockquote>
15190
15191 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
15192 its
15193 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
15194 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
15195
15196 <blockquote>
15197 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
15198
15199 <ul>
15200
15201 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
15202   democratic:
15203
15204          <ul>
15205
15206          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
15207             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
15208             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
15209             and managed.</li>
15210
15211          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
15212             method, can be changed through input from all
15213             participants.</li>
15214
15215          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
15216             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
15217
15218          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
15219             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
15220
15221          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
15222             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
15223             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
15224
15225          </ul>
15226
15227 </li>
15228
15229 </ul>
15230
15231 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
15232 <ul>
15233
15234 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
15235   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
15236   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
15237   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
15238   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
15239
15240 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
15241   a technical or economic barriers</li>
15242
15243 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
15244   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
15245   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
15246   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
15247   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
15248   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
15249   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
15250   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
15251   intended to function.</li>
15252
15253 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
15254   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
15255   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
15256
15257 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
15258   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
15259   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
15260   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
15261   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
15262   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
15263   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
15264   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
15265
15266       <ul>
15267
15268       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
15269         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
15270         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
15271
15272       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
15273         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
15274         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
15275         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
15276
15277       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
15278         licensor</li>
15279
15280       </ul>
15281 </li>
15282
15283 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
15284   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
15285   or restricted licensing terms</li>
15286
15287 </ul>
15288
15289 </blockquote>
15290
15291 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
15292 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
15293 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
15294 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
15295 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
15296 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
15297 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
15298 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
15299 Standards.</p>
15300
15301       </div>
15302       <div class="tags">
15303
15304
15305         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15306
15307
15308       </div>
15309     </div>
15310     <div class="padding"></div>
15311
15312     <div class="entry">
15313       <div class="title">
15314         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
15315       </div>
15316       <div class="date">
15317         25th December 2010
15318       </div>
15319       <div class="body">
15320         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
15321 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
15322
15323 <blockquote>
15324
15325 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
15326 as follows:</p>
15327
15328 <ol>
15329
15330 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
15331 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
15332 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
15333
15334 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
15335 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
15336 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
15337 parties.</li>
15338
15339 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
15340 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
15341 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
15342
15343 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
15344 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
15345
15346 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
15347
15348 </ol>
15349
15350 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
15351 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
15352 products based on the standard.</p>
15353 </blockquote>
15354
15355 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
15356 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
15357 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
15358 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
15359 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
15360 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
15361 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
15362 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
15363
15364 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
15365
15366 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
15367 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
15368 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
15369 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
15370 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
15371 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
15372 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
15373 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
15374 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
15375 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
15376 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
15377 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
15378 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
15379 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
15380
15381 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
15382
15383 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
15384 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
15385 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
15386 documentation indicating this.</p>
15387
15388 <p>According to
15389 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
15390 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
15391 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
15392 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
15393 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
15394 report is correct.</p>
15395
15396 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
15397
15398 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
15399 container format</a> and both the
15400 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
15401 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
15402 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
15403
15404 <blockquote>
15405
15406 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
15407 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
15408 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
15409 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
15410 specification compliance.
15411
15412 </blockquote>
15413
15414 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
15415 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
15416 this is the term:<p>
15417
15418 <blockquote>
15419
15420 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
15421 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
15422 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
15423 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
15424 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
15425 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
15426 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
15427 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
15428 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
15429 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
15430 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
15431 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
15432
15433 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
15434 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
15435 </blockquote>
15436
15437 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
15438 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
15439 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
15440 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
15441 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
15442
15443 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
15444
15445 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
15446 Theora format.
15447 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
15448 and
15449 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
15450 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
15451 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
15452 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
15453 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
15454 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
15455 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
15456 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
15457
15458 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
15459
15460 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
15461
15462 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
15463
15464 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
15465 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
15466 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
15467 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
15468 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
15469 this.</p>
15470
15471 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
15472 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
15473
15474       </div>
15475       <div class="tags">
15476
15477
15478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15479
15480
15481       </div>
15482     </div>
15483     <div class="padding"></div>
15484
15485     <div class="entry">
15486       <div class="title">
15487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
15488       </div>
15489       <div class="date">
15490         25th December 2010
15491       </div>
15492       <div class="body">
15493         <p>A few days ago
15494 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
15495 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
15496 2.0 of
15497 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
15498 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
15499 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
15500 Nothing very surprising there, given
15501 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
15502 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
15503 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
15504 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
15505 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
15506 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
15507 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
15508 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
15509 standard definition from its content.</p>
15510
15511 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
15512 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
15513 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
15514 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
15515 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
15516 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
15517 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
15518 background information about that story is available in
15519 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
15520 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
15521
15522 <blockquote>
15523 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
15524 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
15525 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
15526
15527 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
15528
15529 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
15530
15531 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
15532
15533 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
15534
15535 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
15536
15537 <p>
15538 <ul>
15539 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
15540 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
15541 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
15542 </ul>
15543 </p>
15544
15545 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
15546
15547 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
15548
15549 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
15550
15551 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
15552
15553 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
15554
15555
15556 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
15557 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
15558 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
15559 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
15560 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
15561 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
15562
15563 </p>
15564
15565 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
15566
15567 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
15568
15569 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
15570
15571 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
15572
15573 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
15574
15575 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
15576
15577 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
15578
15579 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
15580
15581 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
15582
15583 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
15584
15585 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
15586
15587 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
15588
15589 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
15590
15591 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
15592
15593 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
15594
15595 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
15596
15597 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
15598
15599 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
15600
15601 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
15602
15603 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
15604
15605 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
15606
15607 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
15608
15609 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
15610
15611 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
15612
15613 <p>On security:</p>
15614
15615 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
15616
15617 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
15618
15619 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
15620
15621 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
15622
15623 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
15624
15625 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
15626
15627 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
15628
15629 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
15630
15631 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
15632
15633 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
15634
15635 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
15636
15637 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
15638
15639 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
15640
15641 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
15642
15643 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
15644
15645 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
15646
15647 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
15648
15649 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
15650
15651 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
15652
15653 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
15654
15655 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
15656
15657 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
15658
15659 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
15660
15661 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
15662
15663 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
15664
15665 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
15666
15667 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
15668
15669 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
15670
15671 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
15672
15673 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
15674
15675 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
15676
15677 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
15678
15679 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
15680
15681 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
15682
15683 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
15684
15685 <p>Cordially,<br>
15686 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
15687 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
15688 </blockquote>
15689
15690       </div>
15691       <div class="tags">
15692
15693
15694         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15695
15696
15697       </div>
15698     </div>
15699     <div class="padding"></div>
15700
15701     <div class="entry">
15702       <div class="title">
15703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
15704       </div>
15705       <div class="date">
15706         25th December 2010
15707       </div>
15708       <div class="body">
15709         <p>Half a year ago I
15710 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
15711 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
15712 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
15713 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
15714
15715 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
15716 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
15717 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
15718 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
15719 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
15720 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
15721 got such a great test tool available.</p>
15722
15723       </div>
15724       <div class="tags">
15725
15726
15727         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15728
15729
15730       </div>
15731     </div>
15732     <div class="padding"></div>
15733
15734     <div class="entry">
15735       <div class="title">
15736         <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>
15737       </div>
15738       <div class="date">
15739         22nd December 2010
15740       </div>
15741       <div class="body">
15742         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
15743 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
15744 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
15745 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
15746 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
15747 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
15748 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
15749 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
15750 university.</p>
15751
15752 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
15753 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
15754 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
15755 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
15756 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
15757 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
15758 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
15759 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
15760
15761 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
15762 I perform on a new model.</p>
15763
15764 <ul>
15765
15766 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
15767 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
15768 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
15769
15770 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
15771 installation, X.org is working.</li>
15772
15773 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
15774 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
15775 reported by the program.</li>
15776
15777 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
15778 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
15779 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
15780 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
15781 normally test this by playing
15782 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
15783 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
15784
15785 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
15786 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
15787
15788 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
15789 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
15790
15791 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
15792 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
15793
15794 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
15795 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
15796 few.</li>
15797
15798 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
15799 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
15800 notice this.</li>
15801
15802 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
15803 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
15804 resume.</li>
15805
15806 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
15807 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
15808 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
15809 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
15810 not.</li>
15811
15812 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
15813 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
15814 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
15815 existence.</li>
15816
15817 </ul>
15818
15819 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
15820 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
15821 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
15822 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
15823 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
15824 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
15825 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
15826 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
15827
15828       </div>
15829       <div class="tags">
15830
15831
15832         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>.
15833
15834
15835       </div>
15836     </div>
15837     <div class="padding"></div>
15838
15839     <div class="entry">
15840       <div class="title">
15841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
15842       </div>
15843       <div class="date">
15844         11th December 2010
15845       </div>
15846       <div class="body">
15847         <p>As I continue to explore
15848 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
15849 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
15850 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
15851
15852 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
15853 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
15854 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
15855 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
15856 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
15857 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
15858 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
15859 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
15860 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
15861 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
15862 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
15863 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
15864 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
15865 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
15866 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
15867 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
15868 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
15869 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
15870 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
15871 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
15872
15873 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
15874 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
15875 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
15876 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
15877 If the Skolelinux foundation
15878 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
15879 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
15880 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
15881 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
15882 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
15883 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
15884 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
15885 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
15886
15887 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
15888 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
15889 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
15890 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
15891 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
15892 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
15893 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
15894 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
15895 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
15896 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
15897 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
15898 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
15899 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
15900 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
15901 currencies.</p>
15902
15903 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
15904 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
15905 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
15906 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
15907 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
15908 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
15909 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
15910 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
15911 BitCoins.  Check out
15912 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
15913 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
15914 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
15915 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
15916 yet.</p>
15917
15918 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
15919 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
15920 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
15921 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
15922 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
15923
15924       </div>
15925       <div class="tags">
15926
15927
15928         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>.
15929
15930
15931       </div>
15932     </div>
15933     <div class="padding"></div>
15934
15935     <div class="entry">
15936       <div class="title">
15937         <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>
15938       </div>
15939       <div class="date">
15940         10th December 2010
15941       </div>
15942       <div class="body">
15943         <p>With this weeks lawless
15944 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
15945 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
15946 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
15947 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
15948 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
15949 A blog post from
15950 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
15951 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
15952 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
15953 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
15954 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
15955 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
15956 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
15957
15958 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
15959 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
15960 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
15961 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
15962 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
15963 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
15964 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
15965 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
15966 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
15967 Debian</a> soon.</p>
15968
15969 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
15970 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
15971 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
15972 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
15973 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
15974 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
15975 you can even get
15976 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
15977 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
15978 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
15979 on the current exchange rates.</p>
15980
15981 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
15982 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
15983 donations to the address
15984 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
15985
15986       </div>
15987       <div class="tags">
15988
15989
15990         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>.
15991
15992
15993       </div>
15994     </div>
15995     <div class="padding"></div>
15996
15997     <div class="entry">
15998       <div class="title">
15999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
16000       </div>
16001       <div class="date">
16002          9th December 2010
16003       </div>
16004       <div class="body">
16005         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
16006 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
16007 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
16008 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
16009 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
16010 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
16011 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
16012 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
16013 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
16014 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
16015 operational.</p>
16016
16017 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
16018 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
16019 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
16020 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
16021 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
16022 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
16023 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
16024
16025       </div>
16026       <div class="tags">
16027
16028
16029         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
16030
16031
16032       </div>
16033     </div>
16034     <div class="padding"></div>
16035
16036     <div class="entry">
16037       <div class="title">
16038         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
16039       </div>
16040       <div class="date">
16041         29th November 2010
16042       </div>
16043       <div class="body">
16044         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
16045 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
16046 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
16047 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
16048 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
16049 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
16050
16051 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
16052 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
16053 will hold its
16054 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
16055 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
16056 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
16057 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
16058 vote this year.</p>
16059
16060       </div>
16061       <div class="tags">
16062
16063
16064         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16065
16066
16067       </div>
16068     </div>
16069     <div class="padding"></div>
16070
16071     <div class="entry">
16072       <div class="title">
16073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
16074       </div>
16075       <div class="date">
16076         27th November 2010
16077       </div>
16078       <div class="body">
16079         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
16080 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
16081 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
16082 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
16083 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
16084 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
16085 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
16086 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
16087
16088 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
16089 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
16090 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
16091 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
16092 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
16093 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
16094 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
16095 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
16096 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
16097 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
16098 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
16099
16100 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
16101 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
16102 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
16103 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
16104 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
16105 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
16106 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
16107 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
16108 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
16109 what is going on.</p>
16110
16111       </div>
16112       <div class="tags">
16113
16114
16115         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>.
16116
16117
16118       </div>
16119     </div>
16120     <div class="padding"></div>
16121
16122     <div class="entry">
16123       <div class="title">
16124         <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>
16125       </div>
16126       <div class="date">
16127         22nd November 2010
16128       </div>
16129       <div class="body">
16130         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
16131 upgrade testing of the
16132 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
16133 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
16134 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
16135 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
16136
16137 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
16138
16139 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16140
16141 <blockquote><p>
16142   apache2.2-bin
16143   aptdaemon
16144   baobab
16145   binfmt-support
16146   browser-plugin-gnash
16147   cheese-common
16148   cli-common
16149   cups-pk-helper
16150   dmz-cursor-theme
16151   empathy
16152   empathy-common
16153   freedesktop-sound-theme
16154   freeglut3
16155   gconf-defaults-service
16156   gdm-themes
16157   gedit-plugins
16158   geoclue
16159   geoclue-hostip
16160   geoclue-localnet
16161   geoclue-manual
16162   geoclue-yahoo
16163   gnash
16164   gnash-common
16165   gnome
16166   gnome-backgrounds
16167   gnome-cards-data
16168   gnome-codec-install
16169   gnome-core
16170   gnome-desktop-environment
16171   gnome-disk-utility
16172   gnome-screenshot
16173   gnome-search-tool
16174   gnome-session-canberra
16175   gnome-system-log
16176   gnome-themes-extras
16177   gnome-themes-more
16178   gnome-user-share
16179   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16180   gstreamer0.10-tools
16181   gtk2-engines
16182   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16183   gtk2-engines-smooth
16184   hamster-applet
16185   libapache2-mod-dnssd
16186   libapr1
16187   libaprutil1
16188   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
16189   libaprutil1-ldap
16190   libart2.0-cil
16191   libboost-date-time1.42.0
16192   libboost-python1.42.0
16193   libboost-thread1.42.0
16194   libchamplain-0.4-0
16195   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
16196   libcheese-gtk18
16197   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
16198   libcryptui0
16199   libdiscid0
16200   libelf1
16201   libepc-1.0-2
16202   libepc-common
16203   libepc-ui-1.0-2
16204   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16205   libfreerdp0
16206   libgconf2.0-cil
16207   libgdata-common
16208   libgdata7
16209   libgdu-gtk0
16210   libgee2
16211   libgeoclue0
16212   libgexiv2-0
16213   libgif4
16214   libglade2.0-cil
16215   libglib2.0-cil
16216   libgmime2.4-cil
16217   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16218   libgnome2.24-cil
16219   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
16220   libgpod-common
16221   libgpod4
16222   libgtk2.0-cil
16223   libgtkglext1
16224   libgtksourceview2.0-common
16225   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
16226   libmono-addins0.2-cil
16227   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
16228   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
16229   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
16230   libmono-posix2.0-cil
16231   libmono-security2.0-cil
16232   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
16233   libmono-system2.0-cil
16234   libmtp8
16235   libmusicbrainz3-6
16236   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
16237   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
16238   libopal3.6.8
16239   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
16240   libpt2.6.7
16241   libpython2.6
16242   librpm1
16243   librpmio1
16244   libsdl1.2debian
16245   libsrtp0
16246   libssh-4
16247   libtelepathy-farsight0
16248   libtelepathy-glib0
16249   libtidy-0.99-0
16250   media-player-info
16251   mesa-utils
16252   mono-2.0-gac
16253   mono-gac
16254   mono-runtime
16255   nautilus-sendto
16256   nautilus-sendto-empathy
16257   p7zip-full
16258   pkg-config
16259   python-aptdaemon
16260   python-aptdaemon-gtk
16261   python-axiom
16262   python-beautifulsoup
16263   python-bugbuddy
16264   python-clientform
16265   python-coherence
16266   python-configobj
16267   python-crypto
16268   python-cupshelpers
16269   python-elementtree
16270   python-epsilon
16271   python-evolution
16272   python-feedparser
16273   python-gdata
16274   python-gdbm
16275   python-gst0.10
16276   python-gtkglext1
16277   python-gtksourceview2
16278   python-httplib2
16279   python-louie
16280   python-mako
16281   python-markupsafe
16282   python-mechanize
16283   python-nevow
16284   python-notify
16285   python-opengl
16286   python-openssl
16287   python-pam
16288   python-pkg-resources
16289   python-pyasn1
16290   python-pysqlite2
16291   python-rdflib
16292   python-serial
16293   python-tagpy
16294   python-twisted-bin
16295   python-twisted-conch
16296   python-twisted-core
16297   python-twisted-web
16298   python-utidylib
16299   python-webkit
16300   python-xdg
16301   python-zope.interface
16302   remmina
16303   remmina-plugin-data
16304   remmina-plugin-rdp
16305   remmina-plugin-vnc
16306   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
16307   rhythmbox-plugins
16308   rpm-common
16309   rpm2cpio
16310   seahorse-plugins
16311   shotwell
16312   software-center
16313   system-config-printer-udev
16314   telepathy-gabble
16315   telepathy-mission-control-5
16316   telepathy-salut
16317   tomboy
16318   totem
16319   totem-coherence
16320   totem-mozilla
16321   totem-plugins
16322   transmission-common
16323   xdg-user-dirs
16324   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
16325   xserver-xephyr
16326 </p></blockquote>
16327
16328 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16329
16330 <blockquote><p>
16331   cheese
16332   ekiga
16333   eog
16334   epiphany-extensions
16335   evolution-exchange
16336   fast-user-switch-applet
16337   file-roller
16338   gcalctool
16339   gconf-editor
16340   gdm
16341   gedit
16342   gedit-common
16343   gnome-games
16344   gnome-games-data
16345   gnome-nettool
16346   gnome-system-tools
16347   gnome-themes
16348   gnuchess
16349   gucharmap
16350   guile-1.8-libs
16351   libavahi-ui0
16352   libdmx1
16353   libgalago3
16354   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
16355   libgtksourceview2.0-0
16356   liblircclient0
16357   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
16358   libspeexdsp1
16359   libsvga1
16360   rhythmbox
16361   seahorse
16362   sound-juicer
16363   system-config-printer
16364   totem-common
16365   transmission-gtk
16366   vinagre
16367   vino
16368 </p></blockquote>
16369
16370 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16371
16372 <blockquote><p>
16373   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16374 </p></blockquote>
16375
16376 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16377
16378 <blockquote><p>
16379 [nothing]
16380 </p></blockquote>
16381
16382 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
16383
16384 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16385
16386 <blockquote><p>
16387   ksmserver
16388 </p></blockquote>
16389
16390 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16391
16392 <blockquote><p>
16393   kwin
16394   network-manager-kde
16395 </p></blockquote>
16396
16397 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16398
16399 <blockquote><p>
16400   arts
16401   dolphin
16402   freespacenotifier
16403   google-gadgets-gst
16404   google-gadgets-xul
16405   kappfinder
16406   kcalc
16407   kcharselect
16408   kde-core
16409   kde-plasma-desktop
16410   kde-standard
16411   kde-window-manager
16412   kdeartwork
16413   kdeartwork-emoticons
16414   kdeartwork-style
16415   kdeartwork-theme-icon
16416   kdebase
16417   kdebase-apps
16418   kdebase-workspace
16419   kdebase-workspace-bin
16420   kdebase-workspace-data
16421   kdeeject
16422   kdelibs
16423   kdeplasma-addons
16424   kdeutils
16425   kdewallpapers
16426   kdf
16427   kfloppy
16428   kgpg
16429   khelpcenter4
16430   kinfocenter
16431   konq-plugins-l10n
16432   konqueror-nsplugins
16433   kscreensaver
16434   kscreensaver-xsavers
16435   ktimer
16436   kwrite
16437   libgle3
16438   libkde4-ruby1.8
16439   libkonq5
16440   libkonq5-templates
16441   libnetpbm10
16442   libplasma-ruby
16443   libplasma-ruby1.8
16444   libqt4-ruby1.8
16445   marble-data
16446   marble-plugins
16447   netpbm
16448   nuvola-icon-theme
16449   plasma-dataengines-workspace
16450   plasma-desktop
16451   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
16452   plasma-runners-addons
16453   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
16454   plasma-scriptengine-python
16455   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
16456   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
16457   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
16458   plasma-scriptengines
16459   plasma-wallpapers-addons
16460   plasma-widget-folderview
16461   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
16462   ruby
16463   sweeper
16464   update-notifier-kde
16465   xscreensaver-data-extra
16466   xscreensaver-gl
16467   xscreensaver-gl-extra
16468   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
16469 </p></blockquote>
16470
16471 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16472
16473 <blockquote><p>
16474   ark
16475   google-gadgets-common
16476   google-gadgets-qt
16477   htdig
16478   kate
16479   kdebase-bin
16480   kdebase-data
16481   kdepasswd
16482   kfind
16483   klipper
16484   konq-plugins
16485   konqueror
16486   ksysguard
16487   ksysguardd
16488   libarchive1
16489   libcln6
16490   libeet1
16491   libeina-svn-06
16492   libggadget-1.0-0b
16493   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
16494   libgps19
16495   libkdecorations4
16496   libkephal4
16497   libkonq4
16498   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
16499   libkscreensaver5
16500   libksgrd4
16501   libksignalplotter4
16502   libkunitconversion4
16503   libkwineffects1a
16504   libmarblewidget4
16505   libntrack-qt4-1
16506   libntrack0
16507   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
16508   libplasmaclock4a
16509   libplasmagenericshell4
16510   libprocesscore4a
16511   libprocessui4a
16512   libqalculate5
16513   libqedje0a
16514   libqtruby4shared2
16515   libqzion0a
16516   libruby1.8
16517   libscim8c2a
16518   libsmokekdecore4-3
16519   libsmokekdeui4-3
16520   libsmokekfile3
16521   libsmokekhtml3
16522   libsmokekio3
16523   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
16524   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
16525   libsmokekparts3
16526   libsmokektexteditor3
16527   libsmokekutils3
16528   libsmokenepomuk3
16529   libsmokephonon3
16530   libsmokeplasma3
16531   libsmokeqtcore4-3
16532   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
16533   libsmokeqtgui4-3
16534   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
16535   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
16536   libsmokeqtscript4-3
16537   libsmokeqtsql4-3
16538   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
16539   libsmokeqttest4-3
16540   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
16541   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
16542   libsmokeqtxml4-3
16543   libsmokesolid3
16544   libsmokesoprano3
16545   libtaskmanager4a
16546   libtidy-0.99-0
16547   libweather-ion4a
16548   libxklavier16
16549   libxxf86misc1
16550   okteta
16551   oxygencursors
16552   plasma-dataengines-addons
16553   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
16554   plasma-widget-lancelot
16555   plasma-widgets-addons
16556   plasma-widgets-workspace
16557   polkit-kde-1
16558   ruby1.8
16559   systemsettings
16560   update-notifier-common
16561 </p></blockquote>
16562
16563 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
16564 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
16565 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
16566 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
16567
16568       </div>
16569       <div class="tags">
16570
16571
16572         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>.
16573
16574
16575       </div>
16576     </div>
16577     <div class="padding"></div>
16578
16579     <div class="entry">
16580       <div class="title">
16581         <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>
16582       </div>
16583       <div class="date">
16584         22nd November 2010
16585       </div>
16586       <div class="body">
16587         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
16588 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
16589 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
16590 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
16591 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
16592 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
16593 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
16594 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
16595 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
16596
16597 <p>I found
16598 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
16599 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
16600 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
16601 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
16602 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
16603 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
16604
16605 <pre>
16606 #!/bin/sh
16607
16608 # Based on
16609 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
16610
16611 set -e
16612 set -x
16613
16614 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
16615     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
16616     exit 1
16617 else
16618     host="$1"
16619 fi
16620
16621 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
16622     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
16623     exit 1
16624 fi
16625
16626 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
16627 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
16628 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
16629 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
16630
16631 img=$host.img
16632 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
16633 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
16634
16635 parted $img mklabel msdos
16636 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
16637 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
16638 parted $img set 1 boot on
16639
16640 modprobe dm-mod
16641 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
16642 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
16643
16644 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
16645 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
16646 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
16647
16648 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
16649 losetup -d /dev/loop0
16650 </pre>
16651
16652 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
16653 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
16654
16655 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
16656 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
16657 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
16658 seem to work just fine.</p>
16659
16660       </div>
16661       <div class="tags">
16662
16663
16664         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>.
16665
16666
16667       </div>
16668     </div>
16669     <div class="padding"></div>
16670
16671     <div class="entry">
16672       <div class="title">
16673         <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>
16674       </div>
16675       <div class="date">
16676         20th November 2010
16677       </div>
16678       <div class="body">
16679         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
16680 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
16681 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
16682 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
16683
16684 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
16685 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
16686 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
16687
16688 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
16689
16690 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16691
16692 <blockquote><p>
16693   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
16694   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
16695   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
16696   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
16697   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
16698   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
16699   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
16700   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
16701   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
16702   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
16703   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16704   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16705   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
16706   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
16707   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
16708   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
16709   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
16710   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
16711   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16712   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
16713   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
16714   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16715   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
16716   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
16717   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
16718   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
16719   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
16720   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
16721   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
16722   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
16723   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
16724   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16725   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
16726   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
16727   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
16728   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
16729   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
16730   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
16731   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
16732   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
16733   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
16734   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
16735   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
16736   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
16737   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
16738   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
16739   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
16740   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
16741   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
16742   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
16743   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
16744   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
16745   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
16746   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
16747   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
16748   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
16749   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
16750   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
16751   zip
16752 </p></blockquote>
16753
16754 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
16755
16756 <blockquote><p>
16757   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
16758   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
16759   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
16760   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
16761   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
16762   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
16763   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
16764   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
16765   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
16766   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
16767   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
16768   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16769   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
16770   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16771   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
16772   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
16773   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
16774   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
16775   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
16776   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
16777   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
16778   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
16779   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
16780   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
16781   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
16782   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
16783   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
16784   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
16785   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
16786 </p></blockquote>
16787
16788 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16789
16790 <blockquote><p>
16791   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16792 </p></blockquote>
16793
16794 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16795
16796 <blockquote><p>
16797 [nothing]
16798 </p></blockquote>
16799
16800 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
16801
16802 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16803
16804 <blockquote><p>
16805   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
16806   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16807   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
16808   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
16809   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
16810   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
16811   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16812   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
16813   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
16814   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16815   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
16816   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
16817   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
16818   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
16819   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
16820   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
16821   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
16822   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
16823   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
16824   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
16825   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
16826   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
16827   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
16828   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
16829   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
16830   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
16831   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
16832   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
16833   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
16834   ttf-sazanami-gothic
16835 </p></blockquote>
16836
16837 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16838
16839 <blockquote><p>
16840   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
16841   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
16842   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
16843   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
16844   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
16845   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
16846   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
16847   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
16848   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
16849   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
16850   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
16851   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
16852   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
16853   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
16854   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16855   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16856   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
16857   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
16858   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16859   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
16860   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
16861   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
16862   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16863   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16864   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
16865   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
16866   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
16867   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
16868   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
16869   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
16870   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
16871   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
16872   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
16873 </p></blockquote>
16874
16875 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16876
16877 <blockquote><p>
16878   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
16879   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
16880   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
16881   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
16882   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
16883   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
16884   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
16885 </p></blockquote>
16886
16887 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16888
16889 <blockquote><p>
16890   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
16891 </p></blockquote>
16892
16893       </div>
16894       <div class="tags">
16895
16896
16897         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>.
16898
16899
16900       </div>
16901     </div>
16902     <div class="padding"></div>
16903
16904     <div class="entry">
16905       <div class="title">
16906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
16907       </div>
16908       <div class="date">
16909         20th November 2010
16910       </div>
16911       <div class="body">
16912         <p>Answering
16913 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
16914 call from the Gnash project</a> for
16915 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
16916 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
16917 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
16918 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
16919 releases out more often.</p>
16920
16921 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
16922 I have considered setting up a <a
16923 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
16924 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
16925 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
16926 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
16927 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
16928 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
16929 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
16930 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
16931 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
16932 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
16933 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
16934 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
16935
16936       </div>
16937       <div class="tags">
16938
16939
16940         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>.
16941
16942
16943       </div>
16944     </div>
16945     <div class="padding"></div>
16946
16947     <div class="entry">
16948       <div class="title">
16949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
16950       </div>
16951       <div class="date">
16952          9th November 2010
16953       </div>
16954       <div class="body">
16955         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
16956
16957 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
16958 3D linked in from
16959 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
16960 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
16961
16962       </div>
16963       <div class="tags">
16964
16965
16966         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>.
16967
16968
16969       </div>
16970     </div>
16971     <div class="padding"></div>
16972
16973     <div class="entry">
16974       <div class="title">
16975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
16976       </div>
16977       <div class="date">
16978          7th November 2010
16979       </div>
16980       <div class="body">
16981         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
16982 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
16983 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
16984 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
16985 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
16986 working using this DVD.</p>
16987
16988 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
16989 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
16990 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
16991 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
16992 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
16993 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
16994 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
16995
16996 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
16997 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
16998 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
16999 Debian archive.</p>
17000
17001 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
17002 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
17003 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
17004 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
17005 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
17006 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
17007 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
17008 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
17009 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
17010 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
17011 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
17012 free X driver should work.</p>
17013
17014 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
17015 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
17016 DVD more useful again.</p>
17017
17018       </div>
17019       <div class="tags">
17020
17021
17022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17023
17024
17025       </div>
17026     </div>
17027     <div class="padding"></div>
17028
17029     <div class="entry">
17030       <div class="title">
17031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
17032       </div>
17033       <div class="date">
17034         24th October 2010
17035       </div>
17036       <div class="body">
17037         <p>Some updates.</p>
17038
17039 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
17040 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
17041 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
17042 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
17043 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
17044 :)</p>
17045
17046 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
17047 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
17048 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
17049 It is called
17050 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
17051 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
17052 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
17053 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
17054 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
17055 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
17056
17057 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
17058 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
17059 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
17060 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
17061 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
17062 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
17063 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
17064 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
17065 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
17066 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
17067
17068       </div>
17069       <div class="tags">
17070
17071
17072         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>.
17073
17074
17075       </div>
17076     </div>
17077     <div class="padding"></div>
17078
17079     <div class="entry">
17080       <div class="title">
17081         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
17082       </div>
17083       <div class="date">
17084         19th October 2010
17085       </div>
17086       <div class="body">
17087         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
17088 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
17089 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
17090 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
17091 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
17092 AVM2 flash files.</p>
17093
17094 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
17095 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
17096 following text:</P>
17097
17098 <p><blockquote>
17099
17100   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
17101   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
17102
17103   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
17104
17105   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
17106
17107   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
17108   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
17109   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
17110   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
17111   days. The project web page is available from
17112   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
17113   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
17114   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
17115
17116   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
17117   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
17118   to get this to happen.</p>
17119
17120   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
17121   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
17122
17123 </blockquote></p>
17124
17125 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
17126 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
17127 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
17128 :)</p>
17129
17130       </div>
17131       <div class="tags">
17132
17133
17134         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17135
17136
17137       </div>
17138     </div>
17139     <div class="padding"></div>
17140
17141     <div class="entry">
17142       <div class="title">
17143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
17144       </div>
17145       <div class="date">
17146          9th October 2010
17147       </div>
17148       <div class="body">
17149         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
17150 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
17151 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
17152 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
17153 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
17154 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
17155 robots.</p>
17156
17157 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
17158 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
17159 a few less important features too.</p>
17160
17161 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
17162 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
17163 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
17164 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
17165
17166 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
17167 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
17168 source or binary package:</p>
17169
17170 <p><ul>
17171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
17172 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
17173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
17174 </ul></p>
17175
17176 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
17177 please let me know.</p>
17178
17179       </div>
17180       <div class="tags">
17181
17182
17183         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
17184
17185
17186       </div>
17187     </div>
17188     <div class="padding"></div>
17189
17190     <div class="entry">
17191       <div class="title">
17192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
17193       </div>
17194       <div class="date">
17195          3rd October 2010
17196       </div>
17197       <div class="body">
17198         <p><ul>
17199
17200 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
17201 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
17202
17203 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
17204 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
17205 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
17206
17207 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
17208 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
17209 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
17210 simple setup.
17211
17212 </ul></p>
17213
17214       </div>
17215       <div class="tags">
17216
17217
17218         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17219
17220
17221       </div>
17222     </div>
17223     <div class="padding"></div>
17224
17225     <div class="entry">
17226       <div class="title">
17227         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
17228       </div>
17229       <div class="date">
17230          9th September 2010
17231       </div>
17232       <div class="body">
17233         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
17234 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
17235 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
17236 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
17237 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
17238 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
17239 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
17240 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
17241 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
17242
17243 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
17244 written:</p>
17245
17246 <blockquote>
17247 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
17248 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
17249 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
17250 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
17251 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
17252
17253 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
17254 standard.</p>
17255 </blockquote>
17256
17257 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
17258 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
17259 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
17260 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
17261
17262 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
17263 read
17264 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
17265 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
17266 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
17267 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
17268 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
17269 the issue.  The solution is to support the
17270 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
17271 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
17272 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
17273
17274       </div>
17275       <div class="tags">
17276
17277
17278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17279
17280
17281       </div>
17282     </div>
17283     <div class="padding"></div>
17284
17285     <div class="entry">
17286       <div class="title">
17287         <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>
17288       </div>
17289       <div class="date">
17290          4th September 2010
17291       </div>
17292       <div class="body">
17293         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
17294 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
17295 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
17296 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
17297 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
17298 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
17299 installed.</p>
17300
17301 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
17302 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
17303 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
17304 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
17305 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
17306 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
17307 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
17308 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
17309 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
17310
17311 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
17312 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
17313 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
17314 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
17315 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
17316 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
17317 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
17318 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
17319 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
17320 pages they want to visit.</p>
17321
17322 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
17323 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
17324 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
17325 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
17326 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
17327 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
17328 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
17329 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
17330 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
17331 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
17332 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
17333
17334       </div>
17335       <div class="tags">
17336
17337
17338         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>.
17339
17340
17341       </div>
17342     </div>
17343     <div class="padding"></div>
17344
17345     <div class="entry">
17346       <div class="title">
17347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
17348       </div>
17349       <div class="date">
17350          1st September 2010
17351       </div>
17352       <div class="body">
17353         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
17354 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
17355 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
17356 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
17357 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
17358 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
17359 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
17360 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
17361 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
17362 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
17363 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
17364 drive around.</p>
17365
17366 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
17367 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
17368
17369 <p><pre>
17370 use Spykee;
17371 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
17372 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
17373 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
17374 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
17375 $spykee->left();
17376 sleep 2;
17377 $spykee->right();
17378 sleep 2;
17379 $spykee->forward();
17380 sleep 2;
17381 $spykee->back();
17382 sleep 2;
17383 $spykee->stop();
17384 </pre></p>
17385
17386 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
17387 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
17388 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
17389 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
17390 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
17391 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
17392 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
17393 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
17394 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
17395 going. :).</p>
17396
17397 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
17398 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
17399 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
17400 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
17401
17402       </div>
17403       <div class="tags">
17404
17405
17406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
17407
17408
17409       </div>
17410     </div>
17411     <div class="padding"></div>
17412
17413     <div class="entry">
17414       <div class="title">
17415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
17416       </div>
17417       <div class="date">
17418         30th August 2010
17419       </div>
17420       <div class="body">
17421         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
17422 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
17423 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
17424 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
17425 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
17426 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
17427 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
17428
17429 <pre>
17430 % ln foo bar
17431 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
17432 %
17433 </pre>
17434
17435 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
17436 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
17437 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
17438 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
17439 nevertheless. :)</p>
17440
17441 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
17442 git from
17443 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
17444
17445       </div>
17446       <div class="tags">
17447
17448
17449         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17450
17451
17452       </div>
17453     </div>
17454     <div class="padding"></div>
17455
17456     <div class="entry">
17457       <div class="title">
17458         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
17459       </div>
17460       <div class="date">
17461         26th August 2010
17462       </div>
17463       <div class="body">
17464         <p>My file system sematics program
17465 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
17466 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
17467 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
17468 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
17469 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
17470 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
17471 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
17472 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
17473 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
17474 script:</p>
17475
17476 <pre>
17477 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
17478   mode_t retval = 0;
17479   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
17480   if (-1 != fd) {
17481     unlink(name);
17482     struct stat statbuf;
17483     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
17484       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
17485     }
17486     close(fd);
17487   }
17488   return retval;
17489 }
17490
17491 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
17492 int test_umask(void) {
17493   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
17494
17495   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
17496   mode_t newmode;
17497   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
17498     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
17499            newmode);
17500   }
17501   umask(007);
17502   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
17503     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
17504            newmode);
17505   }
17506
17507   umask (orig_umask);
17508   return 0;
17509 }
17510
17511 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
17512   [...]
17513   test_umask();
17514   return 0;
17515 }
17516 </pre>
17517
17518 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
17519
17520 <pre>
17521 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17522 info: testing symlink creation
17523 info: testing subdirectory creation
17524 info: testing fcntl locking
17525   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17526   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17527   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
17528   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17529   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17530   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
17531 info: testing umask effect on file creation
17532 </pre>
17533
17534 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
17535 result:</p>
17536
17537 <pre>
17538 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17539 info: testing symlink creation
17540 info: testing subdirectory creation
17541 info: testing fcntl locking
17542   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17543   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17544   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
17545   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17546   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17547   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
17548 info: testing umask effect on file creation
17549   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
17550   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
17551 </pre>
17552
17553 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
17554 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
17555 directory.</p>
17556
17557 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
17558 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
17559
17560 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
17561 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
17562 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
17563
17564       </div>
17565       <div class="tags">
17566
17567
17568         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17569
17570
17571       </div>
17572     </div>
17573     <div class="padding"></div>
17574
17575     <div class="entry">
17576       <div class="title">
17577         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
17578       </div>
17579       <div class="date">
17580         15th August 2010
17581       </div>
17582       <div class="body">
17583         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
17584 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
17585 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
17586 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
17587 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
17588 long time.</p>
17589
17590       </div>
17591       <div class="tags">
17592
17593
17594         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17595
17596
17597       </div>
17598     </div>
17599     <div class="padding"></div>
17600
17601     <div class="entry">
17602       <div class="title">
17603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
17604       </div>
17605       <div class="date">
17606          9th August 2010
17607       </div>
17608       <div class="body">
17609         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
17610 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
17611 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
17612 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
17613 generated configuration.</p>
17614
17615 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
17616 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
17617 without any manual configuration.</p>
17618
17619 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
17620 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
17621 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
17622 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
17623 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
17624 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
17625 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
17626 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
17627 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
17628 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
17629 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
17630 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
17631 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
17632 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
17633 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
17634 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
17635 use.</p>
17636
17637 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
17638 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
17639 working properly out of the box:</p>
17640
17641 <ul>
17642 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
17643 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
17644 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
17645 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
17646 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
17647 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
17648 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
17649 </ul>
17650
17651 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
17652
17653 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
17654 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
17655 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
17656 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
17657 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
17658
17659 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
17660 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
17661 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
17662 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
17663 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
17664 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
17665 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
17666 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
17667
17668 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
17669 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
17670 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
17671 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
17672 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
17673 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
17674 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
17675 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
17676 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
17677 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
17678 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
17679 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
17680 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
17681 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
17682 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
17683 current DNS domain is used.</p>
17684
17685 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
17686 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
17687 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
17688 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
17689 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
17690 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
17691 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
17692 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
17693 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
17694 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
17695 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
17696 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
17697 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
17698
17699 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
17700 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
17701 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
17702 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
17703 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
17704 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
17705 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
17706 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
17707 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
17708 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
17709 do for now. :)</p>
17710
17711 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
17712 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
17713 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
17714 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
17715 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
17716 yet.</p>
17717
17718 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
17719 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17720
17721 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
17722 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
17723 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
17724 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
17725
17726       </div>
17727       <div class="tags">
17728
17729
17730         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17731
17732
17733       </div>
17734     </div>
17735     <div class="padding"></div>
17736
17737     <div class="entry">
17738       <div class="title">
17739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
17740       </div>
17741       <div class="date">
17742          8th August 2010
17743       </div>
17744       <div class="body">
17745         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
17746 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
17747 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
17748 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
17749 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
17750 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
17751 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
17752
17753 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
17754 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
17755 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
17756 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
17757 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
17758 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
17759 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
17760
17761 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
17762 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
17763 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
17764 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
17765 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
17766
17767 <pre>
17768 /*
17769  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
17770  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
17771  * directory.
17772  * License: GPL v2 or later
17773  *
17774  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
17775  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
17776 */
17777
17778 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
17779 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
17780 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
17781
17782 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
17783
17784 #include &lt;errno.h>
17785 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
17786 #include &lt;stdio.h>
17787 #include &lt;string.h>
17788 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
17789 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
17790 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
17791 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
17792 #include &lt;unistd.h>
17793
17794 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
17795 /*
17796  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
17797  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
17798  * below.
17799  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
17800  */
17801 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
17802 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
17803   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
17804 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
17805   char *zErrMsg;
17806   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
17807   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
17808   unlink(name);
17809   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
17810   if( rc ){
17811     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
17812     sqlite3_close(db);
17813     return -1;
17814   }
17815
17816   /* create tables */
17817   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
17818   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
17819     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
17820     sqlite3_close(db);
17821     return -1;
17822   }
17823   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
17824   sqlite3_close(db);
17825   return 0;
17826 }
17827 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
17828
17829 /*
17830  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
17831  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
17832  * done in the sqlite3 library.
17833  * See also
17834  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
17835  * POSIX specification
17836  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
17837  */
17838 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
17839   struct flock fl;
17840   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
17841   unlink(name);
17842   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
17843   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
17844
17845   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
17846   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
17847   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
17848   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
17849   fl.l_len    = 1;
17850   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
17851   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17852
17853   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
17854   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
17855   fl.l_len    = 510;
17856   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
17857   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17858
17859   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
17860   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
17861   fl.l_len    = 1;
17862   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
17863   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17864
17865   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
17866   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
17867   fl.l_len    = 1;
17868   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
17869   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17870
17871   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
17872   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
17873   fl.l_len    = 510;
17874   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17875
17876   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
17877   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
17878   fl.l_len    = 2;
17879   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
17880   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17881
17882   close(fd);
17883   return 0;
17884 }
17885
17886 /*
17887  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
17888  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
17889  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
17890  * slowing down file operations.
17891  */
17892 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
17893 #define LEVELS 5
17894   char *path = strdup("test");
17895   char *dirs[LEVELS];
17896   int level;
17897   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
17898   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
17899     char *newpath = NULL;
17900     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
17901       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
17902              path, strerror(errno));
17903       break;
17904     }
17905     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
17906     free(path);
17907     path = newpath;
17908   }
17909   return 0;
17910 }
17911
17912 /*
17913  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
17914  * KDE.
17915  */
17916 int test_symlinks(void) {
17917   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
17918   unlink("symlink");
17919   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
17920     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
17921   return 0;
17922 }
17923
17924 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
17925   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
17926   test_symlinks();
17927   test_subdirectory_creation();
17928 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
17929   test_sqlite_open();
17930 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
17931   test_gcompris_locking();
17932   return 0;
17933 }
17934 </pre>
17935
17936 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
17937 this:</p>
17938
17939 <pre>
17940 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17941 info: testing symlink creation
17942 info: testing subdirectory creation
17943 info: sqlite worked
17944 info: testing fcntl locking
17945   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17946   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17947   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
17948   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17949   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17950   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
17951 </pre>
17952
17953 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
17954 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
17955 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
17956 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
17957 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
17958 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
17959 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
17960 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
17961
17962 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
17963 it. :)</p>
17964
17965 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
17966 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
17967 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
17968
17969       </div>
17970       <div class="tags">
17971
17972
17973         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17974
17975
17976       </div>
17977     </div>
17978     <div class="padding"></div>
17979
17980     <div class="entry">
17981       <div class="title">
17982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
17983       </div>
17984       <div class="date">
17985          7th August 2010
17986       </div>
17987       <div class="body">
17988         <p>A few days ago, I
17989 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
17990 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
17991 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
17992 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
17993 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
17994 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
17995 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
17996 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
17997 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
17998
17999 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
18000 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
18001 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
18002 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
18003 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
18004 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
18005 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
18006 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
18007 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
18008 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
18009 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
18010 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
18011 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
18012 gave it a IP address.</p>
18013
18014 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
18015 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
18016 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
18017 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
18018 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
18019 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
18020 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
18021 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
18022
18023 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
18024 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
18025 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
18026 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
18027 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
18028 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
18029
18030 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
18031 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
18032 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
18033 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
18034 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
18035 with UID and GID values.</p>
18036
18037 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
18038 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18039
18040       </div>
18041       <div class="tags">
18042
18043
18044         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18045
18046
18047       </div>
18048     </div>
18049     <div class="padding"></div>
18050
18051     <div class="entry">
18052       <div class="title">
18053         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
18054       </div>
18055       <div class="date">
18056          3rd August 2010
18057       </div>
18058       <div class="body">
18059         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
18060 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
18061 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
18062 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
18063 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
18064 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
18065 servers.</p>
18066
18067 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
18068 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
18069 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
18070 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
18071 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
18072 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
18073 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
18074 .uio.no.</p>
18075
18076 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
18077 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
18078 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
18079 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
18080 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
18081 university servers.</p>
18082
18083 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
18084 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
18085 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
18086 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
18087 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
18088 uses.</p>
18089
18090       </div>
18091       <div class="tags">
18092
18093
18094         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18095
18096
18097       </div>
18098     </div>
18099     <div class="padding"></div>
18100
18101     <div class="entry">
18102       <div class="title">
18103         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
18104       </div>
18105       <div class="date">
18106         27th July 2010
18107       </div>
18108       <div class="body">
18109         <p>I discovered this while doing
18110 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
18111 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
18112 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
18113 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
18114 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
18115
18116 <p>An example is from todays
18117 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
18118 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
18119 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
18120 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
18121 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
18122 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
18123 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
18124
18125 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
18126
18127 <blockquote><pre>
18128 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
18129  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
18130   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
18131 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
18132  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
18133 </pre></blockquote>
18134
18135 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
18136 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
18137 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
18138 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
18139 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
18140 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
18141 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
18142 of dependency loops.</p>
18143
18144 <p>Thanks to
18145 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
18146 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
18147 dependencies
18148 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
18149 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
18150
18151 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
18152 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
18153 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
18154 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
18155 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
18156 it.</p>
18157
18158       </div>
18159       <div class="tags">
18160
18161
18162         Tags: <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>.
18163
18164
18165       </div>
18166     </div>
18167     <div class="padding"></div>
18168
18169     <div class="entry">
18170       <div class="title">
18171         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
18172       </div>
18173       <div class="date">
18174         27th July 2010
18175       </div>
18176       <div class="body">
18177         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
18178 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
18179 completed.</p>
18180
18181 <blockquote>
18182 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
18183 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
18184 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
18185 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
18186 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
18187 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
18188 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
18189 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
18190
18191 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
18192 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
18193 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
18194
18195 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
18196 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
18197 much.</p>
18198
18199 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
18200
18201 <ul>
18202 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
18203 <ul>
18204   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
18205          combination with some new artwork
18206   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
18207   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
18208   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
18209   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
18210   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
18211   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
18212   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
18213   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
18214   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
18215 </ul></li>
18216 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
18217     Enabled for:
18218 <ul>
18219   <li>PAM
18220   <li>LDAP
18221   <li>IMAP
18222   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
18223 </ul>
18224 </li>
18225 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
18226 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
18227     fetched from LDAP.</li>
18228 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
18229 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
18230 </ul>
18231 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
18232
18233 <ul>
18234 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
18235     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
18236     for testing.</li>
18237 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
18238     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
18239     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
18240 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
18241 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
18242 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
18243 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
18244     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
18245 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
18246     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
18247     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
18248 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
18249     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
18250     and help out with translations.</li>
18251 </ul>
18252
18253 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
18254
18255 <ul>
18256 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
18257 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
18258 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18259 </ul>
18260 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
18261
18262 <ul>
18263 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
18264 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
18265 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18266 </ul>
18267
18268 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
18269 get closer to the final release.</p>
18270
18271 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
18272
18273 <ul>
18274 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18275 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18276 </ul>
18277
18278 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
18279 <ul>
18280 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18281 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18282 </ul>
18283 <p>How to report bugs:
18284 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
18285
18286 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
18287 </blockquote>
18288
18289       </div>
18290       <div class="tags">
18291
18292
18293         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18294
18295
18296       </div>
18297     </div>
18298     <div class="padding"></div>
18299
18300     <div class="entry">
18301       <div class="title">
18302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
18303       </div>
18304       <div class="date">
18305         25th July 2010
18306       </div>
18307       <div class="body">
18308         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
18309 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
18310 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
18311 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
18312 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
18313
18314 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
18315 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
18316 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
18317 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
18318 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
18319 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
18320 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
18321
18322 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
18323 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
18324 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
18325 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
18326 up. :)</p>
18327
18328 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
18329 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
18330 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
18331
18332 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
18333 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
18334 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
18335 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
18336 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
18337 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
18338 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
18339 release another day.</p>
18340
18341 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
18342 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18343
18344       </div>
18345       <div class="tags">
18346
18347
18348         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
18349
18350
18351       </div>
18352     </div>
18353     <div class="padding"></div>
18354
18355     <div class="entry">
18356       <div class="title">
18357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
18358       </div>
18359       <div class="date">
18360         18th July 2010
18361       </div>
18362       <div class="body">
18363         <p>Thanks to
18364 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
18365 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
18366 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
18367 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
18368 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
18369 only available from the development server, until more experience is
18370 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
18371
18372 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
18373 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
18374 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
18375 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
18376 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
18377 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
18378 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
18379
18380       </div>
18381       <div class="tags">
18382
18383
18384         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18385
18386
18387       </div>
18388     </div>
18389     <div class="padding"></div>
18390
18391     <div class="entry">
18392       <div class="title">
18393         <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>
18394       </div>
18395       <div class="date">
18396         17th July 2010
18397       </div>
18398       <div class="body">
18399         <p>This is a
18400 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
18401 on my
18402 <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
18403 work</a> on
18404 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
18405 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
18406
18407 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
18408 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
18409 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
18410 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
18411
18412 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
18413 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
18414 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
18415
18416 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
18417
18418 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
18419 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
18420 the web.
18421
18422 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
18423 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
18424 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
18425 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
18426 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
18427 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
18428
18429 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
18430 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
18431 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
18432 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
18433 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
18434 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
18435 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
18436 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
18437 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
18438 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
18439 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
18440 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
18441 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
18442 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
18443 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
18444 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
18445
18446 <blockquote><pre>
18447 ldapsearch -h ldap \
18448   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
18449   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
18450   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
18451   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
18452   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
18453   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
18454
18455 ldapsearch -h ldap \
18456   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
18457   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
18458   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
18459   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
18460   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
18461 </pre></blockquote>
18462
18463 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
18464 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
18465 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
18466 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18467 also exist.</p>
18468
18469 <blockquote><pre>
18470 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18471 objectclass: top
18472 objectclass: dnsdomain
18473 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18474 dc: tjener
18475 arecord: 10.0.2.2
18476 associateddomain: tjener.intern
18477
18478 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18479 objectclass: top
18480 objectclass: dnsdomain2
18481 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18482 dc: 2
18483 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
18484 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
18485 </pre></blockquote>
18486
18487 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
18488 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
18489 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
18490 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
18491 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
18492 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
18493 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
18494 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
18495 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
18496 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
18497 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
18498 instead.</p>
18499
18500 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
18501 like this:</p>
18502
18503 <blockquote><pre>
18504 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
18505   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
18506   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
18507   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
18508   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
18509   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
18510
18511 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
18512   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
18513 </pre></blockquote>
18514
18515 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
18516 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
18517 reverse lookups.</p>
18518
18519 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
18520 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
18521 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
18522 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
18523
18524 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
18525 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
18526 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
18527
18528 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
18529 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
18530 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
18531 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
18532 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
18533
18534 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
18535 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
18536 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
18537 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
18538 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
18539
18540 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
18541 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
18542 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
18543 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
18544 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
18545 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
18546
18547 <blockquote><pre>
18548 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
18549     SUP top
18550     AUXILIARY
18551     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
18552           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
18553           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
18554           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
18555           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
18556     ))
18557 </pre></blockquote>
18558
18559 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
18560 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
18561 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
18562 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
18563 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
18564 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
18565
18566 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
18567
18568 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
18569 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
18570 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
18571 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
18572 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
18573
18574 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
18575 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
18576 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
18577 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
18578
18579 <blockquote><pre>
18580 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
18581 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
18582 </pre></blockquote>
18583
18584 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
18585 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
18586 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
18587 search result is this entry:</p>
18588
18589 <blockquote><pre>
18590 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18591 cn: dhcp
18592 objectClass: top
18593 objectClass: dhcpServer
18594 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18595 </pre></blockquote>
18596
18597 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
18598 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
18599 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
18600 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
18601 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
18602 The search result is this entry:</p>
18603
18604 <blockquote><pre>
18605 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18606 cn: DHCP Config
18607 objectClass: top
18608 objectClass: dhcpService
18609 objectClass: dhcpOptions
18610 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18611 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
18612 dhcpStatements: authoritative
18613 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
18614 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
18615 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
18616 </pre></blockquote>
18617
18618 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
18619 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
18620 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
18621 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
18622 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
18623 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
18624 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
18625 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
18626 related computer objects.</p>
18627
18628 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
18629 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
18630 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
18631 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
18632 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
18633 like:</p>
18634
18635 <blockquote><pre>
18636 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18637 cn: hostname
18638 objectClass: top
18639 objectClass: dhcpHost
18640 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18641 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
18642 </pre></blockquote>
18643
18644 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
18645 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
18646 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
18647 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
18648 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
18649 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
18650 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
18651 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
18652 structural object class.
18653
18654 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
18655
18656 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
18657 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
18658 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
18659 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
18660 in the configuration.</p>
18661
18662 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
18663 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
18664 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
18665 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
18666 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
18667 structure.</p>
18668
18669 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
18670 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
18671
18672 <blockquote><pre>
18673 ou=services
18674   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
18675     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
18676     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
18677       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
18678         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
18679     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
18680       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
18681         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
18682     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
18683       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
18684 </pre></blockquote>
18685
18686 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
18687 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
18688 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
18689 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
18690
18691 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
18692 like this:</p>
18693
18694 <blockquote><pre>
18695 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18696 dc: hostname
18697 objectClass: top
18698 objectClass: dhcpHost
18699 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18700 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
18701 associateddomain: hostname.intern
18702 arecord: 10.11.12.13
18703 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18704 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
18705 </pre></blockquote>
18706
18707 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
18708 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
18709 auxiliary object class.</p>
18710
18711       </div>
18712       <div class="tags">
18713
18714
18715         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>.
18716
18717
18718       </div>
18719     </div>
18720     <div class="padding"></div>
18721
18722     <div class="entry">
18723       <div class="title">
18724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
18725       </div>
18726       <div class="date">
18727         14th July 2010
18728       </div>
18729       <div class="body">
18730         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
18731 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
18732 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
18733 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
18734 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
18735
18736 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
18737 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
18738
18739 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
18740 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
18741 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
18742 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
18743 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
18744 to a slave DNS server.</p>
18745
18746 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
18747 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
18748 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
18749 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
18750 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
18751 seem to work.</p>
18752
18753 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
18754 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
18755 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
18756 this:</p>
18757
18758 <blockquote><pre>
18759   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18760   cn: hostname
18761   objectClass: dhcphost
18762   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18763   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
18764   associateddomain: hostname.intern
18765   arecord: 10.11.12.13
18766   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18767   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
18768   ldapconfigsound: Y
18769 </pre></blockquote>
18770
18771 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
18772 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
18773 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
18774 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
18775
18776 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
18777 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
18778 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
18779 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
18780 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
18781 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
18782 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
18783 might be a good place to put it.</p>
18784
18785 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18786 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18787
18788       </div>
18789       <div class="tags">
18790
18791
18792         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>.
18793
18794
18795       </div>
18796     </div>
18797     <div class="padding"></div>
18798
18799     <div class="entry">
18800       <div class="title">
18801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
18802       </div>
18803       <div class="date">
18804         11th July 2010
18805       </div>
18806       <div class="body">
18807         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
18808 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
18809 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
18810 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
18811
18812 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
18813 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
18814 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
18815 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
18816 LTSP clients.</p>
18817
18818 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
18819 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
18820 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
18821
18822 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
18823 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
18824 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
18825
18826 <blockquote><pre>
18827 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
18828 #
18829 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
18830 #
18831 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
18832 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
18833 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
18834 #
18835 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
18836 # existence of attribute names.
18837 #
18838 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
18839 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
18840 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
18841 #
18842 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
18843 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
18844 #
18845 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
18846 #     SUP top
18847 #     AUXILIARY
18848 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
18849
18850 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
18851 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
18852     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
18853     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
18854         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
18855         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
18856             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
18857             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
18858             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
18859             # bass value on to clients
18860             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
18861         done
18862     done
18863 fi
18864 </pre></blockquote>
18865
18866 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
18867 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
18868 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
18869 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
18870 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
18871
18872 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18873 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18874
18875 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
18876 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
18877 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
18878 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
18879 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
18880 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
18881
18882       </div>
18883       <div class="tags">
18884
18885
18886         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>.
18887
18888
18889       </div>
18890     </div>
18891     <div class="padding"></div>
18892
18893     <div class="entry">
18894       <div class="title">
18895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
18896       </div>
18897       <div class="date">
18898          9th July 2010
18899       </div>
18900       <div class="body">
18901         <p>Since
18902 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
18903 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
18904 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
18905 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
18906 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
18907 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
18908 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
18909 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
18910 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
18911 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
18912 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
18913 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
18914 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
18915
18916       </div>
18917       <div class="tags">
18918
18919
18920         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>.
18921
18922
18923       </div>
18924     </div>
18925     <div class="padding"></div>
18926
18927     <div class="entry">
18928       <div class="title">
18929         <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>
18930       </div>
18931       <div class="date">
18932          3rd July 2010
18933       </div>
18934       <div class="body">
18935         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
18936 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
18937 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
18938 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
18939 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
18940 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
18941 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
18942 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
18943
18944 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
18945 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
18946 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
18947 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
18948 publish the difference.</p>
18949
18950 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18951
18952 <blockquote><p>
18953   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18954   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
18955   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
18956   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18957   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
18958   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
18959   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
18960   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
18961 </p></blockquote>
18962
18963 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18964
18965 <blockquote><p>
18966   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
18967   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
18968   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
18969   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
18970   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
18971   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
18972   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18973   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
18974   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18975   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
18976   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
18977   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
18978   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
18979   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
18980   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
18981   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
18982   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
18983   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
18984   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
18985   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
18986 </p></blockquote>
18987
18988 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18989
18990 <blockquote><p>
18991   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
18992   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
18993   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18994   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18995   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
18996   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
18997   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
18998   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18999   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19000   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19001   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19002   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
19003   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
19004   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
19005   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
19006   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
19007   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
19008   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
19009   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
19010   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
19011   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
19012 </p></blockquote>
19013
19014 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19015
19016 <blockquote><p>
19017   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
19018   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
19019   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
19020 </p></blockquote>
19021
19022 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
19023 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
19024 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
19025 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
19026 the difference somewhat.
19027
19028       </div>
19029       <div class="tags">
19030
19031
19032         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>.
19033
19034
19035       </div>
19036     </div>
19037     <div class="padding"></div>
19038
19039     <div class="entry">
19040       <div class="title">
19041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
19042       </div>
19043       <div class="date">
19044          1st July 2010
19045       </div>
19046       <div class="body">
19047         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
19048 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
19049 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
19050 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
19051 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
19052 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
19053 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
19054 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
19055 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
19056
19057 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19058
19059 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
19060 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
19061 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
19062 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
19063 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
19064 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
19065 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
19066 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
19067 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
19068 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
19069 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
19070 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
19071 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
19072 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
19073 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
19074
19075 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
19076
19077 <blockquote><pre>
19078 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
19079 </pre></blockquote>
19080
19081 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
19082 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
19083 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
19084 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
19085 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
19086 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
19087 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
19088 on how to get this working.</p>
19089
19090 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
19091 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
19092 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
19093 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
19094 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
19095 instructions I found in the
19096 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
19097 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
19098
19099 <blockquote><pre>
19100         debug-level             0
19101         reload-count            unlimited
19102         paranoia                no
19103
19104         enable-cache            passwd          yes
19105         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
19106         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
19107         suggested-size          passwd          211
19108         check-files             passwd          yes
19109         persistent              passwd          yes
19110         shared                  passwd          yes
19111         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
19112         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
19113
19114         enable-cache            group           yes
19115         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
19116         negative-time-to-live   group           20
19117         suggested-size          group           211
19118         check-files             group           yes
19119         persistent              group           yes
19120         shared                  group           yes
19121         max-db-size             group           33554432
19122         auto-propagate          group           yes
19123
19124         enable-cache            hosts           no
19125         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
19126         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
19127         suggested-size          hosts           211
19128         check-files             hosts           yes
19129         persistent              hosts           yes
19130         shared                  hosts           yes
19131         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
19132
19133         enable-cache            services        yes
19134         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
19135         negative-time-to-live   services        20
19136         suggested-size          services        211
19137         check-files             services        yes
19138         persistent              services        yes
19139         shared                  services        yes
19140         max-db-size             services        33554432
19141 </pre></blockquote>
19142
19143 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
19144 automatically like the one provided in
19145 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
19146 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
19147 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
19148 look like this:</p>
19149
19150 <blockquote><pre>
19151 passwd:         files ldap
19152 group:          files ldap
19153 shadow:         files ldap
19154 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
19155 networks:       files
19156 protocols:      files
19157 services:       files
19158 ethers:         files
19159 rpc:            files
19160 netgroup:       files ldap
19161 </pre></blockquote>
19162
19163 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
19164 shadow and netgroup.</p>
19165
19166 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
19167 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
19168 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
19169 attributes cached.
19170
19171 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
19172   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19173
19174 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
19175 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
19176 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
19177 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
19178 discovered sssd.</p>
19179
19180 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
19181
19182 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
19183 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
19184 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
19185 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
19186 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
19187 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
19188 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
19189 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
19190 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
19191 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
19192 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
19193 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
19194 version 1.2 is now in testing.
19195
19196 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
19197 roaming setup I want</p>
19198
19199 <blockquote><pre>
19200 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
19201 </pre></blockquote>
19202
19203 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
19204 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
19205
19206 <blockquote><pre>
19207 [sssd]
19208 config_file_version = 2
19209 reconnection_retries = 3
19210 sbus_timeout = 30
19211 services = nss, pam
19212 domains = INTERN
19213
19214 [nss]
19215 filter_groups = root
19216 filter_users = root
19217 reconnection_retries = 3
19218
19219 [pam]
19220 reconnection_retries = 3
19221
19222 [domain/INTERN]
19223 enumerate = false
19224 cache_credentials = true
19225
19226 id_provider = ldap
19227 auth_provider = ldap
19228 chpass_provider = ldap
19229
19230 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
19231 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19232 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
19233 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
19234 </pre></blockquote>
19235
19236 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
19237 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
19238
19239 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
19240 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
19241 modify it manually.</p>
19242
19243 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19244 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19245
19246       </div>
19247       <div class="tags">
19248
19249
19250         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19251
19252
19253       </div>
19254     </div>
19255     <div class="padding"></div>
19256
19257     <div class="entry">
19258       <div class="title">
19259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
19260       </div>
19261       <div class="date">
19262         28th June 2010
19263       </div>
19264       <div class="body">
19265         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
19266 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
19267 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
19268 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
19269 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
19270 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
19271 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
19272 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
19273 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
19274 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
19275
19276 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
19277 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
19278 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
19279 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
19280 released.</p>
19281
19282 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
19283 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
19284 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
19285 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
19286
19287 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
19288 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19289
19290 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
19291 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
19292 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
19293 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
19294 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
19295
19296       </div>
19297       <div class="tags">
19298
19299
19300         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>.
19301
19302
19303       </div>
19304     </div>
19305     <div class="padding"></div>
19306
19307     <div class="entry">
19308       <div class="title">
19309         <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>
19310       </div>
19311       <div class="date">
19312         24th June 2010
19313       </div>
19314       <div class="body">
19315         <p>A while back, I
19316 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
19317 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
19318 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
19319 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
19320
19321 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
19322 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
19323 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
19324 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
19325
19326 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
19327 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
19328 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
19329 Debian Edu.</p>
19330
19331 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
19332 the
19333 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
19334 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
19335 available today from IETF.</p>
19336
19337 <pre>
19338 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
19339 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
19340 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
19341  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
19342         NAME 'dhcpHost'
19343         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
19344 -       SUP top
19345 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
19346         MUST cn
19347         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
19348         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
19349 </pre>
19350
19351 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
19352 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
19353 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
19354
19355 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19356 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19357
19358       </div>
19359       <div class="tags">
19360
19361
19362         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>.
19363
19364
19365       </div>
19366     </div>
19367     <div class="padding"></div>
19368
19369     <div class="entry">
19370       <div class="title">
19371         <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>
19372       </div>
19373       <div class="date">
19374         16th June 2010
19375       </div>
19376       <div class="body">
19377         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
19378 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
19379 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
19380 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
19381 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
19382 this:
19383
19384 <blockquote><pre>
19385 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19386 tasksel --new-install
19387 </pre></blockquote>
19388
19389 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
19390 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
19391 any output what so ever.
19392
19393 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
19394 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
19395 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
19396 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
19397 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
19398 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
19399 code like this:
19400
19401 <blockquote><pre>
19402 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19403 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
19404 $cmd
19405 </pre></blockquote>
19406
19407 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
19408 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
19409 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
19410 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
19411 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
19412 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
19413 installation.</p>
19414
19415 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
19416 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
19417 like this.</p>
19418
19419       </div>
19420       <div class="tags">
19421
19422
19423         Tags: <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>.
19424
19425
19426       </div>
19427     </div>
19428     <div class="padding"></div>
19429
19430     <div class="entry">
19431       <div class="title">
19432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
19433       </div>
19434       <div class="date">
19435         13th June 2010
19436       </div>
19437       <div class="body">
19438         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
19439 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
19440 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
19441 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
19442 pages.</p>
19443
19444 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
19445 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
19446 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
19447 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
19448 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
19449 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
19450 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
19451 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
19452 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
19453 see how the project is doing.</p>
19454
19455 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
19456 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
19457 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
19458 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
19459 Windows.  This is great.</p>
19460
19461       </div>
19462       <div class="tags">
19463
19464
19465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
19466
19467
19468       </div>
19469     </div>
19470     <div class="padding"></div>
19471
19472     <div class="entry">
19473       <div class="title">
19474         <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>
19475       </div>
19476       <div class="date">
19477         13th June 2010
19478       </div>
19479       <div class="body">
19480         <p>My
19481 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
19482 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
19483 finally made the upgrade logs available from
19484 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
19485 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
19486 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
19487 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
19488
19489 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
19490 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
19491 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
19492 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
19493 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
19494 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
19495 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
19496 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
19497
19498 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
19499 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
19500 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
19501 too surprising.</p>
19502
19503 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
19504 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
19505 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
19506 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
19507 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
19508 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
19509 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
19510 continue.</p>
19511
19512 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
19513 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
19514   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
19515   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
19516   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
19517   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
19518   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
19519   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19520   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19521   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
19522   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
19523   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
19524   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
19525   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19526   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19527   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19528   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19529   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19530   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
19531   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
19532   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
19533   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
19534   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
19535   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
19536   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
19537   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
19538   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
19539   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
19540   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
19541   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
19542
19543 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
19544
19545 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
19546   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
19547   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
19548   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
19549   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
19550   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
19551   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
19552   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
19553   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
19554   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
19555   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19556   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
19557   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
19558   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
19559   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
19560   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
19561   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
19562   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
19563   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
19564   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
19565   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
19566   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
19567   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
19568   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
19569   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
19570   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
19571   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
19572   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
19573   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
19574   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19575   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
19576   zip</p>
19577
19578 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
19579
19580 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
19581   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
19582   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
19583   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
19584   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
19585   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
19586   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19587   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19588   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
19589   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
19590   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
19591   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
19592   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19593   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19594   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19595   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19596   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19597   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
19598   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
19599   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
19600   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
19601   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
19602   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
19603   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
19604   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
19605   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
19606   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
19607   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
19608
19609 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
19610 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
19611   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
19612   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
19613   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
19614   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
19615   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
19616   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
19617   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
19618   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
19619   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
19620   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
19621   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
19622   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
19623   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
19624   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
19625   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
19626   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
19627   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
19628   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
19629   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
19630   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
19631   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
19632   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
19633   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
19634   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
19635   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
19636   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
19637   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
19638   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
19639   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
19640   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
19641   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
19642   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
19643   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
19644   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19645   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
19646   xulrunner-1.9</p>
19647
19648
19649       </div>
19650       <div class="tags">
19651
19652
19653         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>.
19654
19655
19656       </div>
19657     </div>
19658     <div class="padding"></div>
19659
19660     <div class="entry">
19661       <div class="title">
19662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
19663       </div>
19664       <div class="date">
19665         11th June 2010
19666       </div>
19667       <div class="body">
19668         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
19669 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
19670 have been discovered and reported in the process
19671 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
19672 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
19673 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
19674 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
19675 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
19676
19677 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
19678 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
19679 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
19680 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
19681 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
19682 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
19683
19684 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
19685 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
19686 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
19687 is created.  The bug report
19688 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
19689 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
19690 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
19691 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
19692 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
19693 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
19694 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
19695 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
19696 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
19697 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
19698 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
19699 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
19700 Debian Squeeze.</p>
19701
19702 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
19703 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
19704 trick:</p>
19705
19706 <blockquote><pre>
19707 #!/bin/sh
19708 set -ex
19709
19710 if [ "$1" ] ; then
19711     desktop=$1
19712 else
19713     desktop=gnome
19714 fi
19715
19716 from=lenny
19717 to=squeeze
19718
19719 exec &lt; /dev/null
19720 unset LANG
19721 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
19722 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
19723 fuser -mv .
19724 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
19725 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19726 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
19727 #!/bin/sh
19728 exit 101
19729 EOF
19730 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
19731 exit_cleanup() {
19732     umount $tmpdir/proc
19733 }
19734 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
19735 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
19736 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
19737
19738 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
19739
19740 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
19741 # to return the correct answers.
19742 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
19743     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
19744
19745 # Include the desktop and laptop task
19746 for test in desktop laptop ; do
19747     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
19748 #!/bin/sh
19749 exit 2
19750 EOF
19751     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
19752 done
19753
19754 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19755 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
19756 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
19757 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
19758
19759 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
19760 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19761 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
19762 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
19763 fuser -mv
19764 </pre></blockquote>
19765
19766 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
19767 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
19768 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
19769 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
19770 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
19771 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
19772
19773 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
19774 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
19775 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
19776 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
19777 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
19778 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
19779 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
19780
19781 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
19782 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
19783 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
19784 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
19785 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
19786 packages.</p>
19787
19788       </div>
19789       <div class="tags">
19790
19791
19792         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>.
19793
19794
19795       </div>
19796     </div>
19797     <div class="padding"></div>
19798
19799     <div class="entry">
19800       <div class="title">
19801         <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>
19802       </div>
19803       <div class="date">
19804          6th June 2010
19805       </div>
19806       <div class="body">
19807         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
19808 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
19809 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
19810 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
19811 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
19812 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
19813 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
19814
19815 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
19816 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
19817 COLUMNS):</p>
19818
19819 <blockquote><pre>
19820 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
19821 previous=N
19822 PREVLEVEL=
19823 RUNLEVEL=
19824 runlevel=S
19825 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
19826 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
19827 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
19828 </pre></blockquote>
19829
19830 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
19831 script.</p>
19832
19833 <blockquote><pre>
19834 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
19835 previous=N
19836 PREVLEVEL=N
19837 RUNLEVEL=S
19838 runlevel=S
19839 </pre></blockquote>
19840
19841 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
19842 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
19843 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
19844
19845 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
19846 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
19847 choice.</p>
19848
19849       </div>
19850       <div class="tags">
19851
19852
19853         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>.
19854
19855
19856       </div>
19857     </div>
19858     <div class="padding"></div>
19859
19860     <div class="entry">
19861       <div class="title">
19862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
19863       </div>
19864       <div class="date">
19865          6th June 2010
19866       </div>
19867       <div class="body">
19868         <p>Via the
19869 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
19870 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
19871 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
19872 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
19873 following the standards wars of today.</p>
19874
19875       </div>
19876       <div class="tags">
19877
19878
19879         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>.
19880
19881
19882       </div>
19883     </div>
19884     <div class="padding"></div>
19885
19886     <div class="entry">
19887       <div class="title">
19888         <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>
19889       </div>
19890       <div class="date">
19891          3rd June 2010
19892       </div>
19893       <div class="body">
19894         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
19895 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
19896 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
19897 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
19898 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
19899
19900 <blockquote><pre>
19901 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
19902   vendor                    count
19903   Dell Computer Corporation     1
19904     PowerEdge 1750              1
19905   IBM                           1
19906     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
19907   Intel                         2
19908   [no-dmi-info]                 3
19909 maintainer:~#
19910 </pre></blockquote>
19911
19912 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
19913 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
19914 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
19915 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
19916 option to list the individual machines.</p>
19917
19918 <p>A larger list is
19919 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
19920 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
19921 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
19922 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
19923 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
19924 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
19925 collector.</p>
19926
19927       </div>
19928       <div class="tags">
19929
19930
19931         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>.
19932
19933
19934       </div>
19935     </div>
19936     <div class="padding"></div>
19937
19938     <div class="entry">
19939       <div class="title">
19940         <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>
19941       </div>
19942       <div class="date">
19943          1st June 2010
19944       </div>
19945       <div class="body">
19946         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
19947 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
19948 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
19949 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
19950 wait.</p>
19951
19952 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
19953 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
19954 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
19955 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
19956 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
19957 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
19958
19959 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
19960 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
19961 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
19962 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
19963 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
19964 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
19965 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
19966 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
19967
19968 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
19969
19970       </div>
19971       <div class="tags">
19972
19973
19974         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>.
19975
19976
19977       </div>
19978     </div>
19979     <div class="padding"></div>
19980
19981     <div class="entry">
19982       <div class="title">
19983         <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>
19984       </div>
19985       <div class="date">
19986         27th May 2010
19987       </div>
19988       <div class="body">
19989         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
19990 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
19991 issues are known and should be solved:
19992
19993 <p><ul>
19994
19995 <li>The wicd package seen to
19996 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
19997 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
19998 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
19999 seem to be on the case.</li>
20000
20001 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
20002 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
20003 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
20004 maintainer is on the case.</li>
20005
20006 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
20007 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
20008 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
20009 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
20010 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
20011 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
20012 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
20013 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
20014
20015 </ul></p>
20016
20017 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
20018 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
20019 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
20020 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
20021
20022 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20023 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20024 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20025 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20026
20027 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
20028
20029       </div>
20030       <div class="tags">
20031
20032
20033         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>.
20034
20035
20036       </div>
20037     </div>
20038     <div class="padding"></div>
20039
20040     <div class="entry">
20041       <div class="title">
20042         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
20043       </div>
20044       <div class="date">
20045         22nd May 2010
20046       </div>
20047       <div class="body">
20048         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
20049 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
20050 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
20051 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
20052
20053 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
20054 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
20055 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
20056 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
20057 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
20058 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
20059 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
20060 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
20061 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
20062 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
20063 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
20064 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
20065 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
20066 going to work.</p>
20067
20068 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
20069 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
20070 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
20071 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
20072 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
20073 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
20074 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
20075 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
20076 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
20077 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
20078 Edu.</p>
20079
20080 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
20081 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
20082 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
20083 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
20084 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
20085 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
20086
20087 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
20088 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
20089
20090       </div>
20091       <div class="tags">
20092
20093
20094         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>.
20095
20096
20097       </div>
20098     </div>
20099     <div class="padding"></div>
20100
20101     <div class="entry">
20102       <div class="title">
20103         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
20104       </div>
20105       <div class="date">
20106         19th May 2010
20107       </div>
20108       <div class="body">
20109         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
20110 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
20111 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
20112 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
20113 into unstable.  The
20114 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
20115 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
20116 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
20117 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
20118 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
20119 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
20120 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
20121
20122 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
20123 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
20124 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
20125 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
20126 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
20127 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
20128 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
20129 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
20130
20131 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
20132 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
20133 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
20134 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
20135 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
20136 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
20137 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
20138
20139 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
20140 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
20141 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
20142 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
20143 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
20144 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
20145 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
20146 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
20147 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
20148 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
20149 on the home directory servers.</p>
20150
20151 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
20152 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
20153 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
20154 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
20155 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
20156 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
20157
20158 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20159 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20160
20161       </div>
20162       <div class="tags">
20163
20164
20165         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20166
20167
20168       </div>
20169     </div>
20170     <div class="padding"></div>
20171
20172     <div class="entry">
20173       <div class="title">
20174         <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>
20175       </div>
20176       <div class="date">
20177         14th May 2010
20178       </div>
20179       <div class="body">
20180         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
20181 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
20182 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
20183 expected, if I am to believe the
20184 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
20185 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
20186 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
20187 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
20188 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
20189 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
20190 version.</p>
20191
20192 More information about
20193 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20194 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
20195 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
20196 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
20197
20198 <blockquote><pre>
20199 CONCURRENCY=none
20200 </pre></blockquote>
20201
20202 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20203 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20204 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20205 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20206
20207       </div>
20208       <div class="tags">
20209
20210
20211         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>.
20212
20213
20214       </div>
20215     </div>
20216     <div class="padding"></div>
20217
20218     <div class="entry">
20219       <div class="title">
20220         <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>
20221       </div>
20222       <div class="date">
20223         14th May 2010
20224       </div>
20225       <div class="body">
20226         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
20227 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
20228 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
20229 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
20230 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
20231 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
20232 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
20233 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
20234
20235 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
20236 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
20237 this on the collector host:</p>
20238
20239 <blockquote><pre>
20240 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
20241 </pre></blockquote>
20242
20243 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
20244 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
20245
20246 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
20247 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
20248 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
20249 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
20250 written yet.</p>
20251
20252       </div>
20253       <div class="tags">
20254
20255
20256         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>.
20257
20258
20259       </div>
20260     </div>
20261     <div class="padding"></div>
20262
20263     <div class="entry">
20264       <div class="title">
20265         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
20266       </div>
20267       <div class="date">
20268         13th May 2010
20269       </div>
20270       <div class="body">
20271         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
20272 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
20273 has been
20274 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
20275
20276 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
20277 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
20278 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
20279 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
20280 based boot system.  Tollef is
20281 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
20282 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
20283 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
20284 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
20285 at the moment do not.</p>
20286
20287 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
20288 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
20289 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
20290 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
20291 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
20292 way forward.</p>
20293
20294 <p>In the mean time, based on the
20295 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
20296 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
20297 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
20298 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
20299 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
20300 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
20301 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
20302 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
20303
20304       </div>
20305       <div class="tags">
20306
20307
20308         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>.
20309
20310
20311       </div>
20312     </div>
20313     <div class="padding"></div>
20314
20315     <div class="entry">
20316       <div class="title">
20317         <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>
20318       </div>
20319       <div class="date">
20320          6th May 2010
20321       </div>
20322       <div class="body">
20323         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
20324 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
20325 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
20326 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
20327 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20328 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
20329 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
20330
20331 <blockquote><pre>
20332 CONCURRENCY=makefile
20333 </pre></blockquote>
20334
20335 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
20336 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
20337 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
20338 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
20339 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
20340 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
20341 make this happen.</p>
20342
20343 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
20344 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
20345 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
20346 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
20347 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
20348
20349 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
20350 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
20351 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
20352 fix the remaining issues.</p>
20353
20354 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20355 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20356 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20357 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20358
20359       </div>
20360       <div class="tags">
20361
20362
20363         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>.
20364
20365
20366       </div>
20367     </div>
20368     <div class="padding"></div>
20369
20370     <div class="entry">
20371       <div class="title">
20372         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
20373       </div>
20374       <div class="date">
20375          2nd May 2010
20376       </div>
20377       <div class="body">
20378         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
20379 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
20380 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
20381
20382 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
20383 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
20384 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
20385 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
20386 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
20387
20388 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
20389 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
20390
20391 <blockquote><pre>
20392 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
20393 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
20394 Password expires                                        : never
20395 Password inactive                                       : never
20396 Account expires                                         : never
20397 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
20398 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
20399 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
20400 root@tjener:~#
20401 </pre></blockquote>
20402
20403 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
20404 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
20405 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
20406 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
20407 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
20408 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
20409
20410 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
20411 intended:</p>
20412
20413 <blockquote><pre>
20414 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
20415 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
20416 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
20417 Password expires                                        : never
20418 Password inactive                                       : never
20419 Account expires                                         : never
20420 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
20421 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
20422 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
20423 root@tjener:~#
20424 </pre></blockquote>
20425
20426 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
20427 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
20428 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
20429
20430 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
20431 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
20432
20433 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
20434 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20435
20436 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
20437 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
20438 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
20439 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
20440 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
20441 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
20442 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
20443
20444 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
20445 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
20446 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
20447 change.</p>
20448
20449       </div>
20450       <div class="tags">
20451
20452
20453         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
20454
20455
20456       </div>
20457     </div>
20458     <div class="padding"></div>
20459
20460     <div class="entry">
20461       <div class="title">
20462         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
20463       </div>
20464       <div class="date">
20465         28th April 2010
20466       </div>
20467       <div class="body">
20468         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
20469 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
20470 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
20471 and go.</p>
20472
20473 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
20474 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
20475 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
20476 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
20477
20478 <ul>
20479
20480  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
20481    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
20482    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
20483    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
20484    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
20485    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
20486    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
20487    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
20488    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
20489    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
20490    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
20491    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
20492
20493  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
20494    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
20495    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
20496    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
20497    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
20498    or the Fedora developed
20499    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
20500    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
20501
20502  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
20503    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
20504    directory, using unison.</li>
20505
20506  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
20507    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
20508    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
20509    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
20510    implemented.</li>
20511
20512  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
20513    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
20514
20515  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
20516    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
20517    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
20518
20519 </ul>
20520
20521 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
20522 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
20523 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
20524 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
20525 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
20526 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
20527 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
20528 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
20529 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
20530
20531 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20532 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20533
20534       </div>
20535       <div class="tags">
20536
20537
20538         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20539
20540
20541       </div>
20542     </div>
20543     <div class="padding"></div>
20544
20545     <div class="entry">
20546       <div class="title">
20547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
20548       </div>
20549       <div class="date">
20550         19th April 2010
20551       </div>
20552       <div class="body">
20553         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
20554 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
20555 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
20556 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
20557 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
20558 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
20559 restrictions on the web, for example from
20560 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
20561 epub-version from
20562 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
20563 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
20564 strongly recommend this book.</p>
20565
20566       </div>
20567       <div class="tags">
20568
20569
20570         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20571
20572
20573       </div>
20574     </div>
20575     <div class="padding"></div>
20576
20577     <div class="entry">
20578       <div class="title">
20579         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
20580       </div>
20581       <div class="date">
20582         14th April 2010
20583       </div>
20584       <div class="body">
20585         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
20586 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
20587 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
20588 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
20589 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
20590 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
20591 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
20592 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
20593 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
20594
20595 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
20596 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
20597 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
20598 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
20599 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
20600
20601 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
20602 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
20603
20604 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
20605 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
20606 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
20607 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
20608 to work properly.</p>
20609
20610 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
20611 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
20612 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
20613 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
20614 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
20615 time.</p>
20616
20617 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
20618 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
20619 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
20620 up in a few days.</p>
20621
20622       </div>
20623       <div class="tags">
20624
20625
20626         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20627
20628
20629       </div>
20630     </div>
20631     <div class="padding"></div>
20632
20633     <div class="entry">
20634       <div class="title">
20635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
20636       </div>
20637       <div class="date">
20638          6th March 2010
20639       </div>
20640       <div class="body">
20641         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
20642 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
20643 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
20644 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
20645 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
20646 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
20647
20648 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
20649 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
20650 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
20651 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
20652
20653 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
20654 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
20655 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
20656 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
20657 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
20658 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
20659
20660       </div>
20661       <div class="tags">
20662
20663
20664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20665
20666
20667       </div>
20668     </div>
20669     <div class="padding"></div>
20670
20671     <div class="entry">
20672       <div class="title">
20673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
20674       </div>
20675       <div class="date">
20676         11th February 2010
20677       </div>
20678       <div class="body">
20679         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
20680 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
20681 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
20682 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
20683 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
20684 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
20685 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
20686
20687 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
20688
20689 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
20690 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
20691 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
20692 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
20693
20694       </div>
20695       <div class="tags">
20696
20697
20698         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20699
20700
20701       </div>
20702     </div>
20703     <div class="padding"></div>
20704
20705     <div class="entry">
20706       <div class="title">
20707         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
20708       </div>
20709       <div class="date">
20710         27th January 2010
20711       </div>
20712       <div class="body">
20713         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
20714 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
20715 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
20716 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
20717 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
20718 further.</p>
20719
20720 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
20721 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
20722 configured to be a server for the
20723 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
20724 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
20725 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
20726 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
20727 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
20728 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
20729 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
20730 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
20731 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
20732 and Nagios configuration.</p>
20733
20734 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
20735 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
20736 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
20737 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
20738
20739 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
20740 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
20741 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
20742 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
20743 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
20744 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
20745 the machine.</p>
20746
20747 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
20748 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
20749 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
20750 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
20751
20752 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
20753 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
20754 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
20755 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
20756 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
20757 everything is taken care of.</p>
20758
20759       </div>
20760       <div class="tags">
20761
20762
20763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
20764
20765
20766       </div>
20767     </div>
20768     <div class="padding"></div>
20769
20770     <div class="entry">
20771       <div class="title">
20772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
20773       </div>
20774       <div class="date">
20775         12th August 2009
20776       </div>
20777       <div class="body">
20778         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
20779 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
20780 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
20781 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
20782
20783 <table>
20784 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20785 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
20786 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
20787 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
20788 </table>
20789
20790 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
20791 got these numbers:</p>
20792
20793 <table>
20794 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20795 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
20796 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
20797 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
20798 </table>
20799
20800 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
20801
20802 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
20803 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
20804 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
20805 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
20806 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
20807
20808
20809 <table>
20810 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20811 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
20812 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
20813 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
20814 </table>
20815
20816 <p>And with 'site:no':
20817
20818 <table>
20819 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20820 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
20821 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
20822 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
20823 </table>
20824
20825 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
20826 numbers.</p>
20827
20828       </div>
20829       <div class="tags">
20830
20831
20832         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20833
20834
20835       </div>
20836     </div>
20837     <div class="padding"></div>
20838
20839     <div class="entry">
20840       <div class="title">
20841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
20842       </div>
20843       <div class="date">
20844          8th August 2009
20845       </div>
20846       <div class="body">
20847         <p>According to <a
20848 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
20849 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
20850 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
20851 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
20852 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
20853 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
20854 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
20855 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
20856 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
20857 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
20858
20859 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
20860 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
20861 seminar this autumn.</p>
20862
20863       </div>
20864       <div class="tags">
20865
20866
20867         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
20868
20869
20870       </div>
20871     </div>
20872     <div class="padding"></div>
20873
20874     <div class="entry">
20875       <div class="title">
20876         <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>
20877       </div>
20878       <div class="date">
20879         27th July 2009
20880       </div>
20881       <div class="body">
20882         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
20883 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
20884 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
20885 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
20886 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
20887 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
20888 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
20889
20890 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
20891 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
20892 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
20893
20894       </div>
20895       <div class="tags">
20896
20897
20898         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>.
20899
20900
20901       </div>
20902     </div>
20903     <div class="padding"></div>
20904
20905     <div class="entry">
20906       <div class="title">
20907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
20908       </div>
20909       <div class="date">
20910         22nd July 2009
20911       </div>
20912       <div class="body">
20913         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
20914 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
20915 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
20916 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
20917 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
20918 the package up to date.</p>
20919
20920 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
20921 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
20922 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
20923 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
20924 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
20925 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
20926 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
20927 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
20928 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
20929 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
20930 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
20931 working on the future release.</p>
20932
20933 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
20934 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
20935
20936       </div>
20937       <div class="tags">
20938
20939
20940         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>.
20941
20942
20943       </div>
20944     </div>
20945     <div class="padding"></div>
20946
20947     <div class="entry">
20948       <div class="title">
20949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
20950       </div>
20951       <div class="date">
20952         24th June 2009
20953       </div>
20954       <div class="body">
20955         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
20956 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
20957 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
20958 funded
20959 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
20960 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
20961 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
20962 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
20963 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
20964 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
20965
20966 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
20967 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
20968 boot:</p>
20969
20970 <ul>
20971
20972 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
20973
20974 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
20975    clock is in UTC.</li>
20976
20977 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
20978    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20979    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
20980
20981 </ul>
20982
20983 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
20984 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
20985 Villegas</a>.
20986
20987 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
20988 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
20989 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
20990 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
20991 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
20992 using this.</p>
20993
20994 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
20995 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
20996 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
20997 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
20998 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
20999 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
21000 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
21001
21002       </div>
21003       <div class="tags">
21004
21005
21006         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>.
21007
21008
21009       </div>
21010     </div>
21011     <div class="padding"></div>
21012
21013     <div class="entry">
21014       <div class="title">
21015         <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>
21016       </div>
21017       <div class="date">
21018          2nd May 2009
21019       </div>
21020       <div class="body">
21021         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
21022 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
21023 do not yet know them.</p>
21024
21025 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
21026 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
21027 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
21028 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
21029 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
21030 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
21031 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
21032 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
21033 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
21034 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
21035 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
21036
21037 <p>The second one is
21038 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
21039 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
21040 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
21041 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
21042 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
21043 and the company behind it is running
21044 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
21045 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
21046 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
21047 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
21048 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
21049 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
21050 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
21051 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
21052
21053 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
21054 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
21055 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
21056 surrounded by today.</p>
21057
21058       </div>
21059       <div class="tags">
21060
21061
21062         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21063
21064
21065       </div>
21066     </div>
21067     <div class="padding"></div>
21068
21069     <div class="entry">
21070       <div class="title">
21071         <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>
21072       </div>
21073       <div class="date">
21074         28th April 2009
21075       </div>
21076       <div class="body">
21077         <p>Julien Blache
21078 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
21079 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
21080 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
21081 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
21082 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
21083 properties.</p>
21084
21085       </div>
21086       <div class="tags">
21087
21088
21089         Tags: <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>.
21090
21091
21092       </div>
21093     </div>
21094     <div class="padding"></div>
21095
21096     <div class="entry">
21097       <div class="title">
21098         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
21099       </div>
21100       <div class="date">
21101          5th April 2009
21102       </div>
21103       <div class="body">
21104         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
21105 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
21106 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
21107 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
21108 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
21109 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
21110 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
21111 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
21112
21113 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
21114 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
21115 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
21116   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
21117   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
21118
21119 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
21120 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
21121 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
21122 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
21123
21124 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
21125 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
21126 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
21127 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
21128
21129 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
21130 set -e
21131 URL="$1"
21132 SAVEFILE="$2"
21133 DURATION="$3"
21134 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
21135   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
21136   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
21137 pid=$!
21138 sleep $DURATION
21139 kill $pid
21140 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
21141
21142       </div>
21143       <div class="tags">
21144
21145
21146         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
21147
21148
21149       </div>
21150     </div>
21151     <div class="padding"></div>
21152
21153     <div class="entry">
21154       <div class="title">
21155         <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>
21156       </div>
21157       <div class="date">
21158         30th March 2009
21159       </div>
21160       <div class="body">
21161         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
21162 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
21163 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
21164 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
21165 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
21166 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
21167 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
21168 application.</p>
21169
21170 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
21171 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
21172 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
21173 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
21174 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
21175 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
21176 blocked from doing so.</p>
21177
21178 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
21179 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
21180 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
21181 requirements change.</p>
21182
21183 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
21184 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
21185 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
21186
21187       </div>
21188       <div class="tags">
21189
21190
21191         Tags: <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>.
21192
21193
21194       </div>
21195     </div>
21196     <div class="padding"></div>
21197
21198     <div class="entry">
21199       <div class="title">
21200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
21201       </div>
21202       <div class="date">
21203         29th March 2009
21204       </div>
21205       <div class="body">
21206         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
21207 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
21208 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
21209 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
21210 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
21211 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
21212 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
21213 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
21214 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
21215 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
21216 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
21217 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
21218 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
21219 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
21220 now. :)</p>
21221
21222       </div>
21223       <div class="tags">
21224
21225
21226         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>.
21227
21228
21229       </div>
21230     </div>
21231     <div class="padding"></div>
21232
21233     <div class="entry">
21234       <div class="title">
21235         <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>
21236       </div>
21237       <div class="date">
21238         29th March 2009
21239       </div>
21240       <div class="body">
21241         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
21242 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
21243 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
21244 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
21245 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
21246 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
21247
21248 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
21249 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
21250 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
21251 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
21252 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
21253 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
21254 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
21255 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
21256 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
21257 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
21258 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
21259 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
21260 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
21261
21262 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
21263 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
21264 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
21265 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
21266
21267 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
21268 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
21269
21270 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
21271 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
21272 new IETF work group?</p>
21273
21274       </div>
21275       <div class="tags">
21276
21277
21278         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>.
21279
21280
21281       </div>
21282     </div>
21283     <div class="padding"></div>
21284
21285     <div class="entry">
21286       <div class="title">
21287         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
21288       </div>
21289       <div class="date">
21290         28th February 2009
21291       </div>
21292       <div class="body">
21293         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
21294 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
21295 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
21296 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
21297 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
21298 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
21299 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
21300 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
21301 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
21302 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
21303 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
21304 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
21305 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
21306 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
21307 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
21308 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
21309 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
21310 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
21311 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
21312 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
21313 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
21314 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
21315 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
21316 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
21317 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
21318 machine.</p>
21319
21320 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
21321 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
21322 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
21323 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
21324 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
21325 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
21326 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
21327
21328 <pre>
21329 use LWP::Simple;
21330 use POSIX;
21331 use WWW::Mechanize;
21332 use Date::Parse;
21333 [...]
21334 sub get_support_info {
21335     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
21336     my $str;
21337
21338     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
21339         # fetch website from Dell support
21340         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
21341         my $webpage = get($url);
21342         return undef unless ($webpage);
21343
21344         my $daysleft = -1;
21345         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
21346         foreach my $line (@lines) {
21347             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
21348             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21349             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
21350
21351             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
21352             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
21353             my $lastend = "";
21354             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
21355                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
21356
21357                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21358                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
21359                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21360                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
21361                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
21362                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
21363                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
21364             }
21365             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21366             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21367                 if ($lastend lt $today);
21368         }
21369     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
21370         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
21371         my $url =
21372             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
21373         $mech->get($url);
21374         my $fields = {
21375             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
21376             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
21377             'country' => 'NO',
21378             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
21379             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
21380         };
21381         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
21382                             fields      => $fields );
21383         # Next step is screen scraping
21384         my $content = $mech->content();
21385
21386         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21387         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
21388         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
21389         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
21390
21391         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21392
21393         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
21394             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
21395                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
21396             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
21397             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21398                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
21399             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21400                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
21401
21402             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
21403
21404             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21405                 if ($end lt $today);
21406         }
21407     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
21408         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
21409         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
21410         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
21411             my $content =
21412                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
21413             if ($content) {
21414                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21415                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
21416                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
21417                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
21418
21419                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
21420                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
21421
21422                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
21423
21424                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21425                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21426                     if ($end lt $today);
21427             }
21428         }
21429     }
21430     return $str;
21431 }
21432 </pre>
21433
21434 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
21435 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
21436 from dmidecode.</p>
21437
21438 <pre>
21439 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
21440                        "447707-B21");
21441 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
21442 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
21443                        "1234567");
21444 </pre>
21445
21446 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
21447 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
21448
21449 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
21450 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
21451 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
21452 do so.</p>
21453
21454       </div>
21455       <div class="tags">
21456
21457
21458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21459
21460
21461       </div>
21462     </div>
21463     <div class="padding"></div>
21464
21465     <div class="entry">
21466       <div class="title">
21467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
21468       </div>
21469       <div class="date">
21470         20th February 2009
21471       </div>
21472       <div class="body">
21473         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
21474 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
21475 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
21476 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
21477 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
21478 the "missing" computer.</p>
21479
21480 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
21481 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
21482 code blocks as defined in the
21483 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
21484 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
21485 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
21486 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
21487 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
21488 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
21489 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
21490 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
21491 codes.</p>
21492
21493 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
21494 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
21495 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
21496 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
21497 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
21498 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
21499
21500 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
21501 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
21502 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
21503 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
21504 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
21505 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
21506 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
21507 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
21508 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
21509 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
21510
21511 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
21512 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
21513 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
21514
21515       </div>
21516       <div class="tags">
21517
21518
21519         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21520
21521
21522       </div>
21523     </div>
21524     <div class="padding"></div>
21525
21526     <div class="entry">
21527       <div class="title">
21528         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
21529       </div>
21530       <div class="date">
21531         17th January 2009
21532       </div>
21533       <div class="body">
21534         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
21535 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
21536 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
21537 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
21538 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
21539 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
21540 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
21541 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
21542 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
21543 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
21544 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
21545 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
21546 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
21547 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
21548
21549 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
21550 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
21551 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
21552 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
21553 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
21554 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
21555 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
21556 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
21557 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
21558 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
21559 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
21560 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
21561 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
21562 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
21563 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
21564 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
21565 playing when the download is done.</p>
21566
21567 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
21568 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
21569 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
21570 too.</p>
21571
21572 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
21573 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
21574 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
21575 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
21576
21577       </div>
21578       <div class="tags">
21579
21580
21581         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21582
21583
21584       </div>
21585     </div>
21586     <div class="padding"></div>
21587
21588     <div class="entry">
21589       <div class="title">
21590         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
21591       </div>
21592       <div class="date">
21593         28th December 2008
21594       </div>
21595       <div class="body">
21596         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
21597 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
21598 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
21599 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
21600 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
21601 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
21602 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
21603 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
21604 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
21605 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
21606 source, sink and mixer applications and
21607 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
21608 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
21609 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
21610 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
21611 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
21612 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
21613 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
21614 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
21615 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
21616
21617 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
21618 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
21619 larger stick as well.</p>
21620
21621       </div>
21622       <div class="tags">
21623
21624
21625         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
21626
21627
21628       </div>
21629     </div>
21630     <div class="padding"></div>
21631
21632     <div class="entry">
21633       <div class="title">
21634         <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>
21635       </div>
21636       <div class="date">
21637          7th December 2008
21638       </div>
21639       <div class="body">
21640         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
21641 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
21642 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
21643 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
21644 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
21645 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
21646 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
21647 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
21648
21649 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
21650 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
21651 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
21652 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
21653 of these cards.</p>
21654
21655       </div>
21656       <div class="tags">
21657
21658
21659         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>.
21660
21661
21662       </div>
21663     </div>
21664     <div class="padding"></div>
21665
21666     <div class="entry">
21667       <div class="title">
21668         <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>
21669       </div>
21670       <div class="date">
21671         25th November 2008
21672       </div>
21673       <div class="body">
21674         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
21675 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
21676 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
21677 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
21678 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
21679 notes are available on
21680 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
21681 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
21682 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
21683 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
21684 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
21685 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
21686 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
21687 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
21688 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
21689
21690 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
21691 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
21692
21693       </div>
21694       <div class="tags">
21695
21696
21697         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>.
21698
21699
21700       </div>
21701     </div>
21702     <div class="padding"></div>
21703
21704     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
21705     <div id="sidebar">
21706
21707
21708
21709 <h2>Archive</h2>
21710 <ul>
21711
21712 <li>2015
21713 <ul>
21714
21715 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
21716
21717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (2)</a></li>
21718
21719 </ul></li>
21720
21721 <li>2014
21722 <ul>
21723
21724 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
21725
21726 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
21727
21728 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
21729
21730 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
21731
21732 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
21733
21734 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
21735
21736 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
21737
21738 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
21739
21740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
21741
21742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
21743
21744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
21745
21746 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
21747
21748 </ul></li>
21749
21750 <li>2013
21751 <ul>
21752
21753 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
21754
21755 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
21756
21757 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
21758
21759 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
21760
21761 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
21762
21763 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
21764
21765 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
21766
21767 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
21768
21769 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
21770
21771 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
21772
21773 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
21774
21775 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
21776
21777 </ul></li>
21778
21779 <li>2012
21780 <ul>
21781
21782 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
21783
21784 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
21785
21786 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
21787
21788 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
21789
21790 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
21791
21792 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
21793
21794 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
21795
21796 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
21797
21798 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
21799
21800 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
21801
21802 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
21803
21804 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
21805
21806 </ul></li>
21807
21808 <li>2011
21809 <ul>
21810
21811 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
21812
21813 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
21814
21815 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
21816
21817 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
21818
21819 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
21820
21821 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
21822
21823 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
21824
21825 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
21826
21827 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
21828
21829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
21830
21831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
21832
21833 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
21834
21835 </ul></li>
21836
21837 <li>2010
21838 <ul>
21839
21840 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
21841
21842 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
21843
21844 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
21845
21846 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
21847
21848 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
21849
21850 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
21851
21852 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
21853
21854 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
21855
21856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
21857
21858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
21859
21860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
21861
21862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
21863
21864 </ul></li>
21865
21866 <li>2009
21867 <ul>
21868
21869 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
21870
21871 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
21872
21873 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
21874
21875 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
21876
21877 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
21878
21879 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
21880
21881 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
21882
21883 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
21884
21885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
21886
21887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
21888
21889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
21890
21891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
21892
21893 </ul></li>
21894
21895 <li>2008
21896 <ul>
21897
21898 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
21899
21900 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
21901
21902 </ul></li>
21903
21904 </ul>
21905
21906
21907
21908 <h2>Tags</h2>
21909 <ul>
21910
21911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
21912
21913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
21914
21915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
21916
21917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
21918
21919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
21920
21921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
21922
21923  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
21924
21925  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
21926
21927  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (109)</a></li>
21928
21929  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (151)</a></li>
21930
21931  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
21932
21933  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
21934
21935  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (12)</a></li>
21936
21937  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
21938
21939  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (267)</a></li>
21940
21941  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (22)</a></li>
21942
21943  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
21944
21945  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (14)</a></li>
21946
21947  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
21948
21949  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (12)</a></li>
21950
21951  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (41)</a></li>
21952
21953  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
21954
21955  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
21956
21957  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
21958
21959  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
21960
21961  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
21962
21963  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
21964
21965  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
21966
21967  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (32)</a></li>
21968
21969  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (259)</a></li>
21970
21971  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (172)</a></li>
21972
21973  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (15)</a></li>
21974
21975  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
21976
21977  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (51)</a></li>
21978
21979  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (81)</a></li>
21980
21981  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
21982
21983  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
21984
21985  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
21986
21987  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
21988
21989  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
21990
21991  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
21992
21993  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
21994
21995  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
21996
21997  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
21998
21999  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
22000
22001  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
22002
22003  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (46)</a></li>
22004
22005  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
22006
22007  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
22008
22009  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (29)</a></li>
22010
22011  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
22012
22013  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
22014
22015  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
22016
22017  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (48)</a></li>
22018
22019  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
22020
22021  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (34)</a></li>
22022
22023 </ul>
22024
22025
22026     </div>
22027     <p style="text-align: right">
22028  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
22029 </p>
22030
22031   </body>
22032 </html>