blog/tags/english/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged english</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="english.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  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/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         24th September 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
  32 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
  33 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
  34 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
  35 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
  36 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
  37 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
  38
  39 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
  40
  41 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
  42 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
  43 by someone else.  I found
  44 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
  45 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
  46 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
  47 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
  48 from him.  Via
  49 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
  50 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
  51 discovered
  52 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
  53 available in Debian.</p>
  54
  55 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
  56 battery stats ever since. Now my
  57 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
  58 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
  59 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capasity.  My
  60 colletor shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
  61
  62 <pre>
  63 #!/bin/sh
  64 # Inspired by
  65 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
  66 # See also
  67 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
  68 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
  69
  70 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
  71     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
  72
  73 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
  74     (
  75         printf "timestamp,"
  76         for f in $files; do
  77             printf "%s," $f
  78         done
  79         echo
  80     ) > "$logfile"
  81 fi
  82
  83 log_battery() {
  84     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
  85     # when several log processes run in parallell.
  86     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
  87         for f in $files; do \
  88             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
  89         done)
  90     echo "$msg"
  91 }
  92
  93 cd /sys/class/power_supply
  94
  95 for bat in BAT*; do
  96     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
  97 done
  98 </pre>
  99
 100 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 101 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 102 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 103 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 104 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 105 The code for the Debian package
 106 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 107 available on github</a>.</p>
 108
 109 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 110
 111 <pre>
 112 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 113 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 114 [...]
 115 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 116 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 117 </pre>
 118
 119 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 120 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of mylaptop
 121 battery.</p>
 122
 123 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 124 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 125 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 126 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 127 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 128 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 129 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 130 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 131 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 132 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 133 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 134 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 135 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 136 Linux too.</p>
 137
 138 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 139 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 140 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 141 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 142 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 143 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 144 load).</p>
 145
 146 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 147 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 148 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 149 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 150 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 151 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 152 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 153 those.</p>
 154
 155       </div>
 156       <div class="tags">
 157
 158
 159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 160
 161
 162       </div>
 163     </div>
 164     <div class="padding"></div>
 165
 166     <div class="entry">
 167       <div class="title">
 168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
 169       </div>
 170       <div class="date">
 171          3rd September 2015
 172       </div>
 173       <div class="body">
 174         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
 175 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
 176 the
 177 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
 178 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
 179 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
 180 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
 181
 182 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
 183 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
 184 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
 185 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
 186 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
 187 version.  Not only did he create a
 188 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
 189 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
 190 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
 191 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
 192 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
 193 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
 194 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
 195 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
 196 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
 197 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
 198
 199 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
 200 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
 201 current english version look like this:</p>
 202
 203 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
 204
 205 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
 206 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
 207 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
 208 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
 209 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
 210
 211 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
 212 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
 213 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
 214 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
 215 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
 216 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
 217
 218       </div>
 219       <div class="tags">
 220
 221
 222         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>.
 223
 224
 225       </div>
 226     </div>
 227     <div class="padding"></div>
 228
 229     <div class="entry">
 230       <div class="title">
 231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
 232       </div>
 233       <div class="date">
 234         19th August 2015
 235       </div>
 236       <div class="body">
 237         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
 238 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
 239 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
 240 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
 241 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
 242 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
 243 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
 244 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
 245 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
 246 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
 247 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
 248 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
 249 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
 250 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
 251 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
 252 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
 253 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
 254
 255 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
 256 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
 257 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
 258 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
 259 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
 260 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
 261
 262       </div>
 263       <div class="tags">
 264
 265
 266         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>.
 267
 268
 269       </div>
 270     </div>
 271     <div class="padding"></div>
 272
 273     <div class="entry">
 274       <div class="title">
 275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
 276       </div>
 277       <div class="date">
 278          9th August 2015
 279       </div>
 280       <div class="body">
 281         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
 282 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
 283 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
 284 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
 285 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
 286 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
 287 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
 288 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
 289 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
 290
 291 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
 292 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
 293 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
 294 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
 295 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
 296
 297 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
 298 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
 299 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
 300 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
 301 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
 302 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
 303
 304 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
 305 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
 306 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
 307 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
 308 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
 309 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
 310 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
 311 bring the prize down further.</p>
 312
 313 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
 314 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
 315 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
 316 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
 317 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
 318 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
 319 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
 320 to the task.</p>
 321
 322 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
 323 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
 324 status can as usual be found on
 325 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 326 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
 327 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
 328 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
 329 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
 330 formatting.</p>
 331
 332 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
 333 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
 334 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
 335 result in a few months.</p>
 336
 337       </div>
 338       <div class="tags">
 339
 340
 341         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>.
 342
 343
 344       </div>
 345     </div>
 346     <div class="padding"></div>
 347
 348     <div class="entry">
 349       <div class="title">
 350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
 351       </div>
 352       <div class="date">
 353         16th July 2015
 354       </div>
 355       <div class="body">
 356         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
 357 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
 358 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
 359 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
 360 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
 361 chapter.  Based on the
 362 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
 363 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
 364 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
 365 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
 366 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
 367 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
 368 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
 369 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
 370
 371 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
 372 and add this text there:</p>
 373
 374 <pre>
 375 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
 376 </pre>
 377
 378 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
 379 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
 380 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
 381
 382 <pre>
 383 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 384 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 385   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
 386     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
 387 \usepackage{endnotes}
 388 \let\footnote=\endnote
 389 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
 390 \begin{document}
 391     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
 392   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
 393 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 394 </pre>
 395
 396 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
 397 this:</p>
 398
 399 <pre>
 400 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
 401 </pre>
 402
 403 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
 404 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
 405 book project</a> is located.</p>
 406
 407       </div>
 408       <div class="tags">
 409
 410
 411         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>.
 412
 413
 414       </div>
 415     </div>
 416     <div class="padding"></div>
 417
 418     <div class="entry">
 419       <div class="title">
 420         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
 421       </div>
 422       <div class="date">
 423          7th July 2015
 424       </div>
 425       <div class="body">
 426         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
 427 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
 428 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
 429 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
 430 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
 431 does not.</p>
 432
 433 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
 434 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
 435 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
 436 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
 437
 438 <p><blockquote>
 439
 440 <p>According to
 441 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
 442 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
 443 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
 444 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
 445 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
 446 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
 447
 448 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
 449 PDF named
 450 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
 451 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
 452 fees:</p>
 453
 454 <ul>
 455  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
 456   <ul>
 457    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
 458      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
 459      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
 460      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
 461
 462    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
 463      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
 464   </ul></li>
 465
 466  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
 467   <ul>
 468    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
 469      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
 470      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
 471
 472    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
 473      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
 474   </ul></li>
 475 </ul>
 476
 477 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
 478 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
 479 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
 480 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
 481 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
 482 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
 483
 484 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
 485 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
 486 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
 487 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
 488 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
 489 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
 490 access to personalized services?</p>
 491
 492 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
 493 Internet.</p>
 494 </blockquote></p>
 495
 496 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
 497 with the MPEG LA:</p>
 498
 499 <p><blockquote>
 500 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
 501 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
 502
 503 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
 504 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
 505 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
 506 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
 507 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
 508 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
 509 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
 510
 511 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
 512 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
 513 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
 514 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
 515 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
 516 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
 517 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
 518 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
 519 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
 520 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
 521 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
 522 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
 523
 524 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
 525 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
 526 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
 527 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
 528 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
 529 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
 530 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
 531
 532 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
 533 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
 534 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
 535 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
 536
 537 <p>For your reference, I have attached
 538 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
 539 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
 540 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
 541 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
 542 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
 543 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
 544 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
 545 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
 546 be used for execution.</p>
 547
 548 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
 549 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
 550 free to contact me directly.</p>
 551 </blockquote></p>
 552
 553 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
 554 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
 555 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
 556 But I still had a few questions:</p>
 557
 558 <p><blockquote>
 559 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
 560 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
 561 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
 562 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
 563 typically look similar to this:
 564
 565 <p><blockquote>
 566   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
 567   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
 568   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
 569   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
 570   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
 571   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
 572   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
 573   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
 574 </blockquote></p>
 575
 576 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
 577 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
 578 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
 579 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
 580 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
 581 </blockquote></p>
 582
 583 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
 584 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
 585
 586 <p><blockquote>
 587
 588 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
 589 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
 590 reads:</p>
 591
 592 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
 593 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
 594 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
 595 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
 596 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
 597 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
 598 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
 599 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
 600
 601 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
 602 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
 603 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
 604 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
 605 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
 606 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
 607 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
 608 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
 609
 610 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
 611 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
 612 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
 613 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
 614 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
 615 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
 616 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
 617 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
 618 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
 619
 620 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
 621 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
 622 Norway.</p>
 623
 624 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
 625 assistance, just let me know.</p>
 626 </blockquote></p>
 627
 628 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
 629 asked for more information:</p>
 630
 631 <p><blockquote>
 632
 633 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
 634 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
 635 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
 636 list available from &lt;URL:
 637 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
 638 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
 639 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
 640 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
 641 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
 642
 643 </blockquote></p>
 644
 645 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
 646 in that list:</p>
 647
 648 <p><blockquote>
 649
 650 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
 651 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
 652 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
 653 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
 654 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
 655 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
 656 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
 657 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
 658 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
 659
 660 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
 661 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
 662 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
 663 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
 664 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
 665 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
 666 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
 667 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
 668 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
 669 Portfolio Patents.</p>
 670 </blockquote></p>
 671
 672 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
 673 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
 674 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
 675 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
 676 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
 677 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
 678 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
 679 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
 680 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
 681
 682       </div>
 683       <div class="tags">
 684
 685
 686         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 687
 688
 689       </div>
 690     </div>
 691     <div class="padding"></div>
 692
 693     <div class="entry">
 694       <div class="title">
 695         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 696       </div>
 697       <div class="date">
 698          5th July 2015
 699       </div>
 700       <div class="body">
 701         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 702 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 703 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 704 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 705 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 706 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 707 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 708 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 709 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 710 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 711 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 712
 713 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 714 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 715 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 716 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 717 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 718 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 719 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 720
 721 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 722 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 723 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 724 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 725 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 726 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 727 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 728 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 729 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 730 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 731 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 732 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 733 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 734 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 735 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 736
 737 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 738 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 739 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 740 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 741
 742 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 743 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 744
 745 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 746 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 747 different
 748 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 749 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 750
 751       </div>
 752       <div class="tags">
 753
 754
 755         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 756
 757
 758       </div>
 759     </div>
 760     <div class="padding"></div>
 761
 762     <div class="entry">
 763       <div class="title">
 764         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 765       </div>
 766       <div class="date">
 767          3rd July 2015
 768       </div>
 769       <div class="body">
 770         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 771 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 772 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 773 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 774 flickering.</p>
 775
 776 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 777 still as
 778 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 779 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 780 good help from
 781 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 782 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 783 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 784 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 785 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 786 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 787 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 788 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 789 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 790
 791 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 792 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 793 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 794 have suggestions.</p>
 795
 796 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 797 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 798 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 799
 800       </div>
 801       <div class="tags">
 802
 803
 804         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 805
 806
 807       </div>
 808     </div>
 809     <div class="padding"></div>
 810
 811     <div class="entry">
 812       <div class="title">
 813         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
 814       </div>
 815       <div class="date">
 816          2nd July 2015
 817       </div>
 818       <div class="body">
 819         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
 820 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
 821 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
 822 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
 823 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
 824 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
 825 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
 826 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
 827 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
 828 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
 829 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
 830 Youtube too</a>.</p>
 831
 832 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
 833 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
 834 pages</a> to view them.</p>
 835
 836 <ul>
 837
 838   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
 839       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
 840
 841   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
 842
 843   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
 844       (Olav Helland)</li>
 845
 846   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
 847       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
 848
 849   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
 850
 851   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
 852
 853   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
 854       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
 855
 856   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
 857
 858   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
 859
 860   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
 861
 862   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
 863
 864   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
 865       Sevens)</li>
 866
 867   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
 868       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
 869
 870   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
 871       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
 872
 873   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
 874       Dyvik)</li>
 875
 876   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
 877
 878 </ul>
 879
 880 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
 881 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
 882 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
 883 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
 884 which sent me on a detour to
 885 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
 886 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
 887 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
 888
 889       </div>
 890       <div class="tags">
 891
 892
 893         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>.
 894
 895
 896       </div>
 897     </div>
 898     <div class="padding"></div>
 899
 900     <div class="entry">
 901       <div class="title">
 902         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
 903       </div>
 904       <div class="date">
 905         15th June 2015
 906       </div>
 907       <div class="body">
 908         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
 909 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
 910 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
 911 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
 912 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
 913 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
 914 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
 915 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
 916 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
 917
 918 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
 919 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
 920 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
 921 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
 922
 923 <pre>
 924 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
 925
 926 real    0m2.841s
 927 user    0m0.184s
 928 sys     0m0.036s
 929 %
 930 </pre>
 931
 932 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
 933 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
 934 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
 935 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
 936 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
 937
 938 <pre>
 939 digraph ownership {
 940 rankdir = LR;
 941 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
 942 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
 943 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
 944 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
 945 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
 946 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
 947 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
 948 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
 949 }
 950 </pre>
 951
 952 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
 953 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
 954 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
 955
 956 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
 957
 958 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
 959 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
 960 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
 961 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
 962 of the ownership links.</p>
 963
 964 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
 965 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
 966
 967 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
 968 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
 969 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
 970 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
 971 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
 972 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
 973 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
 974
 975       </div>
 976       <div class="tags">
 977
 978
 979         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
 980
 981
 982       </div>
 983     </div>
 984     <div class="padding"></div>
 985
 986     <div class="entry">
 987       <div class="title">
 988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
 989       </div>
 990       <div class="date">
 991         11th June 2015
 992       </div>
 993       <div class="body">
 994         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
 995 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
 996 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
 997 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
 998 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
 999 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
1000 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
1001 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
1002 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
1003 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
1004 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
1005 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
1006 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
1007
1008 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
1009 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
1010 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
1011 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
1012 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
1013 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
1014 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
1015 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
1016 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
1017 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
1018
1019 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
1020 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
1021 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
1022 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
1023 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
1024 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
1025 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
1026 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
1027 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
1028
1029 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
1030 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
1031 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
1032 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
1033 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
1034 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
1035 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1036 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
1037 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
1038 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
1039 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
1040
1041       </div>
1042       <div class="tags">
1043
1044
1045         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>.
1046
1047
1048       </div>
1049     </div>
1050     <div class="padding"></div>
1051
1052     <div class="entry">
1053       <div class="title">
1054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
1055       </div>
1056       <div class="date">
1057         10th May 2015
1058       </div>
1059       <div class="body">
1060         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
1061 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
1062 criminal or not, are
1063 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
1064 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
1065 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
1066 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
1067 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
1068 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
1069 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
1070 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
1071 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
1072 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
1073 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
1074 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
1075 the police.</p>
1076
1077 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
1078 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
1079 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
1080 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
1081 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
1082 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
1083 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
1084 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
1085 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
1086 is good to know that
1087 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
1088 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
1089 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
1090 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
1091 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
1092 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
1093 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
1094 business getting access to that information.</p>
1095
1096 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
1097 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
1098 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
1099 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
1100 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
1101 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
1102 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
1103
1104 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
1105 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
1106 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
1107 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
1108
1109 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
1110 really could make such decision, I wrote
1111 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
1112 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
1113 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
1114
1115       </div>
1116       <div class="tags">
1117
1118
1119         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>.
1120
1121
1122       </div>
1123     </div>
1124     <div class="padding"></div>
1125
1126     <div class="entry">
1127       <div class="title">
1128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
1129       </div>
1130       <div class="date">
1131          1st May 2015
1132       </div>
1133       <div class="body">
1134         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
1135 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
1136 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
1137 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
1138 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
1139 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
1140 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
1141
1142 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
1143 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
1144 the 2012 numbers are from
1145 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
1146 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
1147 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
1148 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
1149 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
1150
1151 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
1152 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
1153 enough.  See for example a
1154 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
1155 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
1156 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
1157 to get the storage requirements.</p>
1158
1159 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
1160 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
1161 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
1162 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
1163 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
1164
1165 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
1166 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
1167 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
1168 and large organisations:</p>
1169
1170 <table border="1">
1171 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
1172 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
1173 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
1174 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
1175 </table>
1176
1177 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
1178 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
1179 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
1180 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
1181 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
1182 collecting the data?</p>
1183
1184       </div>
1185       <div class="tags">
1186
1187
1188         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>.
1189
1190
1191       </div>
1192     </div>
1193     <div class="padding"></div>
1194
1195     <div class="entry">
1196       <div class="title">
1197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
1198       </div>
1199       <div class="date">
1200         26th April 2015
1201       </div>
1202       <div class="body">
1203         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
1204 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
1205 announcement today</a>:</p>
1206
1207 <pre>
1208 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
1209 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
1210 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
1211 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
1212
1213 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
1214 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
1215 later today ;)
1216
1217 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
1218 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
1219 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
1220 be possible and encouraged!
1221
1222 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
1223 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
1224
1225 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
1226 operating system for schools, universities and other
1227 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
1228 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
1229 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
1230 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
1231 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
1232 days.
1233
1234 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
1235 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
1236 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
1237 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
1238
1239 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1240 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1241 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
1242 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
1243 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
1244 least 5 characters!
1245
1246 == Where to download ==
1247
1248 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
1249 can be downloaded at the following locations:
1250
1251     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
1252     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
1253
1254 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
1255
1256 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
1257 available, with more software included (saving additional download
1258 time):
1259
1260     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1261     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1262
1263 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
1264
1265 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
1266 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
1267 options.
1268
1269 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
1270
1271 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
1272 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
1273
1274 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
1275 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
1276 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
1277 online version of the translated manual.
1278
1279 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
1280 release notes and the installation manual:
1281 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
1282 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
1283
1284
1285 == Errata / known problems ==
1286
1287     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
1288     DHCP (#780461).
1289
1290     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
1291
1292 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
1293 hostname immediately.
1294
1295 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
1296 more current and complete list.
1297
1298 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
1299
1300 === Software updates ===
1301
1302 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
1303
1304  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
1305    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
1306    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
1307
1308  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
1309    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
1310    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
1311    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
1312      the others see the manual.
1313  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
1314  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
1315  * GOsa 2.7.4
1316  * LTSP 5.5.4
1317  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1318  * new boot framework: systemd
1319  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
1320  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1321  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1322  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
1323  * golearn 0.9
1324  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1325  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1326  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
1327  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
1328    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
1329
1330 === Installation changes ===
1331
1332     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
1333     for the hardware present.
1334
1335 === Fixed bugs ===
1336
1337 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
1338 from a user perspective:
1339
1340  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1341    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1342    information is corrected (710362)
1343
1344  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
1345
1346 === Sugar desktop removed ===
1347
1348 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
1349 available in Debian Edu jessie.
1350
1351
1352 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
1353
1354 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
1355 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1356 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
1357 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1358 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1359 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1360 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1361 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1362 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1363 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1364 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1365 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1366 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1367 environment.
1368
1369 == About Debian ==
1370
1371 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1372 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1373 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1374 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1375 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1376 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1377 operating system.
1378
1379 == Thanks ==
1380
1381 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
1382 You rock.
1383 </pre>
1384
1385       </div>
1386       <div class="tags">
1387
1388
1389         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>.
1390
1391
1392       </div>
1393     </div>
1394     <div class="padding"></div>
1395
1396     <div class="entry">
1397       <div class="title">
1398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
1399       </div>
1400       <div class="date">
1401         15th April 2015
1402       </div>
1403       <div class="body">
1404         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
1405 computer system for schools I've involved in,
1406 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
1407 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
1408 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
1409 Agarwal.</p>
1410
1411 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1412
1413 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
1414 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
1415 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
1416 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
1417 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
1418 few software start-ups as well.</p>
1419
1420 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1421 project?</strong></p>
1422
1423 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
1424 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
1425 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
1426 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
1427 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
1428 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
1429 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
1430
1431 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1432 Edu?</strong></p>
1433
1434 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
1435 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
1436 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
1437 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
1438 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
1439 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
1440 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
1441 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
1442
1443 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
1444 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
1445 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
1446 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
1447 for the developer per-se.</p>
1448
1449 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1450 Edu?</strong></p>
1451
1452 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
1453 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
1454 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
1455
1456 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
1457 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
1458 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
1459 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
1460 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
1461 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
1462 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
1463
1464 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
1465 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
1466 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
1467
1468 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
1469 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
1470 interactive manner. While sites such as the
1471 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
1472 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
1473 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
1474 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
1475 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
1476 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
1477 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
1478 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
1479 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
1480 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
1481 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
1482
1483 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
1484 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
1485 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
1486 also be used.</p>
1487
1488 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
1489 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
1490 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
1491 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
1492 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
1493 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
1494 the user's input.</p>
1495
1496 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
1497 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
1498 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
1499 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
1500 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
1501 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
1502 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
1503 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
1504
1505 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
1506 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
1507 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
1508 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
1509 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
1510 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
1511 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
1512 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
1513
1514 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1515
1516 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
1517 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
1518 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
1519 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
1520 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
1521
1522 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1523 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1524
1525 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
1526 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
1527 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
1528 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
1529 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
1530 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
1531
1532 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
1533 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
1534 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
1535 well.</p>
1536
1537 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
1538 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
1539 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
1540 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
1541
1542 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
1543 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
1544 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
1545 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
1546 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
1547 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
1548 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
1549 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
1550 releases.</p>
1551
1552 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
1553 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
1554 is aimed at.
1555
1556 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
1557 around 2 years, and
1558 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
1559 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
1560 there was :</p>
1561
1562 <ol>
1563
1564   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
1565    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
1566    portion/syllabus given.</li>
1567
1568   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
1569    is in the syllabus.</li>
1570
1571   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
1572    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
1573    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
1574    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
1575    as recognizable as say a
1576    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
1577    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
1578    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
1579    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
1580    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
1581    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
1582
1583 </ol>
1584
1585       </div>
1586       <div class="tags">
1587
1588
1589         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>.
1590
1591
1592       </div>
1593     </div>
1594     <div class="padding"></div>
1595
1596     <div class="entry">
1597       <div class="title">
1598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
1599       </div>
1600       <div class="date">
1601          7th April 2015
1602       </div>
1603       <div class="body">
1604         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
1605 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
1606 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
1607
1608 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
1609 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
1610 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
1611 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
1612 part of my involvement with the
1613 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
1614 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
1615 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
1616 Hackathon with our friends
1617 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
1618 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
1619 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
1620 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
1621
1622 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
1623 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
1624
1625       </div>
1626       <div class="tags">
1627
1628
1629         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1630
1631
1632       </div>
1633     </div>
1634     <div class="padding"></div>
1635
1636     <div class="entry">
1637       <div class="title">
1638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
1639       </div>
1640       <div class="date">
1641          4th April 2015
1642       </div>
1643       <div class="body">
1644         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
1645 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1646 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1647 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
1648 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
1649 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
1650 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
1651 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1652 project pages.  You can also check out the
1653 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1654 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1655 and HTML version available in the
1656 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1657 directory</a>.</p>
1658
1659 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1660 you find any.</p>
1661
1662       </div>
1663       <div class="tags">
1664
1665
1666         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>.
1667
1668
1669       </div>
1670     </div>
1671     <div class="padding"></div>
1672
1673     <div class="entry">
1674       <div class="title">
1675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
1676       </div>
1677       <div class="date">
1678          9th March 2015
1679       </div>
1680       <div class="body">
1681         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
1682 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
1683 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
1684 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
1685 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
1686 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
1687 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
1688 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
1689 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
1690 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
1691 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
1692 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
1693 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
1694 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
1695
1696 <p>The list of NUUG videos
1697 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
1698 include things like a
1699 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
1700 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
1701 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
1702 re-implementation</a>, the
1703 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
1704 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
1705 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
1706 video</A> and many others.</p>
1707
1708 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
1709 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
1710 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
1711 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
1712 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
1713 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
1714 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
1715 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
1716 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1717 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
1718
1719 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
1720 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
1721 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
1722 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
1723 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
1724 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
1725 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
1726 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
1727 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
1728 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
1729
1730       </div>
1731       <div class="tags">
1732
1733
1734         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1735
1736
1737       </div>
1738     </div>
1739     <div class="padding"></div>
1740
1741     <div class="entry">
1742       <div class="title">
1743         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
1744       </div>
1745       <div class="date">
1746         28th February 2015
1747       </div>
1748       <div class="body">
1749         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
1750 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
1751 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
1752 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
1753 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
1754 made for
1755 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
1756 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
1757 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
1758 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
1759 a friend have
1760 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
1761 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
1762 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
1763 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
1764 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
1765 it happen ourselves.
1766 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
1767 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
1768 is.</p>
1769
1770 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
1771 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
1772
1773       </div>
1774       <div class="tags">
1775
1776
1777         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1778
1779
1780       </div>
1781     </div>
1782     <div class="padding"></div>
1783
1784     <div class="entry">
1785       <div class="title">
1786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
1787       </div>
1788       <div class="date">
1789         25th February 2015
1790       </div>
1791       <div class="body">
1792         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
1793 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
1794 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
1795 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
1796 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
1797 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
1798 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
1799 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
1800 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
1801 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
1802 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
1803 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
1804 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
1805 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
1806 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
1807 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
1808 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
1809
1810 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
1811 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
1812 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
1813 with VLC.</p>
1814
1815 <ul>
1816   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
1817   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
1818 </ul>
1819
1820 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
1821 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
1822 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
1823 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
1824 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
1825 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
1826 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
1827
1828 <blockquote><pre>
1829 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
1830  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
1831  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
1832 </pre></blockquote>
1833
1834 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
1835 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
1836 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
1837 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
1838
1839       </div>
1840       <div class="tags">
1841
1842
1843         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1844
1845
1846       </div>
1847     </div>
1848     <div class="padding"></div>
1849
1850     <div class="entry">
1851       <div class="title">
1852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
1853       </div>
1854       <div class="date">
1855         10th February 2015
1856       </div>
1857       <div class="body">
1858         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
1859 that
1860 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
1861 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
1862 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
1863 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
1864 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
1865 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
1866 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
1867 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
1868 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
1869 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
1870 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
1871 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
1872 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
1873 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
1874 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
1875
1876 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
1877 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
1878 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
1879 controversy about these scanners.</p>
1880
1881 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
1882 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
1883 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
1884
1885       </div>
1886       <div class="tags">
1887
1888
1889         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>.
1890
1891
1892       </div>
1893     </div>
1894     <div class="padding"></div>
1895
1896     <div class="entry">
1897       <div class="title">
1898         <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>
1899       </div>
1900       <div class="date">
1901          8th February 2015
1902       </div>
1903       <div class="body">
1904         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
1905 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
1906 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
1907 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
1908 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
1909 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
1910 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
1911 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
1912 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
1913 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
1914 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
1915 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
1916
1917 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
1918 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
1919 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
1920 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
1921
1922 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
1923 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
1924 distribute the TV content.  The
1925 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
1926 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
1927 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
1928 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
1929 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
1930 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
1931 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
1932 following activity, we now have the schedule
1933 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
1934 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
1935 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
1936 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
1937
1938 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
1939 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
1940 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
1941 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
1942 streams are working as they should.</p>
1943
1944       </div>
1945       <div class="tags">
1946
1947
1948         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>.
1949
1950
1951       </div>
1952     </div>
1953     <div class="padding"></div>
1954
1955     <div class="entry">
1956       <div class="title">
1957         <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>
1958       </div>
1959       <div class="date">
1960         12th January 2015
1961       </div>
1962       <div class="body">
1963         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
1964 Foundation</a> announced a new video
1965 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
1966 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
1967 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
1968 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
1969 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
1970 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
1971
1972 <p>But today I was told that
1973 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
1974 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
1975 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
1976 available in
1977 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
1978 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
1979 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
1980
1981 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
1982 Libreplanet
1983 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
1984 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
1985
1986       </div>
1987       <div class="tags">
1988
1989
1990         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>.
1991
1992
1993       </div>
1994     </div>
1995     <div class="padding"></div>
1996
1997     <div class="entry">
1998       <div class="title">
1999         <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>
2000       </div>
2001       <div class="date">
2002         30th December 2014
2003       </div>
2004       <div class="body">
2005         <p>I am very happy that we in the
2006 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
2007 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
2008 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
2009 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
2010 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
2011 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
2012 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
2013 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
2014 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
2015 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
2016
2017 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
2018 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
2019 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
2020 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
2021 reports in public.</p>
2022
2023       </div>
2024       <div class="tags">
2025
2026
2027         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>.
2028
2029
2030       </div>
2031     </div>
2032     <div class="padding"></div>
2033
2034     <div class="entry">
2035       <div class="title">
2036         <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>
2037       </div>
2038       <div class="date">
2039         19th December 2014
2040       </div>
2041       <div class="body">
2042         <p>So, Sony caved in
2043 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
2044 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
2045 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
2046 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
2047 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
2048 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
2049 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
2050 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
2051 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
2052 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
2053 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
2054 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
2055 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
2056
2057 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
2058 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
2059 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
2060 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
2061
2062 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
2063 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
2064 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
2065 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
2066 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
2067 income. :)</p>
2068
2069       </div>
2070       <div class="tags">
2071
2072
2073         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>.
2074
2075
2076       </div>
2077     </div>
2078     <div class="padding"></div>
2079
2080     <div class="entry">
2081       <div class="title">
2082         <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>
2083       </div>
2084       <div class="date">
2085         22nd November 2014
2086       </div>
2087       <div class="body">
2088         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
2089 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
2090 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
2091 courtesy of
2092 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
2093 Schubert</a> and
2094 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
2095 McVittie</a>.
2096
2097 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
2098 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
2099 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
2100 you upgrade:</p>
2101
2102 <p><blockquote><pre>
2103 Package: systemd-sysv
2104 Pin: release o=Debian
2105 Pin-Priority: -1
2106 </pre></blockquote><p>
2107
2108 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
2109 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
2110 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
2111 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
2112 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
2113
2114 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
2115 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
2116 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
2117 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
2118 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
2119 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
2120
2121 <p><blockquote><pre>
2122 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
2123 </pre></blockquote><p>
2124
2125 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
2126
2127 <p><blockquote><pre>
2128 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
2129 </pre></blockquote><p>
2130
2131 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
2132 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
2133
2134 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
2135 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
2136 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
2137 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
2138 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
2139 Jessie is released.</p>
2140
2141 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
2142 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
2143 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
2144 line.</p>
2145
2146       </div>
2147       <div class="tags">
2148
2149
2150         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>.
2151
2152
2153       </div>
2154     </div>
2155     <div class="padding"></div>
2156
2157     <div class="entry">
2158       <div class="title">
2159         <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>
2160       </div>
2161       <div class="date">
2162         10th November 2014
2163       </div>
2164       <div class="body">
2165         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
2166 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
2167 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
2168
2169 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
2170 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
2171 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
2172 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
2173 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
2174 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
2175 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
2176 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
2177 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
2178 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
2179 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
2180 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
2181 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
2182 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
2183 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
2184
2185 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
2186 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
2187 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
2188 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
2189 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
2190 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
2191 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
2192 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
2193 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
2194 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
2195 were fairly easy, and
2196 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
2197 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
2198 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
2199 useful approach.</p>
2200
2201 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
2202 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
2203 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
2204 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
2205 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2206 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2207 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2208 this:</p>
2209
2210 <p><blockquote><pre>
2211 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2212   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2213 </pre></blockquote></p>
2214
2215 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2216 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2217
2218 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2219 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2220 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2221 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2222 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2223 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2224 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2225 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2226 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2227 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2228 system.</p>
2229
2230 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2231 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2232 SMTorP. :)</p>
2233
2234       </div>
2235       <div class="tags">
2236
2237
2238         Tags: <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>.
2239
2240
2241       </div>
2242     </div>
2243     <div class="padding"></div>
2244
2245     <div class="entry">
2246       <div class="title">
2247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
2248       </div>
2249       <div class="date">
2250         27th October 2014
2251       </div>
2252       <div class="body">
2253         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
2254 sent out
2255 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
2256 announcement</a>:</p>
2257
2258 <pre>
2259 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
2260 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
2261
2262 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
2263 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
2264 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
2265 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
2266 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
2267 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
2268 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
2269
2270 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
2271 installation instructions are available, including detailed
2272 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
2273 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
2274 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
2275 of at least 5 characters!
2276
2277  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
2278
2279 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
2280 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
2281 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
2282 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
2283 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
2284
2285 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
2286 mostly in Germany and Norway.
2287
2288 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
2289 ===============================
2290
2291 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
2292 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2293 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2294 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2295 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2296 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2297 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2298 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
2299 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2300 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2301 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2302 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
2303 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
2304 environment.
2305
2306  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
2307  [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;
2308
2309 Full release notes and manual
2310 =============================
2311
2312 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
2313 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
2314 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
2315 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
2316 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
2317
2318  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
2319  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
2320
2321 Where to get it
2322 ---------------
2323
2324 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
2325
2326  * <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>
2327  * <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>
2328  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
2329
2330 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
2331
2332 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
2333 ===============================================================================
2334
2335
2336 Installation changes
2337 --------------------
2338
2339  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
2340
2341 Software updates
2342 ----------------
2343
2344 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
2345
2346  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
2347  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
2348    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
2349    choose one of the others see manual.)
2350  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
2351  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
2352  * GOsa 2.7.4
2353  * LTSP 5.5.4
2354  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
2355  * new boot framework: systemd
2356  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
2357  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
2358  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
2359  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
2360  * golearn 0.9
2361  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
2362  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
2363  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
2364    installation.
2365  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
2366    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
2367
2368  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
2369  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
2370
2371 Fixed bugs
2372 ----------
2373
2374  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
2375    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
2376    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
2377  * and many others.
2378
2379 Documentation and translation updates
2380 -------------------------------------
2381
2382  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
2383    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
2384    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
2385
2386 Other changes
2387 -------------
2388
2389  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
2390    server takes more time.
2391  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
2392    doesn't work.
2393
2394 Regressions / known problems
2395 ----------------------------
2396
2397  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
2398    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
2399    and Debian bug #762103).
2400  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
2401    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
2402  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
2403    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
2404    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
2405
2406 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
2407
2408  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
2409
2410 How to report bugs
2411 ------------------
2412
2413 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
2414
2415 About Debian
2416 ============
2417
2418 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
2419 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
2420 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
2421 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
2422 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
2423 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
2424 operating system.
2425
2426 Contact Information
2427 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
2428 mail to press@debian.org.
2429
2430  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
2431 </pre>
2432
2433       </div>
2434       <div class="tags">
2435
2436
2437         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>.
2438
2439
2440       </div>
2441     </div>
2442     <div class="padding"></div>
2443
2444     <div class="entry">
2445       <div class="title">
2446         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
2447       </div>
2448       <div class="date">
2449         23rd October 2014
2450       </div>
2451       <div class="body">
2452         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
2453 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
2454 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
2455 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
2456 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
2457 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
2458 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
2459 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
2460 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
2461 live.</p>
2462
2463 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
2464 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
2465 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
2466 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
2467 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
2468 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
2469 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
2470 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
2471
2472       </div>
2473       <div class="tags">
2474
2475
2476         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>.
2477
2478
2479       </div>
2480     </div>
2481     <div class="padding"></div>
2482
2483     <div class="entry">
2484       <div class="title">
2485         <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>
2486       </div>
2487       <div class="date">
2488         22nd October 2014
2489       </div>
2490       <div class="body">
2491         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
2492 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
2493 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
2494 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
2495 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
2496 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
2497 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
2498 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
2499 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
2500 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
2501 lists I recently took over:</p>
2502
2503 <p><blockquote><pre>
2504 % time listadmin xiph
2505 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2506 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2507
2508 real    0m1.709s
2509 user    0m0.232s
2510 sys     0m0.012s
2511 %
2512 </pre></blockquote></p>
2513
2514 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
2515 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
2516 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
2517 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
2518 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
2519 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
2520 program.</p>
2521
2522 <p>If you install
2523 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
2524 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
2525 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
2526
2527 <p><blockquote><pre>
2528 username username@example.org
2529 spamlevel 23
2530 default discard
2531 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
2532
2533 password secret
2534 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
2535 mailman-list@lists.example.com
2536
2537 password hidden
2538 other-list@otherserver.example.org
2539 </pre></blockquote></p>
2540
2541 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
2542 learn the details.</p>
2543
2544 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
2545 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
2546 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
2547 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
2548
2549 <p><blockquote><pre>
2550 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
2551 </pre></blockquote></p>
2552
2553 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
2554 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
2555 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
2556 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
2557 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
2558 email.</p>
2559
2560 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
2561 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
2562 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
2563 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
2564 software.</p>
2565
2566 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2567 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2568 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2569
2570 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
2571 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
2572 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
2573 sure why.</p>
2574
2575       </div>
2576       <div class="tags">
2577
2578
2579         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2580
2581
2582       </div>
2583     </div>
2584     <div class="padding"></div>
2585
2586     <div class="entry">
2587       <div class="title">
2588         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
2589       </div>
2590       <div class="date">
2591         17th October 2014
2592       </div>
2593       <div class="body">
2594         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
2595 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
2596 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
2597 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
2598 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
2599 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
2600 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
2601
2602 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
2603 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
2604 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
2605 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
2606 of this story.)</p>
2607
2608 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
2609 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
2610 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
2611 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
2612 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
2613 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
2614 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
2615 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
2616 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
2617 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
2618
2619 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
2620 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
2621 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
2622 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
2623
2624 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
2625 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
2626
2627 <p><blockquote><pre>
2628 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
2629 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
2630 </pre></blockquote></p>
2631
2632 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
2633 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
2634 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
2635 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
2636 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
2637 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
2638 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
2639 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
2640
2641 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
2642 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
2643
2644 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
2645 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
2646 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
2647 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
2648 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
2649
2650 <p><blockquote><pre>
2651 Task: isenkram-packages
2652 Section: hardware
2653 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2654  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2655  proposed.
2656 Test-new-install: show show
2657 Relevance: 8
2658 Packages: for-current-hardware
2659
2660 Task: isenkram-firmware
2661 Section: hardware
2662 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2663  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
2664  packages are proposed.
2665 Test-new-install: mark show
2666 Relevance: 8
2667 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
2668 </pre></blockquote></p>
2669
2670 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
2671 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
2672 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
2673 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
2674 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
2675
2676 <p><blockquote><pre>
2677 #!/bin/sh
2678 #
2679 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
2680 export PATH
2681 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2682 </pre></blockquote></p>
2683
2684 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
2685 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
2686
2687 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
2688 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
2689 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
2690 install.</p>
2691
2692 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
2693 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
2694 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
2695
2696       </div>
2697       <div class="tags">
2698
2699
2700         Tags: <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>.
2701
2702
2703       </div>
2704     </div>
2705     <div class="padding"></div>
2706
2707     <div class="entry">
2708       <div class="title">
2709         <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>
2710       </div>
2711       <div class="date">
2712          4th October 2014
2713       </div>
2714       <div class="body">
2715         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
2716 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
2717 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
2718 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
2719
2720 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
2721
2722 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
2723 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
2724 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
2725
2726       </div>
2727       <div class="tags">
2728
2729
2730         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2731
2732
2733       </div>
2734     </div>
2735     <div class="padding"></div>
2736
2737     <div class="entry">
2738       <div class="title">
2739         <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>
2740       </div>
2741       <div class="date">
2742          4th October 2014
2743       </div>
2744       <div class="body">
2745         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
2746 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
2747 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
2748 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
2749 Dibb.</p>
2750
2751 <p>I just wrapped up
2752 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
2753 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
2754 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
2755 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
2756 0.17.</p>
2757
2758 <ul>
2759
2760  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
2761  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
2762    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
2763  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
2764  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
2765  <li>Fix include orders</li>
2766  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
2767  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
2768  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
2769    the palette size is the same.</li>
2770  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
2771  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
2772  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
2773  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
2774    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
2775
2776 </ul>
2777
2778 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
2779 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
2780 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
2781
2782       </div>
2783       <div class="tags">
2784
2785
2786         Tags: <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>.
2787
2788
2789       </div>
2790     </div>
2791     <div class="padding"></div>
2792
2793     <div class="entry">
2794       <div class="title">
2795         <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>
2796       </div>
2797       <div class="date">
2798         26th September 2014
2799       </div>
2800       <div class="body">
2801         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2802 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
2803 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
2804 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
2805 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
2806 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
2807 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
2808 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
2809 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
2810 future.  The
2811 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
2812 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
2813 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
2814 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
2815 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
2816
2817 <p>First, download the test ISO via
2818 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
2819 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
2820 or rsync (use
2821 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
2822 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
2823 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
2824 install with some tweaking.</p>
2825
2826 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
2827 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
2828
2829 <p><blockquote><pre>
2830 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
2831 </pre></blockquote></p>
2832
2833 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
2834 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
2835 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
2836 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
2837
2838 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
2839 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
2840 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
2841 your need.</p>
2842
2843 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
2844 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
2845 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
2846 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
2847 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
2848 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
2849 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
2850 days.</p>
2851
2852 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
2853 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
2854 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
2855 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
2856 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
2857 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
2858 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
2859 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
2860 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
2861
2862 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
2863 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
2864 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
2865
2866       </div>
2867       <div class="tags">
2868
2869
2870         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>.
2871
2872
2873       </div>
2874     </div>
2875     <div class="padding"></div>
2876
2877     <div class="entry">
2878       <div class="title">
2879         <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>
2880       </div>
2881       <div class="date">
2882         25th September 2014
2883       </div>
2884       <div class="body">
2885         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
2886 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
2887 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
2888 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
2889 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
2890 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
2891 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
2892 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
2893 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
2894 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
2895 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
2896 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
2897 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
2898
2899 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
2900 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
2901 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
2902 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
2903 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
2904 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
2905 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
2906 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
2907 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
2908 list</a>. :)</p>
2909
2910       </div>
2911       <div class="tags">
2912
2913
2914         Tags: <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>.
2915
2916
2917       </div>
2918     </div>
2919     <div class="padding"></div>
2920
2921     <div class="entry">
2922       <div class="title">
2923         <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>
2924       </div>
2925       <div class="date">
2926         16th September 2014
2927       </div>
2928       <div class="body">
2929         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
2930 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
2931 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
2932 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
2933 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
2934 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
2935 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
2936 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
2937 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
2938 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
2939 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
2940 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
2941 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
2942 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
2943
2944 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
2945 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
2946 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
2947 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
2948 depend on the small and clever package
2949 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
2950 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
2951 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
2952 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
2953 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
2954 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
2955 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
2956 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
2957 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
2958 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
2959 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
2960
2961 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
2962 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
2963 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
2964 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
2965 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
2966 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
2967 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
2968 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
2969 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
2970 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
2971 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
2972 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
2973 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
2974 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
2975 dialog.</p>
2976
2977 <p><table>
2978
2979 <tr>
2980 <th>Machine/setup</th>
2981 <th>Original tasksel</th>
2982 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
2983 <th>Reduction</th>
2984 </tr>
2985
2986 <tr>
2987 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
2988 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
2989 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
2990 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
2991 </tr>
2992
2993 <tr>
2994 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
2995 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
2996 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
2997 <td>23 min 40%</td>
2998 </tr>
2999
3000 <tr>
3001 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3002 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3003 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3004 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3005 </tr>
3006
3007 <tr>
3008 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3009 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3010 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3011 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3012 </tr>
3013
3014 <tr>
3015 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3016 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3017 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3018 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3019 </tr>
3020
3021 </table></p>
3022
3023 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3024 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3025 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3026 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3027 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3028 installed.</p>
3029
3030 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3031 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3032 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3033 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3034 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3035 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3036 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3037 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3038 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3039 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3040 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3041 for the entire installation.</p>
3042
3043 <p>I've implemented this in the
3044 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3045 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3046 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3047 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3048 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3049
3050 <p><blockquote><pre>
3051 #!/bin/sh
3052 set -e
3053 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3054 info() {
3055     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3056 }
3057 error() {
3058     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3059 }
3060 override_install() {
3061     apt-install eatmydata || true
3062     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3063         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3064             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3065             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3066             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3067                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3068                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3069                     > /target$file.edu
3070                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3071                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3072                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3073                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3074             else
3075                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3076             fi
3077         done
3078     else
3079         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3080     fi
3081 }
3082
3083 override_install
3084 </pre></blockquote></p>
3085
3086 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3087 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3088
3089 <p><blockquote><pre>
3090 #! /bin/sh -e
3091 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3092 error() {
3093     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3094 }
3095 remove_install_override() {
3096     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3097         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3098         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3099             rm /target$file
3100             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3101                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3102             rm /target$file.edu
3103         else
3104             error "Missing divert for $file."
3105         fi
3106     done
3107     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3108 }
3109
3110 remove_install_override
3111 </pre></blockquote></p>
3112
3113 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3114 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3115 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3116
3117 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3118 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3119 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3120 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3121 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3122 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3123 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3124 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3125 everyone.</p>
3126
3127 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3128 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3129 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3130 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3131
3132 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3133 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3134 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3135 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3136 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3137
3138 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3139 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3140 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3141 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3142 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3143
3144       </div>
3145       <div class="tags">
3146
3147
3148         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>.
3149
3150
3151       </div>
3152     </div>
3153     <div class="padding"></div>
3154
3155     <div class="entry">
3156       <div class="title">
3157         <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>
3158       </div>
3159       <div class="date">
3160         10th September 2014
3161       </div>
3162       <div class="body">
3163         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3164 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3165 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3166 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3167 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3168 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3169 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3170 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3171 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3172 those problems are gone now.</p>
3173
3174 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3175 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3176 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3177 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3178 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3179
3180 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3181 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3182 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3183
3184 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3185 line:</p>
3186
3187 <p><blockquote><pre>
3188 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3189 </pre></blockquote></p>
3190
3191 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3192 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3193 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3194 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3195
3196 <p><blockquote><pre>
3197 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3198 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3199 %
3200 </pre></blockquote></p>
3201
3202 <p>Now if only
3203 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3204 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3205 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3206 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3207 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3208 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3209 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3210 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3211 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3212
3213       </div>
3214       <div class="tags">
3215
3216
3217         Tags: <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>.
3218
3219
3220       </div>
3221     </div>
3222     <div class="padding"></div>
3223
3224     <div class="entry">
3225       <div class="title">
3226         <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>
3227       </div>
3228       <div class="date">
3229         25th August 2014
3230       </div>
3231       <div class="body">
3232         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
3233 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
3234 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
3235 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
3236 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
3237 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
3238 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
3239 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
3240 am not sure.
3241 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
3242 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
3243 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
3244 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
3245 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
3246 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
3247 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
3248 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
3249 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
3250 licenses are.</p>
3251
3252 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
3253 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
3254 end user</a>
3255 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
3256 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
3257
3258 <p><blockquote>
3259 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
3260 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
3261
3262 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
3263 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
3264 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
3265 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
3266 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
3267 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
3268 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
3269 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
3270 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
3271 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
3272 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
3273 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
3274 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
3275 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
3276 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
3277 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
3278 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
3279 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
3280
3281 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
3282 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
3283
3284 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
3285 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
3286 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
3287 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
3288 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
3289 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
3290 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
3291 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3292 </blockquote></p>
3293
3294 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
3295 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
3296
3297 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
3298 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
3299
3300 <p><blockquote>
3301
3302 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
3303 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
3304 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
3305 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
3306 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
3307 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
3308 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
3309 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
3310 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
3311 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
3312 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
3313 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3314
3315 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
3316 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
3317 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
3318 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
3319 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
3320 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
3321 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
3322 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
3323 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
3324 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
3325 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
3326 additional details.</p>
3327
3328 </blockquote></p>
3329
3330 <p>Some free software like
3331 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
3332 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
3333 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
3334 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
3335
3336       </div>
3337       <div class="tags">
3338
3339
3340         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3341
3342
3343       </div>
3344     </div>
3345     <div class="padding"></div>
3346
3347     <div class="entry">
3348       <div class="title">
3349         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
3350       </div>
3351       <div class="date">
3352         31st July 2014
3353       </div>
3354       <div class="body">
3355         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
3356 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3357 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
3358 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
3359 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
3360 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
3361
3362 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3363
3364 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
3365 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
3366 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
3367 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
3368 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
3369 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
3370 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
3371 works with Windows . :-(</p>
3372
3373 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
3374 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
3375 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
3376 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
3377 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
3378 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
3379
3380 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3381 project?</strong></p>
3382
3383 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
3384 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
3385 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
3386 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
3387 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
3388 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
3389 with this job.</p>
3390
3391 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3392 Edu?</strong></p>
3393
3394 <p>The independence.</p>
3395
3396 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
3397 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
3398 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
3399
3400 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
3401 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
3402 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
3403 working reliable. </p>
3404
3405 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
3406 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
3407 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
3408 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
3409 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
3410 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
3411 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
3412 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
3413
3414 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3415 Edu?</strong></p>
3416
3417 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
3418 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
3419 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
3420
3421 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3422
3423 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
3424 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
3425
3426 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3427 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3428
3429 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
3430 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
3431 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
3432 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
3433 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
3434 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
3435 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
3436
3437       </div>
3438       <div class="tags">
3439
3440
3441         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>.
3442
3443
3444       </div>
3445     </div>
3446     <div class="padding"></div>
3447
3448     <div class="entry">
3449       <div class="title">
3450         <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>
3451       </div>
3452       <div class="date">
3453         23rd July 2014
3454       </div>
3455       <div class="body">
3456         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
3457 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3458 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3459 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
3460 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
3461 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
3462 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
3463 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
3464 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
3465 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
3466 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
3467 the translation show this very well:</p>
3468
3469 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
3470
3471 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
3472 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
3473 project pages and the
3474 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
3475 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3476 and HTML version available in the
3477 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
3478 directory</a>.</p>
3479
3480 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
3481 you find any.</p>
3482
3483       </div>
3484       <div class="tags">
3485
3486
3487         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>.
3488
3489
3490       </div>
3491     </div>
3492     <div class="padding"></div>
3493
3494     <div class="entry">
3495       <div class="title">
3496         <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>
3497       </div>
3498       <div class="date">
3499         17th June 2014
3500       </div>
3501       <div class="body">
3502         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3503 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
3504 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
3505 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
3506 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
3507
3508 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
3509 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
3510 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
3511 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
3512 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
3513 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
3514 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
3515 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
3516 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
3517 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
3518 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
3519 goals.</p>
3520
3521 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
3522 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
3523 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
3524 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
3525 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
3526 chapters together into one large web page (aka
3527 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
3528 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
3529 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
3530 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
3531 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
3532 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
3533 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
3534 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
3535 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
3536 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
3537 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
3538 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
3539 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
3540 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
3541 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
3542 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
3543 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
3544 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
3545
3546 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
3547 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
3548 track the English original.  For this we use the
3549 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
3550 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
3551 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
3552 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
3553 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
3554 files), which the translations update with the native language
3555 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
3556 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
3557 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
3558 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
3559 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
3560 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
3561 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
3562 of the documentation.</p>
3563
3564 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
3565 recommend using
3566 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
3567 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
3568 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
3569 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
3570 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
3571 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
3572 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
3573 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
3574
3575 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
3576 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
3577 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
3578 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
3579 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
3580 translated images by storing translated versions in
3581 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
3582 package maintainers know more.</p>
3583
3584 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
3585 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
3586 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
3587 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
3588 PDF version</a> or the
3589 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
3590 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
3591 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
3592
3593 <p>To learn more, check out
3594 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
3595 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
3596 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
3597 manual on the wiki</a> and
3598 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
3599 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
3600
3601       </div>
3602       <div class="tags">
3603
3604
3605         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>.
3606
3607
3608       </div>
3609     </div>
3610     <div class="padding"></div>
3611
3612     <div class="entry">
3613       <div class="title">
3614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
3615       </div>
3616       <div class="date">
3617         29th May 2014
3618       </div>
3619       <div class="body">
3620         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
3621 in my car, connected to
3622 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
3623 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
3624 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
3625 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
3626 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
3627 such car computer.</p>
3628
3629 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
3630
3631 <ul>
3632
3633  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
3634
3635  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
3636    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
3637    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
3638    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
3639    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
3640
3641  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
3642    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
3643    route.</li>
3644
3645  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
3646
3647  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
3648    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
3649    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
3650    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
3651    connection do not work.</li>
3652
3653  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
3654    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
3655
3656  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
3657    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
3658
3659  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
3660    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
3661
3662 </ul>
3663
3664 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
3665 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
3666
3667       </div>
3668       <div class="tags">
3669
3670
3671         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3672
3673
3674       </div>
3675     </div>
3676     <div class="padding"></div>
3677
3678     <div class="entry">
3679       <div class="title">
3680         <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>
3681       </div>
3682       <div class="date">
3683         29th April 2014
3684       </div>
3685       <div class="body">
3686         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
3687 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
3688 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
3689 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
3690 newer AVM2 format - see
3691 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
3692 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
3693 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
3694 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
3695 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
3696 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
3697 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
3698 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
3699 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
3700 sites do not work yet.</p>
3701
3702 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
3703 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
3704 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
3705 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
3706 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
3707 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
3708 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
3709 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
3710 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
3711 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
3712 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
3713
3714 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
3715 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
3716 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
3717 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
3718 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
3719 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
3720 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
3721
3722 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
3723 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
3724 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
3725 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
3726 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
3727
3728       </div>
3729       <div class="tags">
3730
3731
3732         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>.
3733
3734
3735       </div>
3736     </div>
3737     <div class="padding"></div>
3738
3739     <div class="entry">
3740       <div class="title">
3741         <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>
3742       </div>
3743       <div class="date">
3744         23rd April 2014
3745       </div>
3746       <div class="body">
3747         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
3748 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
3749 So I implemented one, using
3750 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
3751 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
3752 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
3753 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
3754 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
3755 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
3756
3757 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
3758 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
3759 packages to install.  The first part is in
3760 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
3761 this:</p>
3762
3763 <p><blockquote><pre>
3764 Task: isenkram
3765 Section: hardware
3766 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3767  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3768  proposed.
3769 Test-new-install: mark show
3770 Relevance: 8
3771 Packages: for-current-hardware
3772 </pre></blockquote></p>
3773
3774 <p>The second part is in
3775 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
3776 this:</p>
3777
3778 <p><blockquote><pre>
3779 #!/bin/sh
3780 #
3781 (
3782     isenkram-lookup
3783     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3784 ) | sort -u
3785 </pre></blockquote></p>
3786
3787 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3788 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3789 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3790 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3791 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3792 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3793
3794 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3795 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3796 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3797 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3798 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3799 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3800 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3801 the python-apt code (bug
3802 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
3803 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
3804 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
3805 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
3806 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
3807 unstable today.</p>
3808
3809 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
3810 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
3811 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
3812 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
3813 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
3814 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
3815 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
3816 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
3817 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
3818
3819 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
3820 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
3821 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
3822 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
3823 package.  See also
3824 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
3825 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
3826 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
3827 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
3828
3829       </div>
3830       <div class="tags">
3831
3832
3833         Tags: <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>.
3834
3835
3836       </div>
3837     </div>
3838     <div class="padding"></div>
3839
3840     <div class="entry">
3841       <div class="title">
3842         <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>
3843       </div>
3844       <div class="date">
3845         15th April 2014
3846       </div>
3847       <div class="body">
3848         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3849 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
3850 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
3851 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
3852 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
3853 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
3854
3855 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
3856 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
3857 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
3858 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
3859 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
3860 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
3861 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
3862
3863 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
3864 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
3865 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
3866 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
3867 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
3868 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
3869 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
3870 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
3871 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
3872 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
3873 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
3874 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
3875
3876 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
3877 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
3878 become root:</p>
3879
3880 <p><pre>
3881 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3882   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3883   u-boot-tools
3884 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3885   freedom-maker
3886 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3887 </pre></p>
3888
3889 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3890 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
3891 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
3892 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
3893 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
3894 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
3895 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
3896 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
3897
3898 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3899 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3900 the preseed values:</p>
3901
3902 <p><pre>
3903 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3904 </pre></p>
3905
3906 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
3907 it still work.</p>
3908
3909 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
3910 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
3911 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
3912 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
3913 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
3914 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
3915 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
3916
3917 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3918 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3919 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3920 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3921 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3922 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3923
3924       </div>
3925       <div class="tags">
3926
3927
3928         Tags: <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>.
3929
3930
3931       </div>
3932     </div>
3933     <div class="padding"></div>
3934
3935     <div class="entry">
3936       <div class="title">
3937         <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>
3938       </div>
3939       <div class="date">
3940          9th April 2014
3941       </div>
3942       <div class="body">
3943         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
3944 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
3945 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
3946 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
3947 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
3948 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
3949 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
3950 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
3951 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
3952 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
3953 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
3954 have looked at a system called
3955 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
3956 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
3957
3958 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
3959 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
3960 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
3961 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
3962 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
3963 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
3964 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
3965 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
3966 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
3967 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
3968 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
3969 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
3970 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
3971
3972 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
3973 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
3974 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
3975 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
3976 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
3977 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
3978 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
3979 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
3980 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
3981 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
3982 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
3983 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
3984 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
3985 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
3986 account.</p>
3987
3988 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
3989 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
3990 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
3991 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
3992 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
3993 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
3994 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
3995
3996 <p><blockquote><pre>
3997 [s3c]
3998 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3999 backend-login: API-login
4000 backend-password: API-password
4001 fs-passphrase: local-password
4002 </pre></blockquote></p>
4003
4004 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
4005 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
4006 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
4007 details and password to create it:</p>
4008
4009 <p><blockquote><pre>
4010 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
4011 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4012   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4013 Enter backend login:
4014 Enter backend password:
4015 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
4016 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
4017 Enter encryption password:
4018 Confirm encryption password:
4019 Generating random encryption key...
4020 Creating metadata tables...
4021 Dumping metadata...
4022 ..objects..
4023 ..blocks..
4024 ..inodes..
4025 ..inode_blocks..
4026 ..symlink_targets..
4027 ..names..
4028 ..contents..
4029 ..ext_attributes..
4030 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4031 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4032 # </pre></blockquote></p>
4033
4034 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4035
4036 <p><blockquote><pre>
4037 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4038   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4039 Using 4 upload threads.
4040 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4041 Reading metadata...
4042 ..objects..
4043 ..blocks..
4044 ..inodes..
4045 ..inode_blocks..
4046 ..symlink_targets..
4047 ..names..
4048 ..contents..
4049 ..ext_attributes..
4050 Mounting filesystem...
4051 # df -h /s3ql
4052 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4053 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
4054 #
4055 </pre></blockquote></p>
4056
4057 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
4058 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4059 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4060 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4061 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4062 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4063
4064 <p><blockquote><pre>
4065 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
4066 #
4067 </pre></blockquote></p>
4068
4069 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4070 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
4071 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4072 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
4073 file system:</p>
4074
4075 <p><blockquote><pre>
4076 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4077 Using cached metadata.
4078 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4079 Checking DB integrity...
4080 Creating temporary extra indices...
4081 Checking lost+found...
4082 Checking cached objects...
4083 Checking names (refcounts)...
4084 Checking contents (names)...
4085 Checking contents (inodes)...
4086 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4087 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4088 Checking objects (backend)...
4089 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
4090 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
4091 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
4092 Checking objects (sizes)...
4093 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4094 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4095 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4096 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4097 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4098 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4099 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4100 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4101 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4102 Checking directory reachability...
4103 Checking unix conventions...
4104 Checking referential integrity...
4105 Dropping temporary indices...
4106 Backing up old metadata...
4107 Dumping metadata...
4108 ..objects..
4109 ..blocks..
4110 ..inodes..
4111 ..inode_blocks..
4112 ..symlink_targets..
4113 ..names..
4114 ..contents..
4115 ..ext_attributes..
4116 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4117 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4118 #
4119 </pre></blockquote></p>
4120
4121 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4122 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
4123 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4124 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
4125 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4126 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4127 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
4128 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
4129 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4130 working set.</p>
4131
4132 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4133 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4134 busy:</p>
4135
4136 <p><blockquote><pre>
4137 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4138   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4139 Using 8 upload threads.
4140 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4141 #
4142 </pre></blockquote></p>
4143
4144 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4145 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4146 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4147 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4148 s3qlctrl:
4149
4150 <p><blockquote><pre>
4151 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4152 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4153 #
4154 </pre></blockquote></p>
4155
4156 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4157 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4158 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4159 a report:</p>
4160
4161 <p><blockquote><pre>
4162 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4163 Directory entries:    9141
4164 Inodes:               9143
4165 Data blocks:          8851
4166 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4167 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4168 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4169 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4170 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4171 #
4172 </pre></blockquote></p>
4173
4174 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4175 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4176 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4177 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4178 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4179 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4180 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4181 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4182 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4183 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4184 best.</p>
4185
4186 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4187 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4188 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4189 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4190 poster is titled
4191 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4192 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4193 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4194 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4195 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4196
4197 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4198 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4199 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4200 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4202 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4203 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4204 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4205
4206 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4207 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4208 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4209 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4210 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4211 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4212 only read from it.</p>
4213
4214 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4215 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4216 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4217
4218       </div>
4219       <div class="tags">
4220
4221
4222         Tags: <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>.
4223
4224
4225       </div>
4226     </div>
4227     <div class="padding"></div>
4228
4229     <div class="entry">
4230       <div class="title">
4231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
4232       </div>
4233       <div class="date">
4234          1st April 2014
4235       </div>
4236       <div class="body">
4237         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
4238 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
4239 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
4240 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
4241 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
4242 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
4243 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
4244 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
4245 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
4246 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
4247 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
4248 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
4249 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
4250
4251 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
4252 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
4253 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
4254 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
4255 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
4256 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
4257 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
4258 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
4259 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
4260 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
4261 Linux.</p>
4262
4263 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
4264 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
4265 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
4266 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
4267 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
4268 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
4269 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
4270 Windows before metro).</p>
4271
4272 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
4273 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
4274 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
4275 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
4276 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
4277 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
4278 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
4279 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
4280 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
4281 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
4282 old Windows binaries, check it out by
4283 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
4284 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
4285 image.</p>
4286
4287       </div>
4288       <div class="tags">
4289
4290
4291         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>.
4292
4293
4294       </div>
4295     </div>
4296     <div class="padding"></div>
4297
4298     <div class="entry">
4299       <div class="title">
4300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
4301       </div>
4302       <div class="date">
4303         30th March 2014
4304       </div>
4305       <div class="body">
4306         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4307 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
4308 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
4309 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
4310 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
4311
4312 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4313
4314 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
4315 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
4316 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
4317 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
4318 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
4319
4320 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
4321 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
4322 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
4323
4324 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
4325 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
4326 hunger.</p>
4327
4328 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4329 project?</strong></p>
4330
4331 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
4332 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
4333 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
4334 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
4335 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
4336 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
4337 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
4338 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
4339 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
4340 running.  I just loved it.</p>
4341
4342 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4343 Edu?</strong></p>
4344
4345 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
4346 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
4347 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
4348 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
4349 be made of steel.</p>
4350
4351 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4352 Edu?</strong></p>
4353
4354 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
4355
4356 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
4357 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
4358 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
4359 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
4360 or dropped.</p>
4361
4362 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
4363 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
4364 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
4365 discourage many people too.</p>
4366
4367 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4368
4369 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
4370 Virtualbox.</p>
4371
4372
4373 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4374 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4375
4376 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
4377 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
4378 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
4379 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
4380 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
4381 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
4382 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
4383 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
4384 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
4385
4386       </div>
4387       <div class="tags">
4388
4389
4390         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>.
4391
4392
4393       </div>
4394     </div>
4395     <div class="padding"></div>
4396
4397     <div class="entry">
4398       <div class="title">
4399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
4400       </div>
4401       <div class="date">
4402         25th March 2014
4403       </div>
4404       <div class="body">
4405         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
4406 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
4407 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
4408 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
4409 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
4410 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
4411 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
4412 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
4413 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
4414
4415 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
4416 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
4417 looked a given way.  Such
4418 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
4419 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
4420 called a
4421 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4422 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
4423 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
4424 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
4425 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
4426 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
4427 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
4428 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
4429 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
4430 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
4431 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
4432 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
4433 There are several commercial services around providing such
4434 timestamping.  A quick search for
4435 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
4436 service</a>" pointed me to at least
4437 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
4438 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
4439 Vadis</a>,
4440 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
4441 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
4442 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
4443 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
4444
4445 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
4446 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
4447 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
4448 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
4449 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
4450 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
4451 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
4452 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
4453 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
4454 Greifswald.</p>
4455
4456 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
4457 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
4458 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
4459 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
4460 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
4461
4462 <p><blockquote><pre>
4463 #!/bin/sh
4464 set -e
4465 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
4466 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
4467 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
4468 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
4469 cafile=chain.txt
4470 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
4471     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
4472 fi
4473 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
4474     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
4475 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
4476 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
4477 base64 < "$resfile"
4478 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
4479 </pre></blockquote></p>
4480
4481 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
4482 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
4483 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
4484 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
4485 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
4486 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
4487 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
4488 changed.</p>
4489
4490 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
4491 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
4492 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
4493 to set up?</p>
4494
4495       </div>
4496       <div class="tags">
4497
4498
4499         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>.
4500
4501
4502       </div>
4503     </div>
4504     <div class="padding"></div>
4505
4506     <div class="entry">
4507       <div class="title">
4508         <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>
4509       </div>
4510       <div class="date">
4511         21st March 2014
4512       </div>
4513       <div class="body">
4514         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
4515 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
4516 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
4517 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
4518 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
4519 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
4520 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
4521
4522 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
4523 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
4524 tried using
4525 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
4526 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
4527 and program
4528 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
4529 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
4530 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
4531 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
4532 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
4533 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
4534 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
4535 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
4536 this method.</p>
4537
4538 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
4539 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
4540 problem is
4541 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
4542 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
4543 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
4544 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
4545 DVD structures, as the python library
4546 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
4547 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
4548 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
4549 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
4550 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
4551 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
4552
4553 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
4554 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
4555
4556       </div>
4557       <div class="tags">
4558
4559
4560         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>.
4561
4562
4563       </div>
4564     </div>
4565     <div class="padding"></div>
4566
4567     <div class="entry">
4568       <div class="title">
4569         <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>
4570       </div>
4571       <div class="date">
4572         14th March 2014
4573       </div>
4574       <div class="body">
4575         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4576 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4577 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4578 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4579 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4580 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4581 release (0.2).</p>
4582
4583 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4584 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4585 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4586 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4587 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4588 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4589 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4590 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4591 and build using
4592 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4593 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4594
4595 <pre>
4596 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4597   freedom-maker
4598 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4599   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4600   u-boot-tools
4601 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4602 </pre>
4603
4604 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4605 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4606 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4607 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4608 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4609 kpartx call.</p>
4610
4611 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4612 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4613 the preseed values:</p>
4614
4615 <pre>
4616 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4617 </pre>
4618
4619 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4620 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4621 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4622 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4623 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4624 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4625
4626 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4627 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4628 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4629 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4630 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4631 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4632
4633       </div>
4634       <div class="tags">
4635
4636
4637         Tags: <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>.
4638
4639
4640       </div>
4641     </div>
4642     <div class="padding"></div>
4643
4644     <div class="entry">
4645       <div class="title">
4646         <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>
4647       </div>
4648       <div class="date">
4649         12th March 2014
4650       </div>
4651       <div class="body">
4652         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
4653 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
4654 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
4655 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
4656 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
4657 document this better when one of the customers of
4658 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
4659 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
4660 get this working are the following:</p>
4661
4662 <p><ol>
4663
4664 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
4665 example host here.</li>
4666
4667 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
4668 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
4669
4670 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
4671 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
4672
4673 </ol></p>
4674
4675 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
4676 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
4677 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
4678 started).</p>
4679
4680 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
4681 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
4682
4683 <p><blockquote><pre>
4684 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
4685 Export list for nas-server:
4686 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
4687 root@tjener:~#
4688 </pre></blockquote></p>
4689
4690 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
4691 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
4692 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
4693 NFS access.</p>
4694
4695 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
4696 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
4697 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
4698
4699 <p><blockquote><pre>
4700 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4701 </pre></blockquote></p>
4702
4703 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
4704 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
4705 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
4706 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
4707
4708 <p><blockquote><pre>
4709 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4710 objectClass: automount
4711 cn: nas-server
4712 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4713
4714 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4715 objectClass: top
4716 objectClass: automountMap
4717 ou: auto.nas-server
4718
4719 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4720 objectClass: automount
4721 cn: /
4722 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
4723 </pre></blockquote></p>
4724
4725 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
4726 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
4727 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
4728
4729 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
4730 the storage server directly by just visiting the
4731 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
4732 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
4733
4734       </div>
4735       <div class="tags">
4736
4737
4738         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>.
4739
4740
4741       </div>
4742     </div>
4743     <div class="padding"></div>
4744
4745     <div class="entry">
4746       <div class="title">
4747         <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>
4748       </div>
4749       <div class="date">
4750         22nd February 2014
4751       </div>
4752       <div class="body">
4753         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4754 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4755 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4756 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4757 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4758 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4759 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4760 proper home since then.</p>
4761
4762 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4763 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4764 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4765 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4766 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4767
4768 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4769 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4770 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4771 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4772 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4773 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4774 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4775 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4776 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4777
4778       </div>
4779       <div class="tags">
4780
4781
4782         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4783
4784
4785       </div>
4786     </div>
4787     <div class="padding"></div>
4788
4789     <div class="entry">
4790       <div class="title">
4791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4792       </div>
4793       <div class="date">
4794          3rd February 2014
4795       </div>
4796       <div class="body">
4797         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4798 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4799 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4800 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4801 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4802 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4803 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4804 <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>,
4805 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4806
4807 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4808 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4809 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4810 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4811 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4812 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4813
4814 <p><blockquote><pre>
4815 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4816 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4817 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4818 dhclient /dev/eth0
4819 </pre></blockquote></p>
4820
4821 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4822 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4823 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4824
4825 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4826 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4827 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4828 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4829 side.</p>
4830
4831 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4832 stuff:</p>
4833
4834 <p><blockquote><pre>
4835 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4836 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4837 EOF
4838 apt-get update
4839 apt-get dist-upgrade
4840 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4841     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4842 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4843 </pre></blockquote></p>
4844
4845 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4846 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4847 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4848 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4849 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4850 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4851 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4852 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4853 ssh instead.
4854
4855 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4856 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4857 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4858 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4859 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4860 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4861
4862 <p><blockquote><pre>
4863 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4864 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4865 EOF
4866 </pre></blockquote></p>
4867
4868 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4869 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4870 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4871 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4872
4873 <p><blockquote><pre>
4874 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4875 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4876 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4877 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4878 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4879 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4880 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4881 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4882 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4883 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4884 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4885 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4886 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4887 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4888 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4889 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4890 #
4891 </pre></blockquote></p>
4892
4893 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4894 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4895 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4896 command line stuff.<p>
4897
4898       </div>
4899       <div class="tags">
4900
4901
4902         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>.
4903
4904
4905       </div>
4906     </div>
4907     <div class="padding"></div>
4908
4909     <div class="entry">
4910       <div class="title">
4911         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
4912       </div>
4913       <div class="date">
4914         29th January 2014
4915       </div>
4916       <div class="body">
4917         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
4918 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
4919 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
4920 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
4921 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
4922 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
4923 investigated in
4924 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
4925 from December 2013, in the article
4926 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
4927 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
4928 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
4929 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
4930 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
4931 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
4932 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
4933 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
4934
4935 <p><blockquote>
4936 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
4937 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
4938 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
4939 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
4940 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
4941 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
4942 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
4943 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
4944 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
4945 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
4946 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
4947 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
4948
4949 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
4950 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
4951 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
4952 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
4953 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
4954 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
4955 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
4956 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
4957 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
4958 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
4959 </blockquote><p>
4960
4961 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
4962 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
4963 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
4964 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
4965 summarized like this:</p>
4966
4967 <p><blockquote>
4968 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
4969 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
4970 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
4971 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
4972 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
4973 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
4974 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
4975 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
4976 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
4977 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
4978 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
4979 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
4980 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
4981 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
4982 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
4983 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
4984 </blockquote></p>
4985
4986 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
4987 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
4988 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
4989 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
4990
4991 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4992 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4993 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4994
4995       </div>
4996       <div class="tags">
4997
4998
4999         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>.
5000
5001
5002       </div>
5003     </div>
5004     <div class="padding"></div>
5005
5006     <div class="entry">
5007       <div class="title">
5008         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
5009       </div>
5010       <div class="date">
5011         14th January 2014
5012       </div>
5013       <div class="body">
5014         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
5015 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5016 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5017 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5018 the source.  The company behind it provide
5019 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5020 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5021 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
5022 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
5023 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
5024 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
5025 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
5026 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
5027 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
5028 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
5029 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
5030 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
5031 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
5032 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
5033 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
5034 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
5035 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
5036 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
5037 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
5038
5039 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
5040
5041 <ul>
5042
5043   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
5044   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
5045   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
5046
5047 </ul>
5048
5049 <p>You can
5050 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5051 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5052 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5053 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5054 include a test suite check.</p>
5055
5056       </div>
5057       <div class="tags">
5058
5059
5060         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>.
5061
5062
5063       </div>
5064     </div>
5065     <div class="padding"></div>
5066
5067     <div class="entry">
5068       <div class="title">
5069         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
5070       </div>
5071       <div class="date">
5072         25th December 2013
5073       </div>
5074       <div class="body">
5075         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5076 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
5077 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
5078 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
5079 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
5080 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
5081 George</a>.</p>
5082
5083 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
5084
5085 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5086
5087 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
5088 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
5089 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
5090 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
5091 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
5092 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
5093
5094 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
5095 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
5096 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
5097 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
5098 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
5099 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
5100 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
5101 to help building another school's informational education concept from
5102 scratch.</p>
5103
5104 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
5105 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
5106 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
5107
5108 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
5109 and cycling.</p>
5110
5111 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5112 project?</strong></p>
5113
5114 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
5115 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
5116 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
5117 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
5118 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
5119 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
5120
5121 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
5122 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
5123 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
5124 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
5125 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
5126 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
5127 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
5128 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
5129 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
5130
5131 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
5132 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
5133 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
5134 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
5135
5136 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5137 Edu?</strong></p>
5138
5139 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
5140 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
5141 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
5142 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
5143 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
5144 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
5145 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
5146 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
5147 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
5148 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
5149 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
5150 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
5151 that it rocks!</p>
5152
5153 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
5154 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
5155 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
5156 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
5157 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
5158 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
5159 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
5160
5161 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5162 Edu?</strong></p>
5163
5164 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
5165 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
5166 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
5167 can list a few points about that:</p>
5168
5169 <ul>
5170
5171  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
5172  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
5173  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
5174
5175 </ul>
5176
5177 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
5178
5179 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5180
5181 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
5182 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
5183 year.</p>
5184
5185 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
5186 run text tools. I use
5187 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
5188 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
5189 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
5190 based full-featured student management software with the two),
5191 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
5192 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
5193 coloured world called the WWW, I use
5194 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
5195 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
5196 e-mail.</p>
5197
5198 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
5199 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
5200 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
5201 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
5202 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
5203 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
5204 Facebook now ;).</p>
5205
5206 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5207 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5208
5209 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
5210 side is what I have experienced.</p>
5211
5212 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
5213 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
5214 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
5215 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
5216 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
5217 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
5218 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
5219 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
5220 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
5221 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
5222 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
5223 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
5224 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
5225 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
5226 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
5227 plain criminal.</p>
5228
5229 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
5230 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
5231 founded an association named
5232 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
5233 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
5234 area of free and open source software, for example the
5235 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
5236 Teckids and are the youth programme of
5237 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
5238 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
5239 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
5240 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
5241 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
5242 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
5243
5244 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
5245 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
5246 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
5247 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
5248 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
5249 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
5250 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
5251 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
5252 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
5253 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
5254 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
5255 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
5256
5257 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
5258 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
5259 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
5260 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
5261
5262 <!--
5263
5264 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
5265
5266 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
5267 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
5268
5269  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
5270    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
5271    of the decision makers above;
5272  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
5273    knowledge about free software
5274
5275 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
5276
5277 -->
5278
5279       </div>
5280       <div class="tags">
5281
5282
5283         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>.
5284
5285
5286       </div>
5287     </div>
5288     <div class="padding"></div>
5289
5290     <div class="entry">
5291       <div class="title">
5292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
5293       </div>
5294       <div class="date">
5295          6th December 2013
5296       </div>
5297       <div class="body">
5298         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
5299 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5300 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
5301 had a new school administrator show up on
5302 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
5303 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
5304 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
5305 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
5306 Germany a few years ago.</p>
5307
5308 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5309
5310 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
5311 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
5312 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
5313 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
5314
5315 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
5316 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
5317 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
5318 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
5319 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
5320 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
5321 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
5322 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
5323 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
5324
5325 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5326 project?</strong></p>
5327
5328 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
5329 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
5330 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
5331 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
5332
5333 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5334 Edu?</strong></p>
5335
5336 <ul>
5337   <li>Quick installation,</li>
5338   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
5339   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
5340   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
5341     single company,</li>
5342   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
5343     experience and problem solutions.</li>
5344 </ul>
5345
5346 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5347 Edu?</strong></p>
5348
5349 <ul>
5350   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
5351   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
5352   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
5353   working again reliably.
5354
5355   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
5356   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
5357   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
5358   as their base.
5359
5360   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
5361   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
5362   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
5363   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
5364   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
5365   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
5366
5367   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
5368   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
5369   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
5370   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
5371   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
5372   schemes.</li>
5373
5374   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
5375   compared to Debian.</li>
5376
5377 </ul>
5378
5379 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
5380 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
5381 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
5382 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
5383
5384 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5385
5386 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
5387 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
5388 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
5389 programming languages for teaching.</p>
5390
5391 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5392 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5393
5394 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
5395
5396 <ul>
5397
5398   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
5399     teaching and learning.</li>
5400
5401   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
5402     home, and at their working place without running into license or
5403     conversion problems.</li>
5404
5405   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
5406     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
5407     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
5408     science, not products.</li>
5409
5410   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
5411     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
5412
5413 </ul>
5414
5415       </div>
5416       <div class="tags">
5417
5418
5419         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>.
5420
5421
5422       </div>
5423     </div>
5424     <div class="padding"></div>
5425
5426     <div class="entry">
5427       <div class="title">
5428         <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>
5429       </div>
5430       <div class="date">
5431         30th November 2013
5432       </div>
5433       <div class="body">
5434         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
5435 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
5436 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
5437 experiment with interesting network technology, the
5438 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
5439 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
5440 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
5441 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
5442 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
5443 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
5444 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
5445 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
5446 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
5447 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
5448 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
5449 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
5450 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
5451 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
5452 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
5453 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
5454
5455       </div>
5456       <div class="tags">
5457
5458
5459         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>.
5460
5461
5462       </div>
5463     </div>
5464     <div class="padding"></div>
5465
5466     <div class="entry">
5467       <div class="title">
5468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
5469       </div>
5470       <div class="date">
5471         24th November 2013
5472       </div>
5473       <div class="body">
5474         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
5475 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
5476 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
5477 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
5478 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
5479 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
5480 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
5481 is working on.  I checked the
5482 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
5483 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
5484 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
5485 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
5486 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
5487 These are the release notes:</p>
5488
5489 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
5490
5491 <ul>
5492
5493   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
5494    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
5495    up.</li>
5496
5497   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
5498
5499   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
5500    Matthias Klose.</li>
5501
5502   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
5503    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
5504
5505   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
5506    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
5507    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
5508
5509 </ul>
5510
5511 <p>You can
5512 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5513 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5514 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5515 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5516 include a testsuite check.</p>
5517
5518       </div>
5519       <div class="tags">
5520
5521
5522         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>.
5523
5524
5525       </div>
5526     </div>
5527     <div class="padding"></div>
5528
5529     <div class="entry">
5530       <div class="title">
5531         <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>
5532       </div>
5533       <div class="date">
5534         21st November 2013
5535       </div>
5536       <div class="body">
5537         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
5538 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
5539 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
5540 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
5541 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
5542 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
5543 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
5544 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
5545 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
5546 TED talk
5547 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
5548 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
5549 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
5550
5551 <blockquote>
5552
5553 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
5554 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
5555 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
5556 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
5557 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
5558 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
5559 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
5560 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
5561 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
5562 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
5563 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
5564
5565 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
5566 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
5567 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
5568
5569 </blockquote>
5570
5571 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
5572 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
5573 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
5574 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
5575 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
5576 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
5577 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
5578 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
5579 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
5580
5581       </div>
5582       <div class="tags">
5583
5584
5585         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>.
5586
5587
5588       </div>
5589     </div>
5590     <div class="padding"></div>
5591
5592     <div class="entry">
5593       <div class="title">
5594         <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>
5595       </div>
5596       <div class="date">
5597         13th November 2013
5598       </div>
5599       <div class="body">
5600         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
5601 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
5602 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
5603 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
5604 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
5605 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
5606 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
5607 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
5608 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
5609 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
5610 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
5611 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
5612 right away. :)</p>
5613
5614       </div>
5615       <div class="tags">
5616
5617
5618         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>.
5619
5620
5621       </div>
5622     </div>
5623     <div class="padding"></div>
5624
5625     <div class="entry">
5626       <div class="title">
5627         <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>
5628       </div>
5629       <div class="date">
5630         10th November 2013
5631       </div>
5632       <div class="body">
5633         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
5634 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
5635 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
5636 MR3040 as a mesh node using
5637 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
5638
5639 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
5640 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
5641 and downloaded
5642 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
5643 recommended firmware image</a>
5644 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
5645 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
5646 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
5647 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
5648 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
5649
5650 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
5651 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
5652 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
5653 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
5654 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
5655 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
5656 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
5657 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
5658 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
5659 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
5660 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
5661 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
5662 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
5663
5664 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
5665 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
5666 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
5667 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
5668 them:</p>
5669
5670 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
5671
5672 <pre>
5673
5674 config interface 'loopback'
5675         option ifname 'lo'
5676         option proto 'static'
5677         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
5678         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
5679
5680 config globals 'globals'
5681         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
5682
5683 config interface 'lan'
5684         option ifname 'eth0'
5685         option type 'bridge'
5686         option proto 'dhcp'
5687         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
5688         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
5689         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
5690         option ip6assign '60'
5691
5692 config interface 'mesh'
5693         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5694         option mtu '1528'
5695         option proto 'batadv'
5696         option mesh 'bat0'
5697 </pre>
5698
5699 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
5700 <pre>
5701
5702 config wifi-device 'radio0'
5703         option type 'mac80211'
5704         option channel '11'
5705         option hwmode '11ng'
5706         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
5707         option htmode 'HT20'
5708         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
5709         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
5710         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
5711         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
5712         option disabled '0'
5713
5714 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
5715         option device 'radio0'
5716         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5717         option network 'mesh'
5718         option encryption 'none'
5719         option mode 'adhoc'
5720         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
5721         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
5722 </pre>
5723 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
5724 <pre>
5725
5726 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
5727         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
5728         option 'aggregated_ogms'
5729         option 'ap_isolation'
5730         option 'bonding'
5731         option 'fragmentation'
5732         option 'gw_bandwidth'
5733         option 'gw_mode'
5734         option 'gw_sel_class'
5735         option 'log_level'
5736         option 'orig_interval'
5737         option 'vis_mode'
5738         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
5739         option 'distributed_arp_table'
5740         option 'network_coding'
5741         option 'hop_penalty'
5742
5743 # yet another batX instance
5744 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
5745 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
5746 </pre>
5747
5748 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
5749 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
5750 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
5751
5752       </div>
5753       <div class="tags">
5754
5755
5756         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>.
5757
5758
5759       </div>
5760     </div>
5761     <div class="padding"></div>
5762
5763     <div class="entry">
5764       <div class="title">
5765         <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>
5766       </div>
5767       <div class="date">
5768          2nd November 2013
5769       </div>
5770       <div class="body">
5771         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
5772 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
5773 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
5774 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
5775 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
5776
5777 <p><pre>
5778 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
5779 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
5780 # Provides:          rsyslog
5781 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
5782 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
5783 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
5784 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
5785 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
5786 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
5787 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
5788 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
5789 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
5790 ### END INIT INFO
5791 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
5792 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
5793 </pre></p>
5794
5795 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
5796 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
5797 info/comments.</p>
5798
5799 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
5800 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5801
5802 <p><pre>
5803 #!/bin/sh
5804
5805 # Define LSB log_* functions.
5806 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
5807 # and status_of_proc is working.
5808 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
5809
5810 #
5811 # Function that starts the daemon/service
5812
5813 #
5814 do_start()
5815 {
5816         # Return
5817         #   0 if daemon has been started
5818         #   1 if daemon was already running
5819         #   2 if daemon could not be started
5820         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
5821                 || return 1
5822         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
5823                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
5824                 || return 2
5825         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
5826         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
5827         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
5828 }
5829
5830 #
5831 # Function that stops the daemon/service
5832 #
5833 do_stop()
5834 {
5835         # Return
5836         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
5837         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
5838         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
5839         #   other if a failure occurred
5840         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5841         RETVAL="$?"
5842         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
5843         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
5844         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
5845         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
5846         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
5847         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
5848         # sleep for some time.
5849         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
5850         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
5851         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
5852         rm -f $PIDFILE
5853         return "$RETVAL"
5854 }
5855
5856 #
5857 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
5858 #
5859 do_reload() {
5860         #
5861         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
5862         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
5863         # then implement that here.
5864         #
5865         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5866         return 0
5867 }
5868
5869 SCRIPTNAME=$1
5870 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
5871 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
5872 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
5873     script="$1"
5874     shift
5875     . $script
5876 else
5877     exit 0
5878 fi
5879
5880 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
5881 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
5882
5883 # Exit if the package is not installed
5884 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
5885
5886 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
5887 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
5888
5889 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
5890 . /lib/init/vars.sh
5891
5892 case "$1" in
5893   start)
5894         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
5895         do_start
5896         case "$?" in
5897                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5898                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5899         esac
5900         ;;
5901   stop)
5902         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
5903         do_stop
5904         case "$?" in
5905                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5906                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5907         esac
5908         ;;
5909   status)
5910         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
5911         ;;
5912   #reload|force-reload)
5913         #
5914         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
5915         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
5916         #
5917         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
5918         #do_reload
5919         #log_end_msg $?
5920         #;;
5921   restart|force-reload)
5922         #
5923         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
5924         # 'force-reload' alias
5925         #
5926         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
5927         do_stop
5928         case "$?" in
5929           0|1)
5930                 do_start
5931                 case "$?" in
5932                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
5933                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
5934                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
5935                 esac
5936                 ;;
5937           *)
5938                 # Failed to stop
5939                 log_end_msg 1
5940                 ;;
5941         esac
5942         ;;
5943   *)
5944         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
5945         exit 3
5946         ;;
5947 esac
5948
5949 :
5950 </pre></p>
5951
5952 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
5953 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
5954 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
5955 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
5956
5957 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
5958 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
5959 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
5960 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
5961 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
5962
5963       </div>
5964       <div class="tags">
5965
5966
5967         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>.
5968
5969
5970       </div>
5971     </div>
5972     <div class="padding"></div>
5973
5974     <div class="entry">
5975       <div class="title">
5976         <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>
5977       </div>
5978       <div class="date">
5979          1st November 2013
5980       </div>
5981       <div class="body">
5982         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
5983 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
5984 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
5985 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
5986 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
5987 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
5988 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
5989 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
5990 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
5991 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
5992 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
5993 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
5994
5995 <p>The source is now available from
5996 <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>
5997
5998       </div>
5999       <div class="tags">
6000
6001
6002         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6003
6004
6005       </div>
6006     </div>
6007     <div class="padding"></div>
6008
6009     <div class="entry">
6010       <div class="title">
6011         <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>
6012       </div>
6013       <div class="date">
6014         27th October 2013
6015       </div>
6016       <div class="body">
6017         <p>The
6018 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6019 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6020 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6021 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6022 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6023 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6024 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6025 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6026 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6027 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6028 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6029 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6030
6031 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6032 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6033 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6034 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6035 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6036 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6037 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6038 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6039 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6040 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6041 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6042 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6043 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6044 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6045 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6046 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6047 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6048 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6049 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6050 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6051 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6052 available from
6053 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6054 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6055
6056 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6057 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6058 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6059 list:</p>
6060
6061 <p><pre>
6062 #!/bin/sh
6063 set -e # Exit on first error
6064 rootdir="$1"
6065 cd "$rootdir"
6066 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6067 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6068 EOF
6069 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6070 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6071 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6072     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6073 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6074 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6075 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6076 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6077 </pre></p>
6078
6079 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6080 to build the image:</p>
6081
6082 <pre>
6083 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6084     --variant minbase \
6085     --arch armel \
6086     --distribution jessie \
6087     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6088     --image test.img \
6089     --size 600M \
6090     --bootsize 64M \
6091     --boottype vfat \
6092     --log-level debug \
6093     --verbose \
6094     --no-kernel \
6095     --no-extlinux \
6096     --root-password raspberry \
6097     --hostname raspberrypi \
6098     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6099     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6100     --package netbase \
6101     --package git-core \
6102     --package binutils \
6103     --package ca-certificates \
6104     --package wget \
6105     --package kmod
6106 </pre></p>
6107
6108 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6109 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6110 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6111 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6112 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6113 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6114 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6115
6116 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6117 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6118 build dependency list.</p>
6119
6120 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6121 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6122 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6123 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6124
6125       </div>
6126       <div class="tags">
6127
6128
6129         Tags: <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>.
6130
6131
6132       </div>
6133     </div>
6134     <div class="padding"></div>
6135
6136     <div class="entry">
6137       <div class="title">
6138         <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>
6139       </div>
6140       <div class="date">
6141         21st October 2013
6142       </div>
6143       <div class="body">
6144         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
6145 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
6146 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
6147 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
6148 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
6149 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
6150 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
6151 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
6152
6153 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
6154 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
6155 instead, I started playing with a
6156 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
6157 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
6158 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
6159 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
6160 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
6161 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
6162 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
6163 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
6164 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
6165 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
6166 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
6167 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
6168 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
6169 every client on the local network.</p>
6170
6171 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
6172 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
6173 and a script
6174 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
6175 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
6176 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
6177 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
6178 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
6179 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
6180 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
6181 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
6182 support.</p>
6183
6184 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
6185 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
6186
6187 <p><pre>
6188 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
6189     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
6190 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
6191 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
6192 %
6193 </pre></p>
6194
6195 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
6196 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
6197 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
6198 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
6199 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
6200 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
6201
6202 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
6203 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
6204 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
6205
6206 <p><table>
6207
6208 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
6209 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
6210 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
6211 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
6212 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
6213 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
6214
6215 </table></p>
6216
6217 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
6218 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
6219 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
6220 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
6221 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
6222 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
6223 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
6224
6225       </div>
6226       <div class="tags">
6227
6228
6229         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>.
6230
6231
6232       </div>
6233     </div>
6234     <div class="padding"></div>
6235
6236     <div class="entry">
6237       <div class="title">
6238         <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>
6239       </div>
6240       <div class="date">
6241         19th October 2013
6242       </div>
6243       <div class="body">
6244         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
6245 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
6246 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
6247 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
6248 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
6249 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
6250 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
6251 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
6252
6253       </div>
6254       <div class="tags">
6255
6256
6257         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>.
6258
6259
6260       </div>
6261     </div>
6262     <div class="padding"></div>
6263
6264     <div class="entry">
6265       <div class="title">
6266         <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>
6267       </div>
6268       <div class="date">
6269         15th October 2013
6270       </div>
6271       <div class="body">
6272         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6273 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6274 these. :)</p>
6275
6276 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6277 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6278 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6279 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6280 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6281 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6282 hope you will to. :)</p>
6283
6284 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6285 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6286 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6287 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6288 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6289
6290 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6291 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6292 statement under the heading
6293 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6294 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6295 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6296 too.</p>
6297
6298       </div>
6299       <div class="tags">
6300
6301
6302         Tags: <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>.
6303
6304
6305       </div>
6306     </div>
6307     <div class="padding"></div>
6308
6309     <div class="entry">
6310       <div class="title">
6311         <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>
6312       </div>
6313       <div class="date">
6314         11th October 2013
6315       </div>
6316       <div class="body">
6317         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
6318 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
6319 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
6320 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
6321 successful examples like
6322 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
6323 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
6324 (see
6325 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
6326 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
6327 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
6328 can be seen from their
6329 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
6330 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
6331 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
6332 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
6333 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
6334
6335 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
6336 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
6337 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
6338 my recent involvement in
6339 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
6340 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
6341 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
6342 when possible, given that most communication between people are
6343 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
6344 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
6345 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
6346 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
6347 important over the years.</p>
6348
6349 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
6350 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
6351 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
6352 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
6353 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
6354 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
6355 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
6356 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
6357 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
6358 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
6359 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
6360 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
6361 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
6362 speakers about this talk (from
6363 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
6364
6365 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6366
6367 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
6368 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
6369 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
6370 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
6371 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
6372 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
6373 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
6374 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
6375 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
6376 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
6377 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
6378 that project (from
6379 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
6380
6381 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6382
6383 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
6384 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
6385 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
6386 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
6387 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
6388 based community mesh networks.</p>
6389
6390 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
6391 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
6392 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
6393 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
6394 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
6395 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
6396 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
6397 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
6398 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
6399
6400 <p><table>
6401 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
6402 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
6403 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
6404 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
6405 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
6406 </table></p>
6407
6408 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
6409 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
6410 VillageTelco about
6411 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
6412 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
6413 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
6414 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
6415 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
6416 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
6417
6418 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
6419 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
6420 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
6421 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
6422
6423 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
6424 us on IRC, either channel
6425 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
6426 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
6427 irc.freenode.net.</p>
6428
6429 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
6430 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
6431 and Innovation called
6432 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
6433 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
6434 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
6435 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
6436 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
6437 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
6438 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
6439 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
6440
6441 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
6442 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
6443 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
6444 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
6445 mesh system.</p>
6446
6447       </div>
6448       <div class="tags">
6449
6450
6451         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>.
6452
6453
6454       </div>
6455     </div>
6456     <div class="padding"></div>
6457
6458     <div class="entry">
6459       <div class="title">
6460         <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>
6461       </div>
6462       <div class="date">
6463          8th October 2013
6464       </div>
6465       <div class="body">
6466         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
6467 Salvador had published a
6468 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
6469 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
6470 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
6471 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
6472 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
6473 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
6474 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
6475 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
6476 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
6477 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
6478 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
6479 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
6480 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
6481 computers without hard drives by installing one central
6482 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
6483
6484 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
6485
6486 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
6487
6488 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
6489 me know. :)</p>
6490
6491       </div>
6492       <div class="tags">
6493
6494
6495         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>.
6496
6497
6498       </div>
6499     </div>
6500     <div class="padding"></div>
6501
6502     <div class="entry">
6503       <div class="title">
6504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
6505       </div>
6506       <div class="date">
6507         29th September 2013
6508       </div>
6509       <div class="body">
6510         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
6511 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
6512 complete announcement text can be found at
6513 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
6514 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
6515
6516 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
6517 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
6518 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
6519 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
6520
6521       </div>
6522       <div class="tags">
6523
6524
6525         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>.
6526
6527
6528       </div>
6529     </div>
6530     <div class="padding"></div>
6531
6532     <div class="entry">
6533       <div class="title">
6534         <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>
6535       </div>
6536       <div class="date">
6537         27th September 2013
6538       </div>
6539       <div class="body">
6540         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6541 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6542 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6543 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6544
6545 <ul>
6546
6547 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6548 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6549
6550 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6551 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6552
6553 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6554 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6555 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6556 (Youtube)</li>
6557
6558 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6559 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6560
6561 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6562 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6563
6564 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6565 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6566 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6567
6568 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6569 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6570 (Youtube)</li>
6571
6572 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6573 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6574
6575 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6576 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6577
6578 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6579 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6580 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6581
6582 </ul>
6583
6584 <p>A larger list is available from
6585 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6586 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6587
6588 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6589 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6590 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6591 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6592 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6593 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6594 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6595 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6596 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6597 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6598 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6599
6600       </div>
6601       <div class="tags">
6602
6603
6604         Tags: <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>.
6605
6606
6607       </div>
6608     </div>
6609     <div class="padding"></div>
6610
6611     <div class="entry">
6612       <div class="title">
6613         <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>
6614       </div>
6615       <div class="date">
6616         16th September 2013
6617       </div>
6618       <div class="body">
6619         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6620 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
6621
6622 <blockquote>
6623 <p>Hi,</p>
6624
6625 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
6626 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6627 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
6628
6629 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
6630 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
6631 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
6632 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
6633
6634 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
6635 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
6636
6637 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
6638 compared to beta1:</p>
6639
6640 <ul>
6641
6642 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
6643 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
6644 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
6645 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
6646 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
6647 main server.</li>
6648 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
6649 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
6650 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
6651 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
6652 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
6653
6654 </ul>
6655
6656 <p>Where to get it:</p>
6657
6658 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6659
6660 <ul>
6661 <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>
6662 <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>
6663 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
6664 </ul>
6665
6666 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
6667
6668 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
6669 <ul>
6670 <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>
6671 <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>
6672 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
6673 </ul>
6674
6675 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
6676
6677 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
6678 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
6679 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
6680 as the other isos.</p>
6681
6682 <p>How to report bugs</p>
6683
6684 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
6685 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6686
6687
6688 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
6689
6690 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6691 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6692 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
6693 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6694 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6695 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6696 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
6697 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
6698 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
6699 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
6700 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
6701 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
6702 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6703
6704 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6705 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6706 Squeeze release.</p>
6707
6708 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
6709
6710 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6711 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6712 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6713 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6714 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
6715 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
6716 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
6717 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
6718 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
6719 directory.</p>
6720
6721
6722 <p>cheers,
6723 <br>        Holger</p>
6724 </blockquote>
6725
6726       </div>
6727       <div class="tags">
6728
6729
6730         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>.
6731
6732
6733       </div>
6734     </div>
6735     <div class="padding"></div>
6736
6737     <div class="entry">
6738       <div class="title">
6739         <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>
6740       </div>
6741       <div class="date">
6742         10th September 2013
6743       </div>
6744       <div class="body">
6745         <p>I was introduced to the
6746 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6747 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6748 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6749 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6750 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6751 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6752 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6753 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6754
6755 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6756 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6757 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6758 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6759 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6760
6761 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6762 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6763 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6764 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6765 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6766 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6767 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6768 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6769 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6770 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6771 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6772 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6773 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6774 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6775 missing in Debian).</p>
6776
6777 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6778 scripts
6779 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6780 and a administrative web interface
6781 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6782 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6783 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6784 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6785 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6786 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6787 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6788 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6789 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6790 this is really working yet, see
6791 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6792 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6793 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6794 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6795 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6796 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6797 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6798
6799 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6800 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6801 at.</p>
6802
6803 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6804
6805 <ol>
6806
6807 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6808 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6809 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6810 to the Debian installer:<p>
6811 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6812
6813 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6814 install on.</li>
6815
6816 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
6817 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
6818
6819 </ol>
6820
6821 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
6822
6823 <ol>
6824
6825 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
6826 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
6827 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
6828 <pre>
6829 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
6830 </pre></li>
6831 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
6832 <pre>
6833 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
6834    apt-key add -
6835 apt-get update
6836 apt-get install freedombox-setup
6837 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
6838 </pre></li>
6839 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
6840
6841 </ol>
6842
6843 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
6844 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
6845 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
6846 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
6847 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
6848
6849 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
6850 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
6851 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
6852 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
6853
6854 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
6855 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
6856 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
6857 irc.debian.org and the
6858 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
6859 mailing list</a>.</p>
6860
6861 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
6862 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
6863 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
6864 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
6865 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
6866 default password is 'secret'.</p>
6867
6868       </div>
6869       <div class="tags">
6870
6871
6872         Tags: <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>.
6873
6874
6875       </div>
6876     </div>
6877     <div class="padding"></div>
6878
6879     <div class="entry">
6880       <div class="title">
6881         <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>
6882       </div>
6883       <div class="date">
6884         22nd August 2013
6885       </div>
6886       <div class="body">
6887         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6888 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
6889 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
6890
6891 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
6892
6893 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6894 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6895
6896 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6897
6898 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6899 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6900 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6901 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6902 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6903 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6904 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6905 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
6906 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6907 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6908 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6909 desktop contains
6910 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6911 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6912 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6913 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6914
6915 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
6916 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
6917 release.</p>
6918
6919 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6920 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6921 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6922 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6923 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
6924 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
6925 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
6926 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
6927 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
6928 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
6929 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
6930
6931 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6932
6933 <ul>
6934
6935 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
6936     work also without a attached tty.</li>
6937 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
6938     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
6939     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
6940     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
6941     required).</li>
6942
6943 </ul>
6944
6945 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6946
6947 <ul>
6948
6949 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
6950 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
6951 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
6952 stick ISO image.</li>
6953 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
6954 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
6955 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
6956     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
6957     cope with this.</li>
6958 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
6959 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
6960     empty password hashes.</li>
6961 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
6962     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
6963     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
6964
6965 </ul>
6966
6967 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6968
6969 <ul>
6970
6971 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
6972     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
6973 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
6974     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
6975
6976 </ul>
6977
6978 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6979
6980 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6981
6982 <ul>
6983
6984 <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>
6985
6986 <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>
6987
6988 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
6989
6990 </ul>
6991
6992 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
6993 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
6994
6995 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6996
6997 <ul>
6998
6999 <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>
7000 <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>
7001 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
7002
7003 </ul>
7004
7005 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
7006 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
7007
7008
7009 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7010
7011 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7012
7013       </div>
7014       <div class="tags">
7015
7016
7017         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>.
7018
7019
7020       </div>
7021     </div>
7022     <div class="padding"></div>
7023
7024     <div class="entry">
7025       <div class="title">
7026         <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>
7027       </div>
7028       <div class="date">
7029         18th August 2013
7030       </div>
7031       <div class="body">
7032         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7033 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7034 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7035 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7036 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7037 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7038 currently on the disk.</p>
7039
7040 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7041 <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>
7042 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7043 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7044 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7045 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7046 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7047 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7048 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7049 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7050 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7051 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7052 the broken disks.</p>
7053
7054       </div>
7055       <div class="tags">
7056
7057
7058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7059
7060
7061       </div>
7062     </div>
7063     <div class="padding"></div>
7064
7065     <div class="entry">
7066       <div class="title">
7067         <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>
7068       </div>
7069       <div class="date">
7070          2nd August 2013
7071       </div>
7072       <div class="body">
7073         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
7074 have worked on a Norwegian
7075 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7076 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7077 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
7078 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
7079 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
7080 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
7081 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
7082 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
7083 progress of the translation:</p>
7084
7085 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
7086
7087 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
7088 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
7089 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
7090 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
7091 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
7092 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
7093 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
7094 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
7095 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
7096 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
7097 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
7098
7099 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7100 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7101 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7102 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7103 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7104 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
7105 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
7106 project files currently available from
7107 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7108
7109 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7110 the updated
7111 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7112 and
7113 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7114 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7115 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7116 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7117
7118       </div>
7119       <div class="tags">
7120
7121
7122         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>.
7123
7124
7125       </div>
7126     </div>
7127     <div class="padding"></div>
7128
7129     <div class="entry">
7130       <div class="title">
7131         <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>
7132       </div>
7133       <div class="date">
7134         27th July 2013
7135       </div>
7136       <div class="body">
7137         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7138 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7139
7140 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
7141 2013-07-27</strong></p>
7142
7143 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7144 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7145
7146 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7147
7148 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7149 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7150 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7151 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7152 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7153 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7154 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7155 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7156 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7157 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7158 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7159 desktop contains
7160 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7161 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7162 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7163 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7164
7165 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7166 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7167 Squeeze release.</p>
7168
7169 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7170 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7171 release.</p>
7172
7173 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7174
7175 <ul>
7176
7177 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
7178    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
7179 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
7180    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
7181    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
7182    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
7183    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
7184 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
7185 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
7186 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
7187    crash bugs.</li>
7188
7189 </ul>
7190
7191 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7192
7193 <ul>
7194
7195 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
7196    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
7197 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
7198    netinst CD.</li>
7199 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
7200    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
7201 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
7202    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
7203    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
7204 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
7205    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
7206    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
7207 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
7208    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
7209    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
7210 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
7211    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
7212 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
7213
7214 </ul>
7215
7216 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7217
7218 <ul>
7219
7220 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
7221 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7222     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7223 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
7224
7225 </ul>
7226
7227 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7228
7229 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7230
7231 <ul>
7232
7233 <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>
7234
7235 <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>
7236
7237 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
7238
7239 </ul>
7240
7241 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
7242 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
7243
7244 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7245
7246 <ul>
7247
7248 <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>
7249 <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>
7250 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
7251
7252 </ul>
7253
7254 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
7255 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
7256
7257
7258 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7259
7260 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7261
7262       </div>
7263       <div class="tags">
7264
7265
7266         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>.
7267
7268
7269       </div>
7270     </div>
7271     <div class="padding"></div>
7272
7273     <div class="entry">
7274       <div class="title">
7275         <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>
7276       </div>
7277       <div class="date">
7278         17th July 2013
7279       </div>
7280       <div class="body">
7281         <p>Today I switched to
7282 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7283 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7284 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7285 <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
7286 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7287 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7288 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7289 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7290 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7291 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7292 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7293 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7294 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7295 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7296 station from now on.</p>
7297
7298 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7299 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7300 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7301 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7302 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7303 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7304 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7305 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7306 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7307 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7308 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7309 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7310
7311 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7312 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7313 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7314 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7315 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7316 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7317 parameters are tuned:</p>
7318
7319 <ul>
7320
7321 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7322     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7323
7324 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7325     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7326     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7327
7328 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7329     systems.</li>
7330
7331 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7332     /etc/fstab.</li>
7333
7334 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7335
7336 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7337     cron.daily).</li>
7338
7339 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7340     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7341
7342 </ul>
7343
7344 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7345 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7346 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7347 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7348 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7349 from getting the data on the disk (see
7350 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7351 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7352 right thing to do.</p>
7353
7354 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7355 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7356 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7357
7358 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7359 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7360 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7361 instead of during my work.</p>
7362
7363 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7364 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7365
7366 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7367 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7368 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7369
7370 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7371 there.</p>
7372
7373 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7374 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7375 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7376 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7377 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7378 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7379 back.</p>
7380
7381       </div>
7382       <div class="tags">
7383
7384
7385         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7386
7387
7388       </div>
7389     </div>
7390     <div class="padding"></div>
7391
7392     <div class="entry">
7393       <div class="title">
7394         <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>
7395       </div>
7396       <div class="date">
7397         10th July 2013
7398       </div>
7399       <div class="body">
7400         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7401 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7402 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7403 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7404 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7405 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7406 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7407 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7408
7409 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7410 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7411 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7412 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7413 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7414 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7415 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7416 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7417 lock up when I download a new
7418 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7419 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7420 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7421
7422 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7423 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7424 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7425 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7426 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7427 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7428
7429 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7430 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7431 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7432 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7433 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7434 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7435
7436 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7437 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7438 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7439 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7440 exist).</p>
7441
7442       </div>
7443       <div class="tags">
7444
7445
7446         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7447
7448
7449       </div>
7450     </div>
7451     <div class="padding"></div>
7452
7453     <div class="entry">
7454       <div class="title">
7455         <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>
7456       </div>
7457       <div class="date">
7458          9th July 2013
7459       </div>
7460       <div class="body">
7461         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
7462 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
7463 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
7464 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
7465 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7466 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
7467 Bitraf</a>.</p>
7468
7469 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
7470 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
7471 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
7472 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
7473 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
7474
7475       </div>
7476       <div class="tags">
7477
7478
7479         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>.
7480
7481
7482       </div>
7483     </div>
7484     <div class="padding"></div>
7485
7486     <div class="entry">
7487       <div class="title">
7488         <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>
7489       </div>
7490       <div class="date">
7491          5th July 2013
7492       </div>
7493       <div class="body">
7494         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7495 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7496 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7497 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7498 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7499 ended up picking a
7500 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7501 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7502 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7503 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7504 on that below.</p>
7505
7506 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7507 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7508 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7509 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7510 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7511 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7512 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7513 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7514 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7515
7516 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7517 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7518 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7519 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7520 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7521 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7522 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7523
7524 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7525 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7526
7527 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7528 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7529 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7530 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7531 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7532 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7533 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7534 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7535 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7536 kernel developers as
7537 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7538 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7539 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7540 Lenovo forums, both for
7541 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7542 2012-11-10</a> and for
7543 <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
7544 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7545 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7546 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7547 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7548 There is even a
7549 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7550 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7551 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7552
7553 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7554 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7555 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7556 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7557 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7558 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7559 fixed. :)</p>
7560
7561       </div>
7562       <div class="tags">
7563
7564
7565         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7566
7567
7568       </div>
7569     </div>
7570     <div class="padding"></div>
7571
7572     <div class="entry">
7573       <div class="title">
7574         <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>
7575       </div>
7576       <div class="date">
7577          4th July 2013
7578       </div>
7579       <div class="body">
7580         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7581 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7582 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7583 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7584 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7585 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7586 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7587 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7588 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7589
7590 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7591 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7592 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7593 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7594 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7595 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7596 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7597
7598 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7599 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7600 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7601 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7602 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7603 new laptop now. :)</p>
7604
7605 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7606
7607       </div>
7608       <div class="tags">
7609
7610
7611         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7612
7613
7614       </div>
7615     </div>
7616     <div class="padding"></div>
7617
7618     <div class="entry">
7619       <div class="title">
7620         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7621       </div>
7622       <div class="date">
7623          3rd July 2013
7624       </div>
7625       <div class="body">
7626         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7627 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7628
7629 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
7630 2013-07-03</strong></p>
7631
7632 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7633 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7634
7635 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7636
7637 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7638 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7639 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7640 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7641 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7642 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7643 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7644 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7645 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7646 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7647 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7648 desktop contains
7649 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7650 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7651 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7652 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7653
7654 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7655 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7656 Squeeze release.</p>
7657
7658 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7659 <ul>
7660   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
7661   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
7662     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
7663     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
7664   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
7665     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
7666     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
7667   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
7668     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
7669     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
7670     too.</li>
7671   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
7672     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
7673 </ul>
7674 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7675 <ul>
7676   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
7677   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
7678   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
7679     up for some language options.</li>
7680   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
7681   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
7682   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
7683     d-i is doing it.</li>
7684   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
7685     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
7686   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
7687     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
7688     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
7689   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
7690     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
7691   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
7692   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
7693     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
7694   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
7695     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
7696 </ul>
7697 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7698 <ul>
7699   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7700     available yet (698840).</li>
7701   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
7702 </ul>
7703 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7704
7705 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7706 <ul>
7707   <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>
7708   <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>
7709   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
7710 </ul>
7711
7712 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
7713 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
7714
7715 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7716 <ul>
7717   <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>
7718   <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>
7719   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
7720 </ul>
7721
7722 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
7723 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
7724
7725 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7726
7727 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7728
7729       </div>
7730       <div class="tags">
7731
7732
7733         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>.
7734
7735
7736       </div>
7737     </div>
7738     <div class="padding"></div>
7739
7740     <div class="entry">
7741       <div class="title">
7742         <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>
7743       </div>
7744       <div class="date">
7745         25th June 2013
7746       </div>
7747       <div class="body">
7748         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7749 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7750 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7751 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7752 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7753 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7754 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7755 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7756 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7757 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7758 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7759
7760 <p><pre>
7761 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7762 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7763 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7764 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7765 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7766 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7767 firmware-ipw2x00
7768 firmware-ipw2x00
7769 Preconfiguring packages ...
7770 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7771 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7772 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7773 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7774 #
7775 </pre></p>
7776
7777 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7778 printed instead:</p>
7779
7780 <p><pre>
7781 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7782 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7783 #
7784 </pre></p>
7785
7786 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7787 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7788
7789 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7790 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7791 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7792 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7793 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7794 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7795 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7796 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7797 machine.</p>
7798
7799 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7800 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7801 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7802 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7803 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7804 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7805
7806       </div>
7807       <div class="tags">
7808
7809
7810         Tags: <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>.
7811
7812
7813       </div>
7814     </div>
7815     <div class="padding"></div>
7816
7817     <div class="entry">
7818       <div class="title">
7819         <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>
7820       </div>
7821       <div class="date">
7822         22nd June 2013
7823       </div>
7824       <div class="body">
7825         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7826 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
7827 which check that services are running, working, and return the
7828 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
7829 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
7830 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
7831 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
7832 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
7833 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
7834
7835 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
7836 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
7837 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
7838 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
7839 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
7840 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
7841 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
7842 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
7843 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
7844 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
7845 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
7846 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
7847 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
7848 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
7849
7850 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
7851 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
7852 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
7853 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
7854 the problem.</p>
7855
7856 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
7857 please join us on
7858 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7859 irc.debian.org</a> and the
7860 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
7861 list.</p>
7862
7863       </div>
7864       <div class="tags">
7865
7866
7867         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>.
7868
7869
7870       </div>
7871     </div>
7872     <div class="padding"></div>
7873
7874     <div class="entry">
7875       <div class="title">
7876         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
7877       </div>
7878       <div class="date">
7879         17th June 2013
7880       </div>
7881       <div class="body">
7882         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
7883 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
7884 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
7885 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
7886 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
7887 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
7888 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
7889 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
7890
7891 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7892
7893 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
7894 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
7895 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
7896 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
7897 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
7898 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
7899 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
7900 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
7901 field.</p>
7902
7903 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
7904 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
7905 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
7906 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
7907 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
7908 the only one we have in our country.</p>
7909
7910 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7911 project?</strong></p>
7912
7913 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
7914 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
7915 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
7916 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
7917 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
7918 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
7919 ways to contribute.</p>
7920
7921 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
7922 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
7923 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
7924 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
7925 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
7926 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
7927 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
7928 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
7929 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
7930 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
7931
7932 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7933 Edu?</strong></p>
7934
7935 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
7936 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
7937 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
7938 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
7939 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
7940 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
7941 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
7942 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
7943
7944 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
7945 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
7946 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
7947 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
7948 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
7949 project.</p>
7950
7951 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7952 Edu?</strong></p>
7953
7954 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
7955 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
7956 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
7957 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
7958 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
7959 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
7960 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
7961 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
7962 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
7963
7964 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
7965 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
7966 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
7967 on.</p>
7968
7969 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7970
7971 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
7972 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
7973 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
7974 Enlightenment project a lot!),
7975 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
7976 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
7977 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
7978 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
7979 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
7980
7981 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7982 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7983
7984 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
7985 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
7986 that:</p>
7987
7988 <ul>
7989
7990 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
7991
7992 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
7993     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
7994     of teenagers more?</li>
7995
7996 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
7997     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
7998     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
7999     them!)</li>
8000
8001 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
8002     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
8003     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
8004
8005 </ul>
8006
8007 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
8008 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
8009 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
8010 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
8011 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
8012
8013       </div>
8014       <div class="tags">
8015
8016
8017         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>.
8018
8019
8020       </div>
8021     </div>
8022     <div class="padding"></div>
8023
8024     <div class="entry">
8025       <div class="title">
8026         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
8027       </div>
8028       <div class="date">
8029         12th June 2013
8030       </div>
8031       <div class="body">
8032         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
8033 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8034 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
8035 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
8036 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
8037 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
8038
8039 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8040
8041 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
8042 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
8043 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
8044
8045 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
8046 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
8047 each other.</p>
8048
8049 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8050 project?</strong></p>
8051
8052 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
8053 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
8054 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
8055 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
8056 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
8057 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
8058 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
8059 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
8060 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
8061 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
8062 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
8063 we'll get there one day.</p>
8064
8065 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8066 Edu?</strong></p>
8067
8068 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
8069 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
8070 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
8071 very high quality work.</p>
8072
8073 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
8074 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
8075 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
8076 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
8077 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
8078
8079 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8080 Edu?</strong></p>
8081
8082 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
8083 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
8084 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
8085
8086 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
8087 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
8088 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
8089 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
8090 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
8091 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
8092 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
8093 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
8094 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
8095 currently.</p>
8096
8097 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
8098 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
8099 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
8100 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
8101 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
8102 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
8103 autonomous.</p>
8104
8105 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8106
8107 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
8108 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
8109 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
8110 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
8111 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
8112
8113 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
8114 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
8115 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
8116 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
8117 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
8118 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
8119 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
8120 X.</p>
8121
8122 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
8123 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
8124 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
8125 it :p)
8126
8127 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8128 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8129
8130 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
8131 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
8132 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
8133 that.</p>
8134
8135 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
8136 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
8137 advantage of that.</p>
8138
8139 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
8140 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
8141 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
8142 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
8143 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
8144 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
8145 best solution for them.</p>
8146
8147 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
8148 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
8149 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
8150
8151       </div>
8152       <div class="tags">
8153
8154
8155         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>.
8156
8157
8158       </div>
8159     </div>
8160     <div class="padding"></div>
8161
8162     <div class="entry">
8163       <div class="title">
8164         <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>
8165       </div>
8166       <div class="date">
8167         11th June 2013
8168       </div>
8169       <div class="body">
8170         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
8171 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
8172 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
8173 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
8174 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
8175 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
8176 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
8177 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
8178 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
8179 i915 driver used by the
8180 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8181 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
8182
8183 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
8184 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
8185 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
8186 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
8187 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
8188
8189 <pre>
8190 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
8191 update-initramfs -u -k all
8192 </pre>
8193
8194 <p>Since March 2012 there is
8195 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
8196 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
8197 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
8198 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
8199 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
8200 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
8201 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
8202 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
8203 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
8204 number.</p>
8205
8206 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
8207 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
8208
8209 <p><pre>
8210 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
8211     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
8212     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
8213  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
8214  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
8215     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
8216  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
8217     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
8218  Latency: 0
8219  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
8220  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
8221  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
8222  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
8223  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
8224  Capabilities: <access denied>
8225  Kernel driver in use: i915
8226 </pre></p>
8227
8228 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
8229
8230 <p><pre>
8231 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
8232        ...
8233         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
8234         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
8235        ...
8236 }
8237 </pre></p>
8238
8239 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
8240 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
8241 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
8242 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
8243 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
8244 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
8245 yet shown up in
8246 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
8247 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
8248 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
8249 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
8250 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
8251 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
8252
8253 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
8254 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
8255 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
8256 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
8257 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
8258 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
8259 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
8260 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
8261 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
8262 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
8263 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
8264 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
8265
8266 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
8267 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
8268 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
8269 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
8270 backlight.</p>
8271
8272       </div>
8273       <div class="tags">
8274
8275
8276         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8277
8278
8279       </div>
8280     </div>
8281     <div class="padding"></div>
8282
8283     <div class="entry">
8284       <div class="title">
8285         <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>
8286       </div>
8287       <div class="date">
8288         10th June 2013
8289       </div>
8290       <div class="body">
8291         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8292 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8293
8294 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
8295 2013-06-10</strong></p>
8296
8297 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8298 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8299
8300 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8301
8302 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8303 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8304 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8305 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8306 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8307 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8308 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8309 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8310 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8311 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8312 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8313 desktop contains
8314 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8315 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8316 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8317 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8318
8319 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8320 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8321 Squeeze release.</p>
8322
8323 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8324
8325 <ul>
8326
8327 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
8328 <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).
8329 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
8330 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
8331 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
8332
8333 </ul>
8334
8335 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8336
8337 <ul>
8338
8339 <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.
8340 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
8341 <li>New Romanian translation.
8342 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
8343 <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).
8344 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
8345 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
8346 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
8347 <li>More testsuite tests.
8348 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
8349 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
8350
8351 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
8352 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
8353
8354 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
8355 them up with GOsa².</li>
8356
8357 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
8358
8359 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
8360 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
8361 entered password). </li>
8362
8363 </ul>
8364
8365 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8366
8367 <ul>
8368
8369 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
8370
8371 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8372 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
8373 missing import feature).</li>
8374
8375 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
8376
8377 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
8378 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
8379 unfixed.</li>
8380
8381 </ul>
8382
8383 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8384
8385 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8386
8387 <ul>
8388
8389 <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>
8390
8391 <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>
8392
8393 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
8394
8395 </ul>
8396
8397 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
8398 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
8399
8400 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8401
8402 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8403
8404       </div>
8405       <div class="tags">
8406
8407
8408         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>.
8409
8410
8411       </div>
8412     </div>
8413     <div class="padding"></div>
8414
8415     <div class="entry">
8416       <div class="title">
8417         <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>
8418       </div>
8419       <div class="date">
8420          5th June 2013
8421       </div>
8422       <div class="body">
8423         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
8424 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
8425 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
8426 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
8427 the project:
8428
8429 <ol>
8430
8431 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
8432   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
8433   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
8434   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
8435   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
8436
8437 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
8438   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
8439   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
8440   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
8441   #698840</a>.</li>
8442
8443 </ol>
8444
8445 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
8446 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
8447 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
8448
8449       </div>
8450       <div class="tags">
8451
8452
8453         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>.
8454
8455
8456       </div>
8457     </div>
8458     <div class="padding"></div>
8459
8460     <div class="entry">
8461       <div class="title">
8462         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
8463       </div>
8464       <div class="date">
8465          4th June 2013
8466       </div>
8467       <div class="body">
8468         <p>It has been a while since my last English
8469 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8470 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
8471 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
8472 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
8473 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
8474
8475 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8476
8477 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
8478 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
8479 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
8480 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
8481
8482 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
8483 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
8484 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
8485
8486 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8487 project?</strong></p>
8488
8489 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
8490 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
8491 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
8492 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
8493 manual.
8494
8495 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
8496 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
8497 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
8498 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
8499
8500 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
8501 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
8502 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
8503 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
8504 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
8505 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
8506 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
8507 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
8508 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
8509 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
8510
8511 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
8512 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
8513 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
8514 beautiful project.</p>
8515
8516 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8517 Edu?</strong></p>
8518
8519 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
8520 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
8521 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
8522
8523 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
8524 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
8525 of educational free software.</p>
8526
8527 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8528 Edu?</strong></p>
8529
8530 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
8531 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
8532 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
8533 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
8534 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
8535
8536 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
8537 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
8538 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
8539 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
8540 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
8541 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
8542 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
8543 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
8544
8545 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8546
8547 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
8548 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
8549 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
8550 also using the mathematical software
8551 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
8552 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
8553 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
8554
8555 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
8556 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
8557 statistics?</strong></p>
8558
8559 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
8560 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
8561 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
8562 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
8563
8564 <ul>
8565
8566 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
8567 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
8568 constructions in planar geometry
8569
8570 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
8571 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
8572 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
8573
8574 </ul>
8575
8576 <p>I like also
8577 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
8578 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
8579 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
8580
8581 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8582 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8583
8584 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
8585
8586 <ul>
8587
8588 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
8589
8590 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
8591     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
8592     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
8593
8594 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
8595
8596 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
8597     system.</li>
8598
8599 </ul>
8600
8601       </div>
8602       <div class="tags">
8603
8604
8605         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>.
8606
8607
8608       </div>
8609     </div>
8610     <div class="padding"></div>
8611
8612     <div class="entry">
8613       <div class="title">
8614         <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>
8615       </div>
8616       <div class="date">
8617          1st June 2013
8618       </div>
8619       <div class="body">
8620         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8621 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
8622 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
8623 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
8624 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
8625 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
8626 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
8627 program.</p>
8628
8629 <!-- 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 -->
8630
8631 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
8632 <p>
8633 <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>
8634 <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>
8635 <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>
8636 <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>
8637 <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>
8638 <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>
8639 <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>
8640 <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>
8641 <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>
8642 <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>
8643 <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>
8644 <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>
8645 <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>
8646 <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>
8647 </p>
8648
8649 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
8650 <p>
8651 <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>
8652 <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>
8653 <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>
8654 <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>
8655 <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>
8656 <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>
8657 </p>
8658
8659 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
8660 <p>
8661 <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>
8662 </p>
8663
8664 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
8665 <p>
8666 <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>
8667 <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>
8668 <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>
8669 <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>
8670 <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>
8671 <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>
8672 <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>
8673 <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>
8674 <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>
8675 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
8676 <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>
8677 </p>
8678
8679 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
8680 <p>
8681 <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>
8682 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
8683 </p>
8684
8685 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
8686 <p>
8687 <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>
8688 <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>
8689 <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>
8690 </p>
8691
8692 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
8693 <p>
8694 <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>
8695 <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>
8696 <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>
8697 <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>
8698 <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>
8699 </p>
8700
8701 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
8702 <p>
8703 <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>
8704 <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>
8705 <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>
8706 <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>
8707 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
8708 <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>
8709 <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>
8710 <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>
8711 <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>
8712 <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>
8713 <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>
8714 <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>
8715 <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>
8716 <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>
8717 <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>
8718 <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>
8719 <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>
8720 </p>
8721
8722 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
8723 <p>
8724 <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>
8725 <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>
8726 </p>
8727
8728 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
8729 <p>
8730 <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>
8731 <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>
8732 <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>
8733 <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>
8734 <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>
8735 <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>
8736 <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>
8737 <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>
8738 <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>
8739 <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>
8740 </p>
8741
8742 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
8743 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
8744 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
8745 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
8746 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
8747 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
8748 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
8749
8750       </div>
8751       <div class="tags">
8752
8753
8754         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>.
8755
8756
8757       </div>
8758     </div>
8759     <div class="padding"></div>
8760
8761     <div class="entry">
8762       <div class="title">
8763         <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>
8764       </div>
8765       <div class="date">
8766         27th May 2013
8767       </div>
8768       <div class="body">
8769         <p>Two days ago, I asked
8770 <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
8771 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
8772 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
8773 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
8774 and Windows 8.</p>
8775
8776 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
8777 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
8778 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
8779 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
8780 enough to tell.</p>
8781
8782 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
8783 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
8784 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
8785 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
8786 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
8787 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
8788 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
8789 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
8790 to follow.</p>
8791
8792 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
8793 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
8794 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
8795 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
8796 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
8797 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
8798 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
8799 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
8800
8801 <p>I've updated the
8802 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
8803 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
8804 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
8805 machine.</p>
8806
8807 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
8808 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
8809
8810       </div>
8811       <div class="tags">
8812
8813
8814         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8815
8816
8817       </div>
8818     </div>
8819     <div class="padding"></div>
8820
8821     <div class="entry">
8822       <div class="title">
8823         <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>
8824       </div>
8825       <div class="date">
8826         25th May 2013
8827       </div>
8828       <div class="body">
8829         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
8830 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
8831 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
8832 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
8833 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
8834 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
8835
8836 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
8837 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
8838 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
8839 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
8840 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
8841 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
8842 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
8843 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
8844 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
8845 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
8846
8847 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
8848 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8849 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
8850 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
8851 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
8852 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
8853
8854 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
8855 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
8856 on new Laptops?</p>
8857
8858       </div>
8859       <div class="tags">
8860
8861
8862         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8863
8864
8865       </div>
8866     </div>
8867     <div class="padding"></div>
8868
8869     <div class="entry">
8870       <div class="title">
8871         <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>
8872       </div>
8873       <div class="date">
8874         17th May 2013
8875       </div>
8876       <div class="body">
8877         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
8878 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
8879 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
8880 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
8881 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
8882 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
8883 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
8884 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
8885 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
8886 donate some money</a>.
8887
8888 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
8889 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
8890 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
8891 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
8892 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
8893
8894 <p>The script,
8895 <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/>
8896 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
8897 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
8898 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
8899
8900 <ol>
8901
8902 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
8903 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
8904 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
8905     our configuration.</li>
8906 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
8907     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
8908     according to the profile specified in the config above,
8909     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
8910 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
8911     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
8912 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
8913
8914 </ol>
8915
8916 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
8917 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
8918 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
8919 the needed packages.</p>
8920
8921 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
8922 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
8923 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
8924 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
8925 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
8926 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
8927
8928 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
8929 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
8930 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
8931
8932 <p><pre>
8933 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
8934 DESKTOP="lxde"
8935 </pre></p>
8936
8937 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
8938 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
8939 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
8940 boot.</p>
8941
8942       </div>
8943       <div class="tags">
8944
8945
8946         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>.
8947
8948
8949       </div>
8950     </div>
8951     <div class="padding"></div>
8952
8953     <div class="entry">
8954       <div class="title">
8955         <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>
8956       </div>
8957       <div class="date">
8958         14th May 2013
8959       </div>
8960       <div class="body">
8961         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8962 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
8963 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8964
8965 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
8966 2013-05-14</strong></p>
8967
8968 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8969 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
8970 codename "Wheezy".</p>
8971
8972 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8973
8974 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
8975 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
8976 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
8977 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
8978 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
8979 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
8980 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
8981 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
8982
8983 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8984 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8985 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8986
8987 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8988 <ul>
8989   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
8990     default.</li>
8991   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
8992   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
8993   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
8994     ibus-anthy.</li>
8995 </ul>
8996
8997 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8998 <ul>
8999
9000   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
9001     reliability improvements.</li>
9002   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
9003     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
9004   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
9005     problems.</li>
9006   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
9007     direct:// URL.</li>
9008   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
9009   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
9010   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
9011   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
9012     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
9013   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
9014     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
9015 </ul>
9016
9017 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
9018 <ul>
9019
9020   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
9021     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
9022     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
9023   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
9024   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
9025     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
9026   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
9027   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
9028   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
9029     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
9030   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
9031     password submission problem
9032     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
9033
9034 </ul>
9035
9036 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9037
9038 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
9039 <ul>
9040
9041   <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>
9042   <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>
9043   <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>
9044
9045 </ul>
9046
9047 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
9048
9049 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
9050
9051 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9052
9053 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9054
9055       </div>
9056       <div class="tags">
9057
9058
9059         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>.
9060
9061
9062       </div>
9063     </div>
9064     <div class="padding"></div>
9065
9066     <div class="entry">
9067       <div class="title">
9068         <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>
9069       </div>
9070       <div class="date">
9071         11th May 2013
9072       </div>
9073       <div class="body">
9074         <P>In January,
9075 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
9076 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
9077 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
9078 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
9079 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
9080 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
9081 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
9082 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
9083 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
9084 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
9085 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
9086 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
9087
9088 <p><table>
9089 <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>
9090 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
9091 <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>
9092 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
9093 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
9094 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
9095 <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>
9096 <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>
9097 <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>
9098 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
9099 </table></p>
9100
9101 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
9102 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
9103 available in experimental.</p>
9104
9105 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
9106 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
9107 for LEGO designers.</p>
9108
9109       </div>
9110       <div class="tags">
9111
9112
9113         Tags: <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>.
9114
9115
9116       </div>
9117     </div>
9118     <div class="padding"></div>
9119
9120     <div class="entry">
9121       <div class="title">
9122         <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>
9123       </div>
9124       <div class="date">
9125          5th May 2013
9126       </div>
9127       <div class="body">
9128         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
9129 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
9130 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
9131 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
9132 soon.</p>
9133
9134 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
9135 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
9136 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
9137 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
9138 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
9139 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
9140 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
9141 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
9142 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
9143 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
9144 Edu.</a>
9145
9146 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
9147 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
9148 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
9149 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
9150 follow.<p>
9151
9152       </div>
9153       <div class="tags">
9154
9155
9156         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>.
9157
9158
9159       </div>
9160     </div>
9161     <div class="padding"></div>
9162
9163     <div class="entry">
9164       <div class="title">
9165         <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>
9166       </div>
9167       <div class="date">
9168         26th April 2013
9169       </div>
9170       <div class="body">
9171         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
9172 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
9173 announcement:</p>
9174
9175 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
9176 2013-04-26</strong></p>
9177
9178 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
9179 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
9180
9181 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9182
9183 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
9184 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
9185 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
9186 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
9187 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
9188 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
9189 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
9190 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
9191 installed via the network.</p>
9192
9193 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9194 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9195 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9196
9197 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9198
9199 <ul>
9200 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
9201   <ul>
9202      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
9203      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
9204          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
9205          manual.)</li>
9206      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
9207      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
9208      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
9209      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
9210      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
9211      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
9212      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
9213      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
9214      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
9215      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
9216      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
9217      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
9218          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
9219          manual</a> for more details.</li>
9220      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
9221          installation.</li>
9222      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
9223          <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>
9224   </ul></li>
9225 </ul>
9226
9227 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
9228 <ul>
9229 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
9230     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
9231     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
9232 </ul>
9233
9234 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
9235 <ul>
9236 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
9237     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
9238     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
9239 </ul>
9240
9241 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9242 <ul>
9243 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
9244     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
9245     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
9246 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
9247     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
9248     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
9249 </ul>
9250
9251 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
9252 <ul>
9253 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
9254     yet.</li>
9255 </ul>
9256
9257 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
9258
9259 <ul>
9260 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
9261     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
9262     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
9263 </ul>
9264
9265 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9266
9267 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
9268 <ul>
9269 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9270 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9271 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
9272 </ul>
9273
9274 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
9275
9276 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
9277
9278 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9279
9280 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9281
9282       </div>
9283       <div class="tags">
9284
9285
9286         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>.
9287
9288
9289       </div>
9290     </div>
9291     <div class="padding"></div>
9292
9293     <div class="entry">
9294       <div class="title">
9295         <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>
9296       </div>
9297       <div class="date">
9298         16th April 2013
9299       </div>
9300       <div class="body">
9301         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
9302 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
9303 Details about the gathering can be found
9304 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
9305 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
9306 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
9307 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
9308 weekend.</p>
9309
9310 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
9311 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
9312 Edu release.</p>
9313
9314 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
9315
9316       </div>
9317       <div class="tags">
9318
9319
9320         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>.
9321
9322
9323       </div>
9324     </div>
9325     <div class="padding"></div>
9326
9327     <div class="entry">
9328       <div class="title">
9329         <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>
9330       </div>
9331       <div class="date">
9332          3rd April 2013
9333       </div>
9334       <div class="body">
9335         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
9336 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
9337 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
9338 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
9339
9340 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
9341 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
9342 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
9343 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
9344 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
9345 BTS. :)</p>
9346
9347       </div>
9348       <div class="tags">
9349
9350
9351         Tags: <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>.
9352
9353
9354       </div>
9355     </div>
9356     <div class="padding"></div>
9357
9358     <div class="entry">
9359       <div class="title">
9360         <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>
9361       </div>
9362       <div class="date">
9363         26th March 2013
9364       </div>
9365       <div class="body">
9366         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
9367 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
9368 font you use when printing.</p>
9369
9370 <p>Three years ago,
9371 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
9372 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
9373 changed their default front from
9374 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
9375 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
9376 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
9377 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
9378 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
9379 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
9380 prints.</p>
9381
9382 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
9383 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
9384 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
9385 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
9386 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
9387 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
9388 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
9389 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
9390 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
9391 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
9392 depend on the documents printed.</p>
9393
9394 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
9395 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
9396 and save some money in the process.</p>
9397
9398 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
9399 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
9400 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
9401 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
9402 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
9403 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
9404 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
9405 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
9406 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
9407
9408       </div>
9409       <div class="tags">
9410
9411
9412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9413
9414
9415       </div>
9416     </div>
9417     <div class="padding"></div>
9418
9419     <div class="entry">
9420       <div class="title">
9421         <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>
9422       </div>
9423       <div class="date">
9424         24th March 2013
9425       </div>
9426       <div class="body">
9427         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
9428 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
9429 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
9430 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
9431 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
9432 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
9433 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
9434 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
9435 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
9436 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
9437 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
9438 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
9439
9440 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
9441 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
9442 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
9443 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
9444 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
9445 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
9446 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
9447 all I had to do was to use the
9448 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
9449 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
9450 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
9451 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
9452 xsltproc/fop (aka
9453 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
9454 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
9455 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
9456 technical detail.</p>
9457
9458 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
9459 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
9460 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
9461 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
9462 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
9463 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
9464
9465 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
9466 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
9467 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
9468 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
9469 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
9470 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
9471 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
9472 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
9473 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
9474
9475 <p><blockquote><pre>
9476 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9477 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9478   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9479     &lt;hr/&gt;
9480   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9481 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9482 </pre></blockquote></p>
9483
9484 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9485
9486 <p><blockquote><pre>
9487 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9488 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9489   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9490     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
9491       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
9492     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
9493   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9494 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9495 </pre></blockquote></p>
9496
9497 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
9498 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
9499 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
9500 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
9501 enough.</p>
9502
9503 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
9504 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
9505 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
9506 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
9507 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
9508 look like this:</p>
9509
9510 <p><blockquote><pre>
9511 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9512 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9513   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9514     &lt;br/&gt;
9515   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9516 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9517 </pre></blockquote></p>
9518
9519 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9520
9521 <p><blockquote><pre>
9522 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9523 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
9524   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
9525   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9526     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
9527   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9528 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9529 </pre></blockquote></p>
9530
9531 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
9532 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
9533 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
9534 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
9535 page.</p>
9536
9537 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
9538 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
9539 github</a>
9540 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
9541 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
9542 days.</p>
9543
9544       </div>
9545       <div class="tags">
9546
9547
9548         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>.
9549
9550
9551       </div>
9552     </div>
9553     <div class="padding"></div>
9554
9555     <div class="entry">
9556       <div class="title">
9557         <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>
9558       </div>
9559       <div class="date">
9560         17th March 2013
9561       </div>
9562       <div class="body">
9563         <p>Via
9564 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
9565 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
9566 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
9567 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9568 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
9569 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
9570 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
9571
9572 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
9573 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
9574
9575 <blockquote>
9576 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
9577 </blockquote>
9578
9579 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
9580
9581 <blockquote>
9582 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
9583 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
9584 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
9585 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
9586 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
9587 </blockquote>
9588
9589 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
9590 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
9591 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
9592 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
9593
9594 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
9595 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
9596
9597 <blockquote>
9598 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
9599 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
9600 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
9601 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
9602 </blockquote>
9603
9604 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
9605 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
9606 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
9607 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
9608 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
9609
9610 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
9611 embedding:</p>
9612
9613 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
9614
9615       </div>
9616       <div class="tags">
9617
9618
9619         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>.
9620
9621
9622       </div>
9623     </div>
9624     <div class="padding"></div>
9625
9626     <div class="entry">
9627       <div class="title">
9628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
9629       </div>
9630       <div class="date">
9631          8th March 2013
9632       </div>
9633       <div class="body">
9634         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
9635 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9636 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
9637 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
9638 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
9639 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
9640 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
9641
9642 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
9643
9644 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
9645 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
9646
9647 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
9648 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
9649 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
9650 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
9651 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
9652 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
9653
9654 <p>Images are available for download at
9655 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
9656
9657 <p>md5sums:
9658 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9659 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9660 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9661
9662 <p>sha1sums:
9663 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9664 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9665 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9666
9667 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
9668
9669 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
9670 2013-03-03:</p>
9671
9672 <ul>
9673   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
9674   <ul>
9675         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
9676         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
9677   </ul></li>
9678   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
9679   <ul>
9680         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
9681         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
9682   </ul></li>
9683   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
9684      <ul>
9685         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
9686         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
9687         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
9688                 Closes: #664596</li>
9689         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
9690                 Closes: #664976</li>
9691         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
9692            <ul>
9693                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
9694                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
9695            </ul></li>
9696         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
9697            <ul>
9698                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
9699                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
9700                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
9701                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
9702                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
9703            </ul></li>
9704         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
9705     </ul>
9706   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
9707     <ul>
9708         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
9709     </ul></li>
9710 </ul>
9711
9712 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
9713 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
9714 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
9715 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
9716
9717 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
9718 mailinglist
9719 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
9720 </p></blockquote>
9721
9722 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
9723
9724       </div>
9725       <div class="tags">
9726
9727
9728         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>.
9729
9730
9731       </div>
9732     </div>
9733     <div class="padding"></div>
9734
9735     <div class="entry">
9736       <div class="title">
9737         <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>
9738       </div>
9739       <div class="date">
9740          3rd March 2013
9741       </div>
9742       <div class="body">
9743         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
9744 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
9745 support using
9746 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9747 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
9748 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
9749 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
9750 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
9751 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
9752 using the GNU LGPL, and
9753 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
9754
9755 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
9756 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
9757 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
9758 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
9759 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
9760 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
9761
9762 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
9763 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
9764 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
9765 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
9766 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
9767 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
9768 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
9769 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
9770 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
9771 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
9772 signal distribution is handled using
9773 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
9774 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
9775 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
9776 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
9777 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
9778 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
9779 them up a bit more first.</p>
9780
9781 <p>The development is coordinated on the
9782 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
9783 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
9784 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
9785 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
9786 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
9787 development.</p>
9788
9789       </div>
9790       <div class="tags">
9791
9792
9793         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>.
9794
9795
9796       </div>
9797     </div>
9798     <div class="padding"></div>
9799
9800     <div class="entry">
9801       <div class="title">
9802         <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>
9803       </div>
9804       <div class="date">
9805         27th February 2013
9806       </div>
9807       <div class="body">
9808         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
9809 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
9810 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
9811 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
9812 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
9813 (where I am the chair of the board) and
9814 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
9815 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
9816 GNU», with this description:
9817
9818 <p><blockquote>
9819 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
9820 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
9821 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
9822 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
9823 </blockquote></p>
9824
9825 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
9826 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
9827 am really curious how many will show up.  See
9828 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
9829 page</a> for the location details.</p>
9830
9831       </div>
9832       <div class="tags">
9833
9834
9835         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
9836
9837
9838       </div>
9839     </div>
9840     <div class="padding"></div>
9841
9842     <div class="entry">
9843       <div class="title">
9844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
9845       </div>
9846       <div class="date">
9847         15th February 2013
9848       </div>
9849       <div class="body">
9850         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
9851 now a great source of free maps available from
9852 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
9853 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
9854 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
9855 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
9856 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
9857 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
9858 page for descriptions).</p>
9859
9860 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
9861 map you can just edit the
9862 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
9863 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
9864
9865       </div>
9866       <div class="tags">
9867
9868
9869         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>.
9870
9871
9872       </div>
9873     </div>
9874     <div class="padding"></div>
9875
9876     <div class="entry">
9877       <div class="title">
9878         <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>
9879       </div>
9880       <div class="date">
9881         12th February 2013
9882       </div>
9883       <div class="body">
9884         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
9885 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
9886 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
9887 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
9888 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
9889 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
9890 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
9891 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
9892 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
9893 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
9894 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
9895 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
9896 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
9897 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
9898 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
9899 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
9900
9901 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
9902 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
9903 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
9904 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
9905 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
9906 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
9907 fields:</p>
9908
9909 <p><pre>
9910 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9911 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9912 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
9913 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9914 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9915 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9916 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9917 </pre></p>
9918
9919 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
9920 answer regarding
9921 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
9922 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
9923 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
9924 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
9925
9926 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
9927
9928 <p><pre>
9929 BEGIN:VCARD
9930 VERSION:2.1
9931 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
9932 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
9933 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
9934 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
9935 REV:20130212T095000Z
9936 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9937 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9938 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9939 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9940 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9941 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9942 END:VCARD
9943 </pre></p>
9944
9945 <p>The resulting QR code created using
9946 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
9947 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
9948 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
9949 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
9950 system.</p>
9951
9952 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
9953
9954 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
9955 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
9956 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
9957 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
9958
9959 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
9960 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
9961
9962       </div>
9963       <div class="tags">
9964
9965
9966         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>.
9967
9968
9969       </div>
9970     </div>
9971     <div class="padding"></div>
9972
9973     <div class="entry">
9974       <div class="title">
9975         <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>
9976       </div>
9977       <div class="date">
9978         10th February 2013
9979       </div>
9980       <div class="body">
9981         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
9982
9983 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
9984 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
9985 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
9986 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
9987 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
9988 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
9989 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
9990 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
9991 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
9992 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
9993 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
9994
9995 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
9996 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
9997 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
9998 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
9999 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
10000 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
10001 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
10002 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
10003 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
10004 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
10005 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
10006 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
10007 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
10008 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
10009 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
10010 ones own
10011 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
10012 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
10013 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
10014 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
10015 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
10016 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
10017 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
10018 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
10019 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
10020 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
10021 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
10022
10023 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
10024 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
10025 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
10026 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
10027 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
10028 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
10029
10030 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
10031 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
10032 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
10033
10034       </div>
10035       <div class="tags">
10036
10037
10038         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10039
10040
10041       </div>
10042     </div>
10043     <div class="padding"></div>
10044
10045     <div class="entry">
10046       <div class="title">
10047         <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>
10048       </div>
10049       <div class="date">
10050          2nd February 2013
10051       </div>
10052       <div class="body">
10053         <p>My
10054 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
10055 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
10056 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
10057 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
10058 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
10059 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
10060 version too.</p>
10061
10062 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
10063 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
10064 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
10065 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
10066 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
10067 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
10068 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
10069 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
10070
10071 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
10072 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
10073 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
10074 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
10075 it. :)</p>
10076
10077 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10078 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10079 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10080
10081       </div>
10082       <div class="tags">
10083
10084
10085         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>.
10086
10087
10088       </div>
10089     </div>
10090     <div class="padding"></div>
10091
10092     <div class="entry">
10093       <div class="title">
10094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
10095       </div>
10096       <div class="date">
10097         22nd January 2013
10098       </div>
10099       <div class="body">
10100         <p>Yesterday, I
10101 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
10102 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
10103 pluggable hardware devices, which I
10104 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
10105 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
10106 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
10107 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
10108 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
10109 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
10110 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
10111 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
10112 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
10113 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
10114
10115 <pre>
10116 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
10117 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
10118 </pre>
10119
10120 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
10121 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
10122 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
10123 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
10124
10125 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
10126 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
10127 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
10128 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
10129 word.</p>
10130
10131 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
10132 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
10133 process.</p>
10134
10135 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
10136 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
10137
10138       </div>
10139       <div class="tags">
10140
10141
10142         Tags: <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>.
10143
10144
10145       </div>
10146     </div>
10147     <div class="padding"></div>
10148
10149     <div class="entry">
10150       <div class="title">
10151         <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>
10152       </div>
10153       <div class="date">
10154         21st January 2013
10155       </div>
10156       <div class="body">
10157         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
10158 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
10159 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
10160 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
10161 it, fetch the
10162 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
10163 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
10164 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
10165 autostart script.</p>
10166
10167 <p>The design is simple:</p>
10168
10169 <ul>
10170
10171 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
10172 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
10173
10174 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
10175 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
10176 initially did.</li>
10177
10178 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
10179 the APT database, a database
10180 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
10181 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
10182
10183 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
10184 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
10185 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
10186 package or packages.</li>
10187
10188 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
10189 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
10190
10191 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
10192 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
10193
10194 </ul>
10195
10196 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
10197 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
10198 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
10199 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
10200
10201 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
10202 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
10203 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
10204 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
10205 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
10206
10207 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
10208 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
10209 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
10210 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
10211 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
10212 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
10213 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
10214 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
10215
10216 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
10217 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
10218 '<tt>svn checkout
10219 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
10220 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
10221 devscripts package.</p>
10222
10223 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
10224 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
10225 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
10226 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
10227 instructions</a> for details.</p>
10228
10229       </div>
10230       <div class="tags">
10231
10232
10233         Tags: <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>.
10234
10235
10236       </div>
10237     </div>
10238     <div class="padding"></div>
10239
10240     <div class="entry">
10241       <div class="title">
10242         <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>
10243       </div>
10244       <div class="date">
10245         19th January 2013
10246       </div>
10247       <div class="body">
10248         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
10249 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
10250 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
10251 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
10252 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
10253 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
10254 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
10255 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
10256 not a durable solution.
10257
10258 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
10259 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
10260
10261 <ul>
10262
10263 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
10264   than A4).</li>
10265 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
10266 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
10267 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
10268 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
10269 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
10270 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
10271 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
10272 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
10273 size).</li>
10274 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
10275   X.org packages.</li>
10276 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
10277   the time).
10278
10279 </ul>
10280
10281 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
10282 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
10283 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
10284 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
10285 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
10286 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
10287 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
10288 still be useful.</p>
10289
10290 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
10291 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
10292 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
10293 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
10294 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
10295 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
10296
10297       </div>
10298       <div class="tags">
10299
10300
10301         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10302
10303
10304       </div>
10305     </div>
10306     <div class="padding"></div>
10307
10308     <div class="entry">
10309       <div class="title">
10310         <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>
10311       </div>
10312       <div class="date">
10313         18th January 2013
10314       </div>
10315       <div class="body">
10316         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
10317 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
10318 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
10319 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
10320 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
10321 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
10322 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
10323
10324 <pre>
10325 #!/usr/bin/python
10326 import sys
10327 import apt
10328 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10329     cache = apt.Cache()
10330     cache.open(None)
10331     thepkgs = []
10332     for pkg in cache:
10333         version = pkg.candidate
10334         if version is None:
10335             version = pkg.installed
10336         if version is None:
10337             continue
10338         record = version.record
10339         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
10340             continue
10341         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
10342         for t in mime_types:
10343             t = t.rstrip().strip()
10344             if t == mimetype:
10345                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
10346     return thepkgs
10347 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
10348 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
10349     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
10350 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
10351 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10352     print "  %s" %pkg
10353 </pre>
10354
10355 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
10356
10357 <pre>
10358 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
10359 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
10360   gecko-mediaplayer
10361 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
10362 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
10363   browser-plugin-gnash
10364 %
10365 </pre>
10366
10367 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
10368 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
10369 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
10370 anyone working on adding it?</p>
10371
10372 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
10373 request for icweasel support for this feature is
10374 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
10375 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
10376 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
10377 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
10378
10379       </div>
10380       <div class="tags">
10381
10382
10383         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10384
10385
10386       </div>
10387     </div>
10388     <div class="padding"></div>
10389
10390     <div class="entry">
10391       <div class="title">
10392         <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>
10393       </div>
10394       <div class="date">
10395         16th January 2013
10396       </div>
10397       <div class="body">
10398         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
10399 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
10400 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
10401 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
10402 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
10403 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
10404 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
10405 downloaded by the browser.</p>
10406
10407 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
10408 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
10409 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
10410 can be found on the
10411 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
10412 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
10413 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
10414 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
10415 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
10416
10417 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
10418
10419 <pre>
10420   count MIME type
10421   ----- -----------------------
10422      32 text/plain
10423      30 audio/mpeg
10424      29 image/png
10425      28 image/jpeg
10426      27 application/ogg
10427      26 audio/x-mp3
10428      25 image/tiff
10429      25 image/gif
10430      22 image/bmp
10431      22 audio/x-wav
10432      20 audio/x-flac
10433      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10434      18 video/x-ms-asf
10435      18 audio/x-musepack
10436      18 audio/x-mpeg
10437      18 application/x-ogg
10438      17 video/mpeg
10439      17 audio/x-scpls
10440      17 audio/ogg
10441      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10442 </pre>
10443
10444 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
10445
10446 <pre>
10447   count MIME type
10448   ----- -----------------------
10449      33 text/plain
10450      32 image/png
10451      32 image/jpeg
10452      29 audio/mpeg
10453      27 image/gif
10454      26 image/tiff
10455      26 application/ogg
10456      25 audio/x-mp3
10457      22 image/bmp
10458      21 audio/x-wav
10459      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10460      19 audio/x-mpeg
10461      18 video/mpeg
10462      18 audio/x-scpls
10463      18 audio/x-flac
10464      18 application/x-ogg
10465      17 video/x-ms-asf
10466      17 text/html
10467      17 audio/x-musepack
10468      16 image/x-xbitmap
10469 </pre>
10470
10471 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
10472
10473 <pre>
10474   count MIME type
10475   ----- -----------------------
10476      31 text/plain
10477      31 image/png
10478      31 image/jpeg
10479      29 audio/mpeg
10480      28 application/ogg
10481      27 image/gif
10482      26 image/tiff
10483      26 audio/x-mp3
10484      23 audio/x-wav
10485      22 image/bmp
10486      21 audio/x-flac
10487      20 audio/x-mpegurl
10488      19 audio/x-mpeg
10489      18 video/x-ms-asf
10490      18 video/mpeg
10491      18 audio/x-scpls
10492      18 application/x-ogg
10493      17 audio/x-musepack
10494      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10495      16 video/x-msvideo
10496 </pre>
10497
10498 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
10499 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
10500 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
10501 issues.</p>
10502
10503 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
10504 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
10505
10506       </div>
10507       <div class="tags">
10508
10509
10510         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10511
10512
10513       </div>
10514     </div>
10515     <div class="padding"></div>
10516
10517     <div class="entry">
10518       <div class="title">
10519         <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>
10520       </div>
10521       <div class="date">
10522         15th January 2013
10523       </div>
10524       <div class="body">
10525         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
10526 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
10527 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
10528 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
10529 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
10530 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
10531 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
10532 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
10533 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
10534 packages.</p>
10535
10536 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
10537 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
10538 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
10539 modalias.</p>
10540
10541 <p><blockquote>
10542 Package: package-name
10543 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
10544 </blockquote></p>
10545
10546 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
10547 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
10548
10549 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
10550 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
10551
10552 <p><blockquote>
10553 Package: cheese
10554 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
10555 </blockquote></p>
10556
10557 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
10558 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
10559
10560 <p><blockquote>
10561 Package: pcmciautils
10562 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
10563 </blockquote></p>
10564
10565 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
10566 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
10567
10568 <p><blockquote>
10569 Package: colorhug-client
10570 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
10571 </blockquote></p>
10572
10573 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
10574 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
10575 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
10576
10577 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
10578 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
10579 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
10580 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
10581 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
10582 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
10583 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
10584 Raring.</p>
10585
10586 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
10587 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
10588 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
10589 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
10590 try the
10591 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
10592 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
10593 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
10594 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
10595
10596 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
10597 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
10598
10599 <p><blockquote>
10600 % ./hw-support-lookup
10601 <br>yubikey-personalization
10602 <br>%
10603 </blockquote></p>
10604
10605 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
10606 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
10607
10608 <p><blockquote>
10609 % ./hw-support-lookup
10610 <br>pcmciautils
10611 <br>%
10612 </blockquote></p>
10613
10614 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
10615 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
10616 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
10617
10618 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
10619 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
10620 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
10621 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
10622 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
10623 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
10624 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
10625 see if it work.</p>
10626
10627 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10628 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10629 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10630 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10631
10632       </div>
10633       <div class="tags">
10634
10635
10636         Tags: <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>.
10637
10638
10639       </div>
10640     </div>
10641     <div class="padding"></div>
10642
10643     <div class="entry">
10644       <div class="title">
10645         <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>
10646       </div>
10647       <div class="date">
10648         14th January 2013
10649       </div>
10650       <div class="body">
10651         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
10652 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
10653 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
10654 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
10655 in
10656 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10657 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
10658
10659 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
10660
10661 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
10662 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
10663 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
10664 &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;,
10665 &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
10666 &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;.
10667
10668 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
10669 this shell script:</p>
10670
10671 <pre>
10672 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
10673 </pre>
10674
10675 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
10676 using modinfo:</p>
10677
10678 <pre>
10679 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
10680 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
10681 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
10682 %
10683 </pre>
10684
10685 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
10686
10687 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
10688 Bridge memory controller:</p>
10689
10690 <p><blockquote>
10691 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
10692 </blockquote></p>
10693
10694 <p>This represent these values:</p>
10695
10696 <pre>
10697  v   00008086  (vendor)
10698  d   00002770  (device)
10699  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
10700  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
10701  bc  06        (bus class)
10702  sc  00        (bus subclass)
10703  i   00        (interface)
10704 </pre>
10705
10706 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
10707 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
10708 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
10709 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
10710
10711 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
10712 means.</p>
10713
10714 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
10715
10716 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
10717 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
10718
10719 <p><blockquote>
10720 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
10721 </blockquote></p>
10722
10723 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
10724
10725 <pre>
10726  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
10727  p    0001  (device product)
10728  d    0206  (bcddevice)
10729  dc     09  (device class)
10730  dsc    00  (device subclass)
10731  dp     00  (device protocol)
10732  ic     09  (interface class)
10733  isc    00  (interface subclass)
10734  ip     00  (interface protocol)
10735 </pre>
10736
10737 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
10738 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
10739 these alias entries show up:</p>
10740
10741 <p><blockquote>
10742 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
10743 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
10744 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
10745 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
10746 </blockquote></p>
10747
10748 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
10749 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
10750 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
10751
10752 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
10753
10754 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
10755 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
10756
10757 <p><blockquote>
10758 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10759 </blockquote></p>
10760
10761 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
10762
10763 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
10764
10765 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
10766 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
10767 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
10768
10769 <p><blockquote>
10770 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
10771 </blockquote></p>
10772
10773 <p>The values present are</p>
10774
10775 <pre>
10776  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
10777  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
10778  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
10779  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
10780  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
10781  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
10782  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
10783  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
10784  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
10785  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
10786  ct   10             (chassis type)
10787  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
10788 </pre>
10789
10790 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
10791 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
10792
10793 <pre>
10794   3 Desktop
10795   4 Low Profile Desktop
10796   5 Pizza Box
10797   6 Mini Tower
10798   7 Tower
10799   8 Portable
10800   9 Laptop
10801  10 Notebook
10802  11 Hand Held
10803  12 Docking Station
10804  13 All In One
10805  14 Sub Notebook
10806  15 Space-saving
10807  16 Lunch Box
10808  17 Main Server Chassis
10809  18 Expansion Chassis
10810  19 Sub Chassis
10811  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
10812  21 Peripheral Chassis
10813  22 RAID Chassis
10814  23 Rack Mount Chassis
10815  24 Sealed-case PC
10816  25 Multi-system
10817  26 CompactPCI
10818  27 AdvancedTCA
10819  28 Blade
10820  29 Blade Enclosing
10821 </pre>
10822
10823 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
10824 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
10825 claim it is a desktop.</p>
10826
10827 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
10828
10829 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
10830 test machine:</p>
10831
10832 <p><blockquote>
10833 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
10834 </blockquote></p>
10835
10836 <p>The values present are</p>
10837
10838 <pre>
10839   ty  01  (type)
10840   pr  00  (prototype)
10841   id  00  (id)
10842   ex  00  (extra)
10843 </pre>
10844
10845 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
10846 the valid values are.</p>
10847
10848 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
10849
10850 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
10851 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
10852 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
10853 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
10854 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
10855 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
10856 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
10857
10858 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
10859
10860 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
10861 one can use the following shell script:</p>
10862
10863 <pre>
10864   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
10865     echo "$id" ; \
10866     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
10867   done
10868 </pre>
10869
10870 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
10871 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
10872
10873 <pre>
10874   acpi:ACPI0003:
10875     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
10876   acpi:device:
10877   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
10878   acpi:IBM0068:
10879     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
10880     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
10881     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
10882     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
10883   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10884     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
10885     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
10886     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
10887   [...]
10888 </pre>
10889
10890 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10891 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10892 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10893 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10894
10895 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
10896 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
10897 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
10898
10899       </div>
10900       <div class="tags">
10901
10902
10903         Tags: <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>.
10904
10905
10906       </div>
10907     </div>
10908     <div class="padding"></div>
10909
10910     <div class="entry">
10911       <div class="title">
10912         <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>
10913       </div>
10914       <div class="date">
10915         10th January 2013
10916       </div>
10917       <div class="body">
10918         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
10919 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
10920 Launcher and updated the Debian package
10921 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
10922 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
10923 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
10924 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
10925 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
10926 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
10927 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
10928 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
10929 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
10930 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
10931 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
10932 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
10933 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
10934 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
10935 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
10936
10937       </div>
10938       <div class="tags">
10939
10940
10941         Tags: <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>.
10942
10943
10944       </div>
10945     </div>
10946     <div class="padding"></div>
10947
10948     <div class="entry">
10949       <div class="title">
10950         <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>
10951       </div>
10952       <div class="date">
10953          9th January 2013
10954       </div>
10955       <div class="body">
10956         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
10957 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
10958 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
10959 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
10960 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
10961 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
10962 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
10963 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
10964 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
10965 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
10966 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
10967
10968 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
10969 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
10970 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
10971 simple:
10972
10973 <ul>
10974
10975 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
10976   starting when a user log in.</li>
10977
10978 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
10979   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
10980
10981 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
10982   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
10983   packages.</li>
10984
10985 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
10986   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
10987
10988 </ul>
10989
10990 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
10991 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
10992 discover database to find packages and
10993 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
10994 packages.</p>
10995
10996 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
10997 draft package is now checked into
10998 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10999 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
11000 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
11001 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
11002 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
11003 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
11004 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
11005 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
11006 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
11007 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
11008 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
11009 because of the freeze).</p>
11010
11011 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
11012 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
11013 inserted):</p>
11014
11015 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
11016
11017 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
11018 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
11019 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
11020
11021 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
11022 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
11023 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
11024 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
11025 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
11026 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
11027 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
11028
11029 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
11030 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
11031 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
11032 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
11033 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
11034 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
11035 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
11036 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
11037 not be installed?</p>
11038
11039 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
11040 please send me an email. :)</p>
11041
11042       </div>
11043       <div class="tags">
11044
11045
11046         Tags: <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>.
11047
11048
11049       </div>
11050     </div>
11051     <div class="padding"></div>
11052
11053     <div class="entry">
11054       <div class="title">
11055         <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>
11056       </div>
11057       <div class="date">
11058          2nd January 2013
11059       </div>
11060       <div class="body">
11061         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
11062 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
11063 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
11064 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
11065 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
11066 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
11067 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
11068 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
11069 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
11070 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
11071
11072 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
11073 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
11074 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
11075
11076       </div>
11077       <div class="tags">
11078
11079
11080         Tags: <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>.
11081
11082
11083       </div>
11084     </div>
11085     <div class="padding"></div>
11086
11087     <div class="entry">
11088       <div class="title">
11089         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11090       </div>
11091       <div class="date">
11092         28th December 2012
11093       </div>
11094       <div class="body">
11095         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
11096 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11097 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
11098 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
11099 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
11100 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
11101 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
11102 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
11103 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
11104 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
11105 followed by many others. :)</p>
11106
11107 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
11108 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
11109 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
11110 you want to donate to the project.</p>
11111
11112       </div>
11113       <div class="tags">
11114
11115
11116         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>.
11117
11118
11119       </div>
11120     </div>
11121     <div class="padding"></div>
11122
11123     <div class="entry">
11124       <div class="title">
11125         <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>
11126       </div>
11127       <div class="date">
11128         25th December 2012
11129       </div>
11130       <div class="body">
11131         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
11132 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
11133
11134 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
11135 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
11136 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
11137 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
11138 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
11139 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
11140 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
11141 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
11142 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
11143 name.</p>
11144
11145 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
11146 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
11147 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
11148
11149 <blockquote><pre>
11150 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
11151 cd bitcoin
11152 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
11153 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
11154 </pre></blockquote>
11155
11156 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
11157 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
11158 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
11159 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
11160 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
11161 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
11162 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
11163 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
11164 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
11165
11166 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11167 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11168 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11169
11170       </div>
11171       <div class="tags">
11172
11173
11174         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>.
11175
11176
11177       </div>
11178     </div>
11179     <div class="padding"></div>
11180
11181     <div class="entry">
11182       <div class="title">
11183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
11184       </div>
11185       <div class="date">
11186         21st December 2012
11187       </div>
11188       <div class="body">
11189         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
11190 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
11191 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
11192 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
11193 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
11194 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
11195 is now maintained by a
11196 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
11197 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
11198 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
11199 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
11200 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
11201 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
11202 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
11203 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
11204 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
11205 Corallo in a
11206 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
11207 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
11208 Debian package.</p>
11209
11210 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
11211 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
11212 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
11213 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11214 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11215 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11216 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
11217 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
11218 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11219 new version to unstable.
11220
11221 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11222 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
11223 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11224 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
11225 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
11226 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
11227 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
11228 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
11229 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
11230 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
11231 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
11232 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
11233 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
11234 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
11235 have not tested them.</p>
11236
11237 <p>My
11238 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
11239 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
11240 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
11241 years ago, as can be
11242 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
11243 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
11244 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
11245 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
11246 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
11247 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
11248 the same address as last time,
11249 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11250
11251       </div>
11252       <div class="tags">
11253
11254
11255         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>.
11256
11257
11258       </div>
11259     </div>
11260     <div class="padding"></div>
11261
11262     <div class="entry">
11263       <div class="title">
11264         <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>
11265       </div>
11266       <div class="date">
11267         18th December 2012
11268       </div>
11269       <div class="body">
11270         <p>A few days ago I came across
11271 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
11272 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
11273 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
11274 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
11275 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
11276 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
11277 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
11278 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
11279 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
11280
11281 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
11282 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
11283 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
11284 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
11285
11286 <blockquote><pre>
11287 2004-05-27 Book Store
11288       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
11289       Liabilities:Visa
11290 </pre></blockquote>
11291
11292 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
11293 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
11294 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
11295 Spang</a>,
11296 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
11297 Keen</a>,
11298 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
11299 Cantino</a> and
11300 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
11301 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
11302 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
11303 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
11304 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
11305
11306 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
11307 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
11308 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
11309 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
11310 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
11311
11312 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
11313 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
11314 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
11315 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
11316 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
11317 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
11318 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
11319 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
11320 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
11321
11322       </div>
11323       <div class="tags">
11324
11325
11326         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>.
11327
11328
11329       </div>
11330     </div>
11331     <div class="padding"></div>
11332
11333     <div class="entry">
11334       <div class="title">
11335         <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>
11336       </div>
11337       <div class="date">
11338          6th December 2012
11339       </div>
11340       <div class="body">
11341         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
11342 Oslo</a>, we use the
11343 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
11344 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
11345 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
11346 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
11347 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
11348 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
11349 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
11350 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
11351 Python.</p>
11352
11353 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
11354 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
11355 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
11356 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
11357 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
11358 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
11359
11360 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
11361 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
11362 user currently logged in:</p>
11363
11364 <blockquote><pre>
11365 #!/usr/bin/env python
11366 import getpass
11367 import xmlrpclib
11368 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
11369 username = getpass.getuser()
11370 password = getpass.getpass()
11371 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
11372 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
11373 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
11374 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
11375 result = server.logout(sessionid)
11376 print result
11377 </pre></blockquote>
11378
11379 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
11380 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
11381
11382       </div>
11383       <div class="tags">
11384
11385
11386         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>.
11387
11388
11389       </div>
11390     </div>
11391     <div class="padding"></div>
11392
11393     <div class="entry">
11394       <div class="title">
11395         <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>
11396       </div>
11397       <div class="date">
11398         17th November 2012
11399       </div>
11400       <div class="body">
11401         <p>While working on a
11402 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
11403 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
11404 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
11405 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
11406 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
11407 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
11408
11409 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
11410 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
11411 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
11412 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
11413 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
11414 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
11415 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
11416 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
11417 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
11418 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
11419 arguments.</p>
11420
11421 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
11422 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
11423 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
11424 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
11425 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
11426 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
11427 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
11428 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
11429
11430 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
11431 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
11432 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
11433 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
11434 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
11435 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
11436 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
11437 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
11438 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
11439 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
11440 correct right holder.</p>
11441
11442 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
11443 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
11444 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
11445 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
11446 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
11447 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
11448 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
11449 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
11450 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
11451 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
11452 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
11453 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
11454 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
11455 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
11456
11457 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
11458 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
11459 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
11460
11461 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
11462 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
11463
11464       </div>
11465       <div class="tags">
11466
11467
11468         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>.
11469
11470
11471       </div>
11472     </div>
11473     <div class="padding"></div>
11474
11475     <div class="entry">
11476       <div class="title">
11477         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
11478       </div>
11479       <div class="date">
11480         14th November 2012
11481       </div>
11482       <div class="body">
11483         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
11484 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11485 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
11486 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
11487 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
11488 the people behind the German
11489 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
11490 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
11491 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
11492
11493 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11494
11495 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
11496 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
11497 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
11498
11499 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
11500 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
11501 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
11502 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
11503 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
11504 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
11505
11506 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
11507 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
11508 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
11509 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
11510 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
11511 relationship management and the communication processes in the
11512 project.</p>
11513
11514 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
11515 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
11516 and a yoga teacher.</p>
11517
11518 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11519 project?</strong></p>
11520
11521 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
11522
11523 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
11524 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
11525 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
11526 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
11527 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
11528 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
11529 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
11530 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
11531 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
11532 parents.</p>
11533
11534 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
11535 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
11536 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
11537 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
11538 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
11539 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
11540 Germany.</p>
11541
11542 <p>For information about our school project you can read
11543 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
11544 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
11545
11546 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11547 Edu?</strong></p>
11548
11549 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
11550 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
11551
11552 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
11553 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
11554 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
11555 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
11556 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
11557 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
11558 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
11559 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
11560 teachers, parents...</p>
11561
11562 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11563 Edu?</strong></p>
11564
11565 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
11566 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11567
11568 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
11569 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
11570 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
11571 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
11572 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11573
11574 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
11575 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
11576 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
11577 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
11578 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
11579 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
11580 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11581
11582 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11583
11584 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
11585 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
11586 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
11587 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
11588
11589 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11590 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11591
11592 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
11593 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
11594 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
11595 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
11596 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
11597
11598 <ul>
11599
11600 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
11601 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
11602 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
11603
11604 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
11605 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
11606 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
11607 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
11608 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
11609 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
11610 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
11611
11612 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
11613 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
11614 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
11615 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
11616
11617 </ul>
11618
11619       </div>
11620       <div class="tags">
11621
11622
11623         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>.
11624
11625
11626       </div>
11627     </div>
11628     <div class="padding"></div>
11629
11630     <div class="entry">
11631       <div class="title">
11632         <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>
11633       </div>
11634       <div class="date">
11635          4th November 2012
11636       </div>
11637       <div class="body">
11638         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
11639 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
11640 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
11641 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
11642 see how a member of the bitcoin community
11643 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
11644 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
11645 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
11646 competition.  My thoughts go to the
11647 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
11648 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
11649 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
11650 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
11651 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
11652
11653 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
11654 that the community already seem to have
11655 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
11656 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
11657 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
11658 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
11659 wealth is available.</p>
11660
11661       </div>
11662       <div class="tags">
11663
11664
11665         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>.
11666
11667
11668       </div>
11669     </div>
11670     <div class="padding"></div>
11671
11672     <div class="entry">
11673       <div class="title">
11674         <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>
11675       </div>
11676       <div class="date">
11677         26th October 2012
11678       </div>
11679       <div class="body">
11680         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
11681 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
11682 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
11683 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
11684 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
11685 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
11686 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
11687 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
11688 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
11689 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
11690 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
11691 it every time.</p>
11692
11693 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
11694 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
11695 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
11696 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
11697 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
11698 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
11699 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
11700 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
11701 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
11702 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
11703 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
11704 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
11705
11706 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
11707 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
11708 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
11709 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
11710 article: First the unplanned outage:
11711
11712 <blockquote><pre>
11713 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
11714 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
11715 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
11716 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
11717 Duration:    40 minutes
11718 Scope:       Exchange 2003
11719 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
11720              a cluster failover.
11721
11722 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
11723              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
11724 Technician:  [xxx]
11725 </pre></blockquote>
11726
11727 Next the planned outage:
11728
11729 <blockquote><pre>
11730 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
11731 Severity:    Major (Planned)
11732 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
11733 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
11734 Duration:    10 hours
11735 Scope:       H2 Transport
11736 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
11737              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
11738              4510s.
11739 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
11740              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
11741              connectivity.
11742 Technician:  [xxx]
11743 </pre></blockquote>
11744
11745 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
11746 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
11747 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
11748 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
11749 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
11750 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
11751 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
11752
11753 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
11754 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
11755 university too.  We do register
11756 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
11757 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
11758 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
11759 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
11760 for other sites to consider too?</p>
11761
11762       </div>
11763       <div class="tags">
11764
11765
11766         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>.
11767
11768
11769       </div>
11770     </div>
11771     <div class="padding"></div>
11772
11773     <div class="entry">
11774       <div class="title">
11775         <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>
11776       </div>
11777       <div class="date">
11778         22nd October 2012
11779       </div>
11780       <div class="body">
11781         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
11782 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
11783 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
11784 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
11785 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
11786 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
11787 background information is available in Norwegian from
11788 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
11789 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
11790 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
11791 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
11792 willing to
11793 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
11794 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
11795 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
11796 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
11797 sounded like
11798 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
11799 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
11800 later.</p>
11801
11802 <p>And thought this action is
11803 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
11804 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
11805 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
11806 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
11807 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
11808 rights.</p>
11809
11810 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
11811 unacceptable terms.  For example
11812 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
11813 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
11814 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
11815 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
11816 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
11817
11818 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
11819 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
11820 restored the account of the user, as reported by
11821 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
11822 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
11823 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
11824 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
11825 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
11826 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
11827 reading two opinions from
11828 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
11829 Phipps</a> and
11830 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
11831 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
11832 details about the original story.</p>
11833
11834       </div>
11835       <div class="tags">
11836
11837
11838         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>.
11839
11840
11841       </div>
11842     </div>
11843     <div class="padding"></div>
11844
11845     <div class="entry">
11846       <div class="title">
11847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
11848       </div>
11849       <div class="date">
11850         18th October 2012
11851       </div>
11852       <div class="body">
11853         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
11854 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
11855 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
11856 across a marvellous drawing by
11857 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
11858 visualising some of what is going on.
11859
11860 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
11861 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
11862
11863 <blockquote>
11864 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
11865 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
11866 </blockquote>
11867
11868 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
11869 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
11870 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
11871 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
11872 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
11873 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
11874
11875       </div>
11876       <div class="tags">
11877
11878
11879         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>.
11880
11881
11882       </div>
11883     </div>
11884     <div class="padding"></div>
11885
11886     <div class="entry">
11887       <div class="title">
11888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
11889       </div>
11890       <div class="date">
11891         12th October 2012
11892       </div>
11893       <div class="body">
11894         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
11895 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
11896 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
11897 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
11898 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
11899 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
11900 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
11901 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
11902 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
11903 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
11904 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
11905 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
11906 matter".</p>
11907
11908 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
11909 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
11910 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
11911 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
11912 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
11913 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
11914 to argue its side.</p>
11915
11916 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
11917 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
11918 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
11919 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
11920
11921 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
11922 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
11923 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
11924
11925       </div>
11926       <div class="tags">
11927
11928
11929         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>.
11930
11931
11932       </div>
11933     </div>
11934     <div class="padding"></div>
11935
11936     <div class="entry">
11937       <div class="title">
11938         <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>
11939       </div>
11940       <div class="date">
11941          3rd October 2012
11942       </div>
11943       <div class="body">
11944         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
11945 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
11946 the computer science book collection available in his local
11947 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
11948 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
11949 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
11950 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
11951 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
11952 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
11953 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
11954 recently published books.</p>
11955
11956 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
11957 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
11958 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
11959 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
11960 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
11961 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
11962 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
11963 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
11964 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
11965 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
11966 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
11967 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
11968 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
11969 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
11970 for the library that evening.</p>
11971
11972 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
11973 going to know that for example
11974 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
11975 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
11976 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
11977 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
11978 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
11979 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
11980 book right away.</p>
11981
11982       </div>
11983       <div class="tags">
11984
11985
11986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11987
11988
11989       </div>
11990     </div>
11991     <div class="padding"></div>
11992
11993     <div class="entry">
11994       <div class="title">
11995         <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>
11996       </div>
11997       <div class="date">
11998         23rd September 2012
11999       </div>
12000       <div class="body">
12001         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
12002 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
12003 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12004 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
12005 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
12006 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
12007
12008 When I started, I
12009 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12010 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
12011 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
12012 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
12013 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
12014 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
12015 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
12016
12017 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12018
12019 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
12020 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
12021 the project files currently available from
12022 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12023
12024 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12025 the updated
12026 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12027 and
12028 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12029 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12030 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12031 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12032
12033       </div>
12034       <div class="tags">
12035
12036
12037         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>.
12038
12039
12040       </div>
12041     </div>
12042     <div class="padding"></div>
12043
12044     <div class="entry">
12045       <div class="title">
12046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
12047       </div>
12048       <div class="date">
12049         17th September 2012
12050       </div>
12051       <div class="body">
12052         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
12053 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12054 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
12055 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
12056 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
12057 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
12058 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
12059
12060 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12061
12062 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
12063 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
12064 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
12065 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
12066 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
12067 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
12068 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
12069 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
12070 training is anyway very important</p>
12071
12072 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
12073 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
12074 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
12075 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
12076 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
12077
12078 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12079 project?</strong></p>
12080
12081 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
12082 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
12083 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
12084 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
12085 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
12086 hole.</p>
12087
12088 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12089 Edu?</strong></p>
12090
12091 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
12092 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
12093 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
12094 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
12095 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
12096 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
12097 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
12098 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
12099 hassle.</p>
12100
12101 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12102 Edu?</strong></p>
12103
12104 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
12105 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
12106 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
12107 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
12108 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
12109 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
12110 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
12111 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
12112
12113 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12114
12115 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
12116 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
12117 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
12118 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
12119 has the same...</p>
12120
12121 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
12122 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
12123 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
12124 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
12125
12126 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12127 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12128
12129 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
12130 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
12131 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
12132
12133 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
12134 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
12135 don't.</p>
12136
12137 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
12138 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
12139 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
12140 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
12141 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
12142 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
12143 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
12144
12145       </div>
12146       <div class="tags">
12147
12148
12149         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>.
12150
12151
12152       </div>
12153     </div>
12154     <div class="padding"></div>
12155
12156     <div class="entry">
12157       <div class="title">
12158         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
12159       </div>
12160       <div class="date">
12161         15th September 2012
12162       </div>
12163       <div class="body">
12164         <p>After the
12165 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
12166 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
12167 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
12168 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
12169 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
12170 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
12171 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
12172 was
12173 <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
12174 formal working group should be formed.</p>
12175
12176 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
12177 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
12178 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
12179 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
12180 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
12181 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
12182 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
12183 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
12184
12185 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
12186 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
12187 IETF.</p>
12188
12189       </div>
12190       <div class="tags">
12191
12192
12193         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>.
12194
12195
12196       </div>
12197     </div>
12198     <div class="padding"></div>
12199
12200     <div class="entry">
12201       <div class="title">
12202         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
12203       </div>
12204       <div class="date">
12205         12th September 2012
12206       </div>
12207       <div class="body">
12208         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
12209 publication of of
12210 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
12211 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
12212 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
12213 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
12214 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
12215 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
12216 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
12217 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
12218 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
12219 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
12220
12221 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
12222 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
12223 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
12224 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
12225
12226 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
12227 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
12228
12229       </div>
12230       <div class="tags">
12231
12232
12233         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>.
12234
12235
12236       </div>
12237     </div>
12238     <div class="padding"></div>
12239
12240     <div class="entry">
12241       <div class="title">
12242         <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>
12243       </div>
12244       <div class="date">
12245          7th September 2012
12246       </div>
12247       <div class="body">
12248         <p>As I
12249 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12250 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12251 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12252 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12253 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12254
12255 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12256 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12257 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12258 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12259
12260 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12261 PostScript formats at
12262 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12263 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12264
12265       </div>
12266       <div class="tags">
12267
12268
12269         Tags: <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>.
12270
12271
12272       </div>
12273     </div>
12274     <div class="padding"></div>
12275
12276     <div class="entry">
12277       <div class="title">
12278         <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>
12279       </div>
12280       <div class="date">
12281         23rd August 2012
12282       </div>
12283       <div class="body">
12284         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
12285 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
12286 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
12287 revisit the great site
12288 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
12289 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
12290 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
12291
12292       </div>
12293       <div class="tags">
12294
12295
12296         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>.
12297
12298
12299       </div>
12300     </div>
12301     <div class="padding"></div>
12302
12303     <div class="entry">
12304       <div class="title">
12305         <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>
12306       </div>
12307       <div class="date">
12308         17th August 2012
12309       </div>
12310       <div class="body">
12311         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
12312 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12313 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12314 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
12315 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
12316 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
12317 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
12318 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
12319 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
12320 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
12321 summer I
12322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12323 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
12324 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
12325
12326 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
12327 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
12328 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
12329 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
12330 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
12331 progress:</p>
12332
12333 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12334
12335 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
12336 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
12337 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
12338 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
12339 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
12340 english version of the docbook source.</p>
12341
12342 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12343 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12344 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12345 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12346 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12347 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
12348 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
12349 project files currently available from <a
12350 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12351
12352 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12353 the updated
12354 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12355 and
12356 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12357 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12358 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12359 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12360
12361       </div>
12362       <div class="tags">
12363
12364
12365         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>.
12366
12367
12368       </div>
12369     </div>
12370     <div class="padding"></div>
12371
12372     <div class="entry">
12373       <div class="title">
12374         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
12375       </div>
12376       <div class="date">
12377         10th August 2012
12378       </div>
12379       <div class="body">
12380         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
12381 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
12382 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
12383 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
12384 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
12385 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
12386 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
12387 case for the language
12388 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
12389 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
12390
12391 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
12392 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
12393 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
12394 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
12395 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
12396
12397 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
12398 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
12399 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
12400 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
12401 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
12402 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
12403 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
12404 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
12405 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
12406 alias for 'nb'.</p>
12407
12408 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
12409 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
12410 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
12411 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
12412 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
12413 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
12414 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
12415 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
12416 at the same time. :(</p>
12417
12418 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
12419 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
12420 processors. :(</p>
12421
12422 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
12423
12424       </div>
12425       <div class="tags">
12426
12427
12428         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>.
12429
12430
12431       </div>
12432     </div>
12433     <div class="padding"></div>
12434
12435     <div class="entry">
12436       <div class="title">
12437         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
12438       </div>
12439       <div class="date">
12440         31st July 2012
12441       </div>
12442       <div class="body">
12443         <p>I tried to send this text to the
12444 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
12445 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
12446 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
12447 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
12448 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
12449 out.</p>
12450
12451 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
12452 learning curve at the moment.</p>
12453
12454 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
12455 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
12456 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
12457 available from
12458 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
12459 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
12460 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
12461 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
12462 Squeeze.</p>
12463
12464 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
12465 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
12466 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
12467 problems.</p>
12468
12469 <ul>
12470
12471 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
12472    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
12473    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
12474    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
12475    index references spanning several pages (See
12476    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
12477    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
12478    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
12479
12480 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
12481    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
12482    #683163</a>).</li>
12483
12484 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
12485    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
12486    footnote and text body, see
12487    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
12488    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
12489    refs listed are not right).</li>
12490
12491 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
12492
12493 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
12494    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
12495
12496 </ul>
12497
12498 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
12499 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
12500 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
12501
12502 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
12503
12504       </div>
12505       <div class="tags">
12506
12507
12508         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>.
12509
12510
12511       </div>
12512     </div>
12513     <div class="padding"></div>
12514
12515     <div class="entry">
12516       <div class="title">
12517         <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>
12518       </div>
12519       <div class="date">
12520         21st July 2012
12521       </div>
12522       <div class="body">
12523         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
12524 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
12525 norwegian version</a> of the book
12526 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12527 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
12528 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
12529 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
12530 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12531
12532 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
12533 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
12534 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
12535 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
12536 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
12537 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
12538 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
12539 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
12540 print. :)</p>
12541
12542 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
12543 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
12544 language.</p>
12545
12546       </div>
12547       <div class="tags">
12548
12549
12550         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>.
12551
12552
12553       </div>
12554     </div>
12555     <div class="padding"></div>
12556
12557     <div class="entry">
12558       <div class="title">
12559         <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>
12560       </div>
12561       <div class="date">
12562         16th July 2012
12563       </div>
12564       <div class="body">
12565         <p>I am currently working on a
12566 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
12567 to translate</a> the book
12568 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
12569 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
12570 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
12571 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
12572 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
12573 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
12574 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12575
12576 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
12577 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
12578 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
12579 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
12580 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
12581 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
12582 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
12583 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
12584 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
12585
12586       </div>
12587       <div class="tags">
12588
12589
12590         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>.
12591
12592
12593       </div>
12594     </div>
12595     <div class="padding"></div>
12596
12597     <div class="entry">
12598       <div class="title">
12599         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
12600       </div>
12601       <div class="date">
12602          9th July 2012
12603       </div>
12604       <div class="body">
12605         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12606 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
12607 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
12608 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
12609 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
12610 to adjust and scale the just released
12611 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12612 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
12613 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
12614
12615 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12616
12617 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
12618 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
12619 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
12620 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
12621 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
12622 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
12623 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
12624 perspective when working with IT.</p>
12625
12626 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12627 project?</strong></p>
12628
12629 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
12630 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
12631 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
12632 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
12633 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
12634 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
12635
12636 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12637 Edu?</strong></p>
12638
12639 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
12640 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
12641 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
12642 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
12643 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
12644 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
12645 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
12646 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
12647 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
12648 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
12649 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
12650 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
12651 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
12652 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
12653 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
12654 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
12655 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
12656 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
12657 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
12658 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
12659 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
12660 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
12661 quicker to update.
12662
12663 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12664 Edu?</strong></p>
12665
12666 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
12667 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
12668 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
12669 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
12670 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
12671 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
12672
12673 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
12674 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
12675 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
12676 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
12677 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
12678 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
12679 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
12680 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
12681 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
12682 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
12683 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
12684 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
12685 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
12686 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
12687 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
12688
12689 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
12690 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
12691 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
12692 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
12693 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
12694 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
12695 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
12696 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
12697
12698 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
12699 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
12700 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
12701 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
12702 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
12703 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
12704 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
12705 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
12706 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
12707 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
12708 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
12709 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
12710 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
12711 sound file.</p>
12712
12713 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
12714 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
12715 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
12716 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
12717 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
12718 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
12719 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
12720 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
12721 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
12722
12723 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12724
12725 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
12726 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
12727 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
12728 )</p>
12729
12730 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12731 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12732
12733 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
12734 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
12735 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
12736 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
12737 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
12738 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
12739 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
12740 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
12741 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
12742 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
12743 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
12744 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
12745 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
12746 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
12747 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
12748
12749 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
12750 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
12751 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
12752 management with Airtime</a>,
12753 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
12754 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
12755 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
12756 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
12757 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
12758
12759       </div>
12760       <div class="tags">
12761
12762
12763         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>.
12764
12765
12766       </div>
12767     </div>
12768     <div class="padding"></div>
12769
12770     <div class="entry">
12771       <div class="title">
12772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
12773       </div>
12774       <div class="date">
12775          8th July 2012
12776       </div>
12777       <div class="body">
12778         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
12779 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
12780 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
12781 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
12782 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
12783 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
12784 Steinberg in his blog post
12785 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
12786 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
12787 spending of your tax money.</p>
12788
12789 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
12790 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
12791 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
12792 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
12793 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
12794 purchases.</p>
12795
12796       </div>
12797       <div class="tags">
12798
12799
12800         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>.
12801
12802
12803       </div>
12804     </div>
12805     <div class="padding"></div>
12806
12807     <div class="entry">
12808       <div class="title">
12809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
12810       </div>
12811       <div class="date">
12812          7th July 2012
12813       </div>
12814       <div class="body">
12815         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12816 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
12817 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
12818 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
12819 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
12820 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
12821 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
12822 receive.  The software is
12823
12824 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
12825 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
12826 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
12827 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
12828 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
12829 Windows</a>.</p>
12830
12831 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
12832 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
12833
12834 <p><ul>
12835
12836   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
12837     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
12838
12839   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
12840     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
12841     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
12842     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
12843     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
12844     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
12845     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
12846     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
12847     </li>
12848
12849   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
12850     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
12851
12852   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
12853     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
12854
12855   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
12856     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
12857
12858   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
12859
12860   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
12861     formats </li>
12862
12863   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
12864     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
12865     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
12866     (as separate sets)</li>
12867
12868   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
12869     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
12870     percentage)</li>
12871
12872   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
12873     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
12874     memory):
12875     <ul>
12876       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
12877       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
12878       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
12879       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
12880       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
12881       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
12882       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
12883       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
12884       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
12885       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
12886           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
12887           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
12888           activity)</li>
12889       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
12890       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
12891     </ul></li>
12892
12893   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
12894     <ul>
12895       <li>Break periods</li>
12896       <li>For teacher(s):
12897         <ul>
12898           <li>Not available periods</li>
12899           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
12900           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12901           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12902           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12903           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12904
12905           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12906             days per week</li>
12907         </ul></li>
12908       <li>For students (sets):
12909         <ul>
12910           <li>Not available periods</li>
12911           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
12912           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12913           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12914           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12915           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12916
12917           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12918             days per week</li>
12919         </ul></li>
12920       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
12921         <ul>
12922           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
12923           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
12924           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
12925           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
12926           <li>End(s) students day</li>
12927           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
12928           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
12929             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
12930           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
12931           <li>Not overlapping</li>
12932           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
12933           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
12934         </ul></li>
12935     </ul></li>
12936
12937   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
12938     <ul>
12939       <li>Room not available periods</li>
12940       <li>For teacher(s):
12941         <ul>
12942           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12943           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12944           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12945         </ul>
12946       </li>
12947
12948       <li>For students (sets):
12949         <ul>
12950           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12951           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12952           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12953         </ul>
12954       </li>
12955       <li>Preferred room(s):
12956         <ul>
12957           <li>For a subject</li>
12958           <li>For an activity tag</li>
12959           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
12960           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
12961         </ul>
12962       </li>
12963
12964       <li>For a set of activities:
12965         <ul>
12966           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
12967         </ul>
12968       </li>
12969     </ul>
12970   </li>
12971 </ul></p>
12972
12973 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
12974 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
12975 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
12976 manually, check it out.
12977
12978 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
12979 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
12980 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
12981 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
12982 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
12983 section</a>.</p>
12984
12985       </div>
12986       <div class="tags">
12987
12988
12989         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>.
12990
12991
12992       </div>
12993     </div>
12994     <div class="padding"></div>
12995
12996     <div class="entry">
12997       <div class="title">
12998         <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>
12999       </div>
13000       <div class="date">
13001          3rd July 2012
13002       </div>
13003       <div class="body">
13004         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
13005 project (Norwegian version of
13006 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
13007 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
13008 a problem with the municipalities using
13009 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
13010 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
13011 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
13012 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
13013 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
13014 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
13015 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
13016 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
13017 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
13018 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
13019 the From: header.</p>
13020
13021 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
13022 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
13023 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
13024 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
13025 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
13026 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
13027 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
13028 behaviour.</p>
13029
13030 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
13031 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
13032 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
13033 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
13034 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
13035 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
13036 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
13037
13038       </div>
13039       <div class="tags">
13040
13041
13042         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>.
13043
13044
13045       </div>
13046     </div>
13047     <div class="padding"></div>
13048
13049     <div class="entry">
13050       <div class="title">
13051         <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>
13052       </div>
13053       <div class="date">
13054         26th June 2012
13055       </div>
13056       <div class="body">
13057         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
13058 another interview with the people behind
13059 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13060 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
13061 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
13062 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
13063 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
13064 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13065 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13066
13067 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13068
13069 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
13070 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
13071 ICT in schools</p>
13072
13073 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13074 project?</strong></p>
13075
13076 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
13077 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
13078 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
13079 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
13080
13081 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13082 Edu?</strong></p>
13083
13084 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
13085 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
13086 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
13087 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
13088
13089 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13090 Edu?</strong></p>
13091
13092 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
13093 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
13094 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
13095 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
13096 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
13097 technologies in school.</p>
13098
13099 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13100
13101 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
13102 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
13103 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
13104
13105 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13106 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13107
13108 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
13109 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
13110 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
13111 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
13112
13113 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
13114 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
13115 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
13116
13117 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
13118 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
13119 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
13120 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
13121 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
13122 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
13123 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
13124 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
13125 working there.</p>
13126
13127       </div>
13128       <div class="tags">
13129
13130
13131         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>.
13132
13133
13134       </div>
13135     </div>
13136     <div class="padding"></div>
13137
13138     <div class="entry">
13139       <div class="title">
13140         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
13141       </div>
13142       <div class="date">
13143         24th June 2012
13144       </div>
13145       <div class="body">
13146         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
13147 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
13148 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
13149 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
13150 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
13151 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
13152 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
13153 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
13154 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
13155 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
13156 missing in my book.</p>
13157
13158 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
13159 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
13160 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
13161 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
13162 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
13163 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
13164 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
13165
13166       </div>
13167       <div class="tags">
13168
13169
13170         Tags: <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>.
13171
13172
13173       </div>
13174     </div>
13175     <div class="padding"></div>
13176
13177     <div class="entry">
13178       <div class="title">
13179         <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>
13180       </div>
13181       <div class="date">
13182         11th June 2012
13183       </div>
13184       <div class="body">
13185         <p>During my work on
13186 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
13187 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
13188 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
13189 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
13190 explanation.</p>
13191
13192 <p><ul>
13193
13194 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
13195 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
13196 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
13197 system depend on tasksel tasks in
13198 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
13199 installation.</li>
13200
13201 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
13202 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
13203 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
13204 at least try to enable it for these services:
13205 <ul>
13206
13207   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
13208     quotas.</li>
13209   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
13210   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
13211   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
13212   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
13213   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
13214
13215 </ul></li>
13216
13217 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
13218 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
13219 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
13220 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
13221
13222 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
13223 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
13224 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
13225
13226 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
13227 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
13228 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
13229 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
13230 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
13231 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
13232
13233 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
13234 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
13235 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
13236 in Wheezy.
13237
13238 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
13239 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
13240 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
13241
13242 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
13243 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
13244 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
13245 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
13246
13247 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
13248 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
13249 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
13250 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
13251
13252 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
13253 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
13254 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
13255
13256 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
13257 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
13258 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
13259
13260 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
13261 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
13262 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
13263 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
13264 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
13265
13266 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
13267 <ul>
13268
13269 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
13270 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
13271 <li>and probably more?</li>
13272 </ul></li>
13273
13274 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
13275 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
13276 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
13277 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
13278 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
13279 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
13280 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
13281 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
13282
13283
13284 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
13285 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
13286 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
13287 use.</li>
13288
13289 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
13290 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
13291 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
13292 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
13293 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
13294
13295 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
13296 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
13297 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
13298 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
13299 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
13300 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
13301
13302 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
13303 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
13304 There are at least three implementations,
13305 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
13306 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
13307 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
13308 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
13309 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
13310 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
13311 given room.</li>
13312
13313 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
13314 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
13315 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
13316 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
13317 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
13318 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
13319 investigated.</li>
13320
13321 </ul></p>
13322
13323 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
13324 version.</p>
13325
13326       </div>
13327       <div class="tags">
13328
13329
13330         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>.
13331
13332
13333       </div>
13334     </div>
13335     <div class="padding"></div>
13336
13337     <div class="entry">
13338       <div class="title">
13339         <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>
13340       </div>
13341       <div class="date">
13342          9th June 2012
13343       </div>
13344       <div class="body">
13345         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
13346 <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
13347 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
13348 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
13349 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
13350 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
13351 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
13352 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
13353 be willing to pay for.</p>
13354
13355 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
13356 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
13357 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
13358 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
13359 Orwell</a>.</p>
13360
13361       </div>
13362       <div class="tags">
13363
13364
13365         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>.
13366
13367
13368       </div>
13369     </div>
13370     <div class="padding"></div>
13371
13372     <div class="entry">
13373       <div class="title">
13374         <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>
13375       </div>
13376       <div class="date">
13377          6th June 2012
13378       </div>
13379       <div class="body">
13380         <p>A few days ago
13381 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
13382 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
13383 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
13384 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
13385 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
13386 code for HP, Dell and IBM
13387 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
13388 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
13389 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
13390 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
13391 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
13392
13393 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
13394 output:
13395
13396 <blockquote><pre>
13397 % 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>
13398 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": ""})
13399 %
13400 </pre></blockquote>
13401
13402 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
13403 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
13404 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
13405
13406       </div>
13407       <div class="tags">
13408
13409
13410         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>.
13411
13412
13413       </div>
13414     </div>
13415     <div class="padding"></div>
13416
13417     <div class="entry">
13418       <div class="title">
13419         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
13420       </div>
13421       <div class="date">
13422          2nd June 2012
13423       </div>
13424       <div class="body">
13425         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
13426 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13427 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
13428 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
13429 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13430 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13431
13432 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13433
13434 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
13435 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
13436 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
13437 by Angela).</p>
13438
13439 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
13440 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
13441 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
13442 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
13443 becoming an osteopath.</p>
13444
13445 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
13446 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
13447 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
13448 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
13449 skills with communication skills.</p>
13450
13451 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13452 project?</strong></p>
13453
13454 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
13455 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
13456 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
13457 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
13458 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
13459
13460 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
13461 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
13462 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
13463 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
13464 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
13465 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
13466 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
13467 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
13468 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
13469
13470 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
13471 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
13472 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
13473
13474 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
13475
13476 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
13477 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
13478 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
13479 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
13480 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
13481 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
13482 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
13483 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
13484 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
13485 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
13486 point.</p>
13487
13488 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
13489 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
13490 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
13491 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
13492 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
13493 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
13494
13495 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
13496 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
13497 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
13498 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
13499 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
13500 spare time.</p>
13501
13502 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
13503 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
13504 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
13505 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
13506 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
13507
13508 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
13509 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
13510 avoidance do exist.</p>
13511
13512 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
13513 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
13514 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
13515 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
13516 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
13517 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
13518 and probably a gain for all.</p>
13519
13520 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13521 Edu?</strong></p>
13522
13523 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
13524 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
13525 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
13526 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
13527 project communication, honest communication within the group of
13528 developers, etc.</p>
13529
13530 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13531 Edu?</strong></p>
13532
13533 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
13534
13535 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
13536 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
13537 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
13538 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
13539 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
13540 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
13541 contribute).</p>
13542
13543 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
13544 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
13545 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
13546 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
13547 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
13548 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
13549 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
13550 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
13551 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
13552 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13553
13554 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13555
13556 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
13557
13558 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
13559 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
13560 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
13561
13562 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
13563 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
13564 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
13565 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
13566
13567 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
13568 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
13569 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
13570 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
13571 whiteboard.</p>
13572
13573 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
13574
13575 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13576 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13577
13578 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
13579 enrol people.</p>
13580
13581       </div>
13582       <div class="tags">
13583
13584
13585         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>.
13586
13587
13588       </div>
13589     </div>
13590     <div class="padding"></div>
13591
13592     <div class="entry">
13593       <div class="title">
13594         <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>
13595       </div>
13596       <div class="date">
13597          1st June 2012
13598       </div>
13599       <div class="body">
13600         <p>A few years ago I wrote
13601 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
13602 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
13603 I have learned from colleges here at the
13604 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
13605 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
13606 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
13607 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
13608 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
13609
13610 <p><pre>
13611 use strict;
13612 use warnings;
13613 use SOAP::Lite;
13614 use Data::Dumper;
13615 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
13616 my $App = 'test';
13617 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
13618 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
13619 my $s = SOAP::Lite
13620     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
13621     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
13622     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
13623     ;
13624 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
13625     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
13626     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
13627     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
13628 );
13629 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
13630 </pre></p>
13631
13632 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
13633
13634 <p><pre>
13635 $VAR1 = {
13636           'Asset' => {
13637                      'Entitlements' => {
13638                                        'EntitlementData' => [
13639                                                             {
13640                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13641                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13642                                                               'Provider' => '',
13643                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13644                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13645                                                             },
13646                                                             {
13647                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13648                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13649                                                               'Provider' => '',
13650                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13651                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13652                                                             },
13653                                                             {
13654                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13655                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
13656                                                               'Provider' => '',
13657                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13658                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13659                                                             }
13660                                                           ]
13661                                      },
13662                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
13663                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
13664                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
13665                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
13666                                           'Buid' => '2323',
13667                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
13668                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
13669                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
13670                                         }
13671                    }
13672         };
13673 </pre></p>
13674
13675 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
13676 service outside the
13677 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
13678 documentation</a>, and according to
13679 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
13680 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
13681 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
13682
13683 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
13684 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
13685
13686       </div>
13687       <div class="tags">
13688
13689
13690         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>.
13691
13692
13693       </div>
13694     </div>
13695     <div class="padding"></div>
13696
13697     <div class="entry">
13698       <div class="title">
13699         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
13700       </div>
13701       <div class="date">
13702         31st May 2012
13703       </div>
13704       <div class="body">
13705         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
13706 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
13707 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
13708 running Debian Squeeze, where
13709 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
13710 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
13711 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
13712 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
13713 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
13714 another day.</p>
13715
13716 <p>After calibration, I get a
13717 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
13718 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
13719 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
13720 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
13721 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
13722 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
13723 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
13724 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
13725 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
13726 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
13727 and a simple</p>
13728
13729 <p><pre>
13730 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
13731 </pre></p>
13732
13733 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
13734 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
13735 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
13736 enough for now.</p>
13737
13738       </div>
13739       <div class="tags">
13740
13741
13742         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13743
13744
13745       </div>
13746     </div>
13747     <div class="padding"></div>
13748
13749     <div class="entry">
13750       <div class="title">
13751         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
13752       </div>
13753       <div class="date">
13754         27th May 2012
13755       </div>
13756       <div class="body">
13757         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
13758 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13759 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
13760 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
13761 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
13762 since then, helping to make sure the
13763 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13764 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
13765
13766 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13767
13768 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
13769 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
13770 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
13771 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
13772 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
13773 our computer network.</p>
13774
13775 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
13776 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
13777 (4 months).</p>
13778
13779 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13780 project?</strong></p>
13781
13782 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
13783 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
13784 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
13785 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
13786 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
13787 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
13788 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
13789 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
13790 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
13791 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
13792 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
13793 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
13794 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
13795 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
13796
13797 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13798 Edu?</strong></p>
13799
13800 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
13801 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
13802 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
13803 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
13804 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
13805 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
13806 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
13807 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
13808
13809 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13810 Edu?</strong></p>
13811
13812 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
13813 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
13814 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
13815 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
13816 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
13817 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
13818 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
13819 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
13820 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
13821 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
13822 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
13823 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
13824
13825 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13826
13827 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
13828 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
13829 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
13830
13831 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13832 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13833
13834 <p><ol>
13835
13836 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
13837 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
13838 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
13839 developing.</li>
13840
13841 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
13842 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
13843 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
13844 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
13845 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
13846
13847 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
13848 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
13849 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
13850
13851 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
13852 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
13853 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
13854 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
13855
13856 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
13857 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
13858 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
13859
13860 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
13861
13862 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
13863 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
13864 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
13865 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
13866
13867 </ol></p>
13868
13869       </div>
13870       <div class="tags">
13871
13872
13873         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>.
13874
13875
13876       </div>
13877     </div>
13878     <div class="padding"></div>
13879
13880     <div class="entry">
13881       <div class="title">
13882         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
13883       </div>
13884       <div class="date">
13885         26th May 2012
13886       </div>
13887       <div class="body">
13888         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
13889 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
13890 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
13891 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
13892 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
13893
13894 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
13895 <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>
13896 comment:</p>
13897
13898 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
13899 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
13900 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
13901 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
13902 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
13903 </blockquote></p>
13904
13905 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
13906 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
13907 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
13908 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
13909 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
13910 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
13911 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
13912 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
13913 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
13914 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
13915 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
13916 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
13917 of wasted effort.</p>
13918
13919 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
13920 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
13921 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
13922
13923 <p>See
13924 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
13925 and
13926 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
13927 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
13928 </blockquote></p>
13929
13930       </div>
13931       <div class="tags">
13932
13933
13934         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>.
13935
13936
13937       </div>
13938     </div>
13939     <div class="padding"></div>
13940
13941     <div class="entry">
13942       <div class="title">
13943         <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>
13944       </div>
13945       <div class="date">
13946         18th May 2012
13947       </div>
13948       <div class="body">
13949         <p>In january, I
13950 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
13951 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
13952 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
13953 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
13954 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
13955 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
13956 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
13957 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
13958 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
13959 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
13960
13961 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
13962 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
13963 drivers. :)</p>
13964
13965       </div>
13966       <div class="tags">
13967
13968
13969         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13970
13971
13972       </div>
13973     </div>
13974     <div class="padding"></div>
13975
13976     <div class="entry">
13977       <div class="title">
13978         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
13979       </div>
13980       <div class="date">
13981         13th May 2012
13982       </div>
13983       <div class="body">
13984         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
13985 publish another interview with the people behind
13986 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13987 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
13988 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
13989 details get right before release.
13990
13991 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13992
13993 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
13994 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
13995 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
13996 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
13997 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
13998 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
13999 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
14000 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
14001
14002 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
14003 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
14004 home since 2006.</p>
14005
14006 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14007 project?</strong></p>
14008
14009 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
14010 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
14011 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
14012 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
14013 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
14014 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
14015
14016 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
14017 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
14018 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
14019 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
14020 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
14021 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
14022 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
14023 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
14024 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
14025 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
14026 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
14027 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
14028 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
14029 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
14030 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
14031 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
14032
14033 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14034 Edu?</strong></p>
14035
14036 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
14037 for me as today.</p>
14038
14039 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
14040
14041 <p><ul>
14042
14043 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
14044 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
14045
14046 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
14047 cost.</li>
14048
14049 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
14050 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
14051 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
14052 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
14053 server</li>
14054
14055 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
14056 school.</li>
14057
14058 </ul></p>
14059
14060 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
14061 came up in this way:</p>
14062
14063 <p><ul>
14064
14065 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
14066 now.</li>
14067
14068 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
14069 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
14070 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
14071
14072 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
14073 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
14074 interfaces used in the past.</li>
14075
14076 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
14077 different needs.</li>
14078
14079 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
14080
14081 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
14082 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
14083 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
14084
14085 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
14086 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
14087
14088 </ul></p>
14089
14090 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14091 Edu?</strong></p>
14092
14093 <p><ul>
14094
14095 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
14096 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
14097 whole municipality areas.</li>
14098
14099 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
14100 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
14101 politicians.</li>
14102
14103 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
14104
14105 </ul></p>
14106
14107 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14108
14109 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
14110 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
14111 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
14112 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
14113 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
14114 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
14115
14116 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
14117 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
14118 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
14119 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
14120 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
14121
14122 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14123 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14124
14125 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
14126 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
14127 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
14128
14129       </div>
14130       <div class="tags">
14131
14132
14133         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>.
14134
14135
14136       </div>
14137     </div>
14138     <div class="padding"></div>
14139
14140     <div class="entry">
14141       <div class="title">
14142         <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>
14143       </div>
14144       <div class="date">
14145         30th April 2012
14146       </div>
14147       <div class="body">
14148         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
14149 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
14150
14151 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
14152 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
14153 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
14154 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
14155 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
14156 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
14157 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
14158 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
14159 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
14160 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
14161 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
14162 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
14163 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
14164 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
14165 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
14166 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
14167
14168 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
14169 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
14170 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
14171 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
14172 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
14173 finally found a Danish supplier
14174 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
14175 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
14176 days ago.</p>
14177
14178 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
14179 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
14180 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
14181 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
14182 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
14183 toys.</p>
14184
14185       </div>
14186       <div class="tags">
14187
14188
14189         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14190
14191
14192       </div>
14193     </div>
14194     <div class="padding"></div>
14195
14196     <div class="entry">
14197       <div class="title">
14198         <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>
14199       </div>
14200       <div class="date">
14201         26th April 2012
14202       </div>
14203       <div class="body">
14204         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
14205 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
14206 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
14207 that the video editor application included with
14208 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
14209 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
14210 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
14211
14212 <p><blockquote>
14213 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
14214 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
14215 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
14216 </blockquote></p>
14217
14218 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
14219
14220 <p><blockquote>
14221 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
14222 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
14223 </blockquote></p>
14224
14225 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
14226 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
14227 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
14228 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
14229 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
14230 video.  AMR is
14231 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
14232 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
14233 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
14234 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
14235 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
14236 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
14237 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
14238
14239 <p>I know why I prefer
14240 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
14241 standards</a> also for video.</p>
14242
14243       </div>
14244       <div class="tags">
14245
14246
14247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14248
14249
14250       </div>
14251     </div>
14252     <div class="padding"></div>
14253
14254     <div class="entry">
14255       <div class="title">
14256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
14257       </div>
14258       <div class="date">
14259         19th April 2012
14260       </div>
14261       <div class="body">
14262         <p>Here in Norway, the
14263 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
14264 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
14265 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
14266 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
14267 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
14268 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
14269 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
14270 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
14271 on the same level.</p>
14272
14273 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
14274 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
14275 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
14276 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
14277 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
14278 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
14279 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
14280 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
14281 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
14282 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
14283 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
14284 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
14285 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
14286 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
14287 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
14288 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
14289 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
14290 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
14291
14292 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
14293 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
14294 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
14295 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
14296 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
14297 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
14298 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
14299 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
14300
14301 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
14302 from Simon Phipps
14303 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
14304 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
14305
14306 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
14307 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
14308 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
14309 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
14310 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
14311 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
14312 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
14313 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
14314 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
14315
14316       </div>
14317       <div class="tags">
14318
14319
14320         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>.
14321
14322
14323       </div>
14324     </div>
14325     <div class="padding"></div>
14326
14327     <div class="entry">
14328       <div class="title">
14329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
14330       </div>
14331       <div class="date">
14332         15th April 2012
14333       </div>
14334       <div class="body">
14335         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14336 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
14337 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
14338 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
14339 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
14340 up in the recently released
14341 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14342 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14343
14344 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14345
14346 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
14347 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
14348 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
14349 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
14350 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
14351 information technology and science/technology.</p>
14352
14353 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14354 project?</strong></p>
14355
14356 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
14357 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
14358 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
14359 contributing.</p>
14360
14361 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14362 Edu?</strong></p>
14363
14364 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
14365 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
14366 Debian Project!</p>
14367
14368 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14369 Edu?</strong></p>
14370
14371 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
14372 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
14373 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
14374 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
14375 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
14376 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
14377 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
14378
14379 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
14380 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
14381
14382 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14383
14384 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
14385 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
14386 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
14387 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
14388
14389 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14390 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14391
14392 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
14393 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
14394 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
14395 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
14396 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
14397 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
14398 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
14399
14400 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
14401 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
14402 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
14403 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
14404 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
14405 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
14406 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
14407 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
14408
14409       </div>
14410       <div class="tags">
14411
14412
14413         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>.
14414
14415
14416       </div>
14417     </div>
14418     <div class="padding"></div>
14419
14420     <div class="entry">
14421       <div class="title">
14422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
14423       </div>
14424       <div class="date">
14425          8th April 2012
14426       </div>
14427       <div class="body">
14428         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
14429 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
14430 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
14431 contributor to the
14432 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14433 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
14434
14435 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14436
14437 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
14438 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
14439
14440 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14441 project?</strong></p>
14442
14443 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
14444 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
14445 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
14446 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
14447 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
14448 "localisation".</p>
14449
14450 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14451 Edu?</strong></p>
14452
14453 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14454 Edu?</strong></p>
14455
14456 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
14457 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
14458 education system.</p>
14459
14460 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
14461 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
14462 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
14463 money on the latest hardware.</p>
14464
14465 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14466
14467 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
14468 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
14469 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
14470
14471 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14472 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14473
14474 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
14475 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
14476 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
14477
14478       </div>
14479       <div class="tags">
14480
14481
14482         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>.
14483
14484
14485       </div>
14486     </div>
14487     <div class="padding"></div>
14488
14489     <div class="entry">
14490       <div class="title">
14491         <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>
14492       </div>
14493       <div class="date">
14494          6th April 2012
14495       </div>
14496       <div class="body">
14497         <p>Recently I have spent time with
14498 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
14499 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14500 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
14501 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
14502 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
14503 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
14504 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
14505 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
14506
14507 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
14508 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
14509 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
14510 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
14511 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
14512 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
14513 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
14514 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
14515
14516 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
14517 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
14518 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
14519 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
14520 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
14521 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
14522 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
14523 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
14524
14525 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
14526 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
14527 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
14528 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
14529 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
14530 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
14531 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
14532 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
14533 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
14534 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
14535
14536 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
14537 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
14538 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
14539 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
14540
14541 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
14542 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
14543
14544 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
14545 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
14546 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
14547 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
14548
14549       </div>
14550       <div class="tags">
14551
14552
14553         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>.
14554
14555
14556       </div>
14557     </div>
14558     <div class="padding"></div>
14559
14560     <div class="entry">
14561       <div class="title">
14562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
14563       </div>
14564       <div class="date">
14565          5th April 2012
14566       </div>
14567       <div class="body">
14568         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
14569 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
14570 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
14571 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
14572 for schools.  Check out his article
14573 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
14574 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
14575
14576       </div>
14577       <div class="tags">
14578
14579
14580         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>.
14581
14582
14583       </div>
14584     </div>
14585     <div class="padding"></div>
14586
14587     <div class="entry">
14588       <div class="title">
14589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
14590       </div>
14591       <div class="date">
14592          1st April 2012
14593       </div>
14594       <div class="body">
14595         <p>Germany is a core area for the
14596 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14597 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
14598 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
14599
14600 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14601
14602 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
14603 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
14604 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
14605 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
14606 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
14607 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
14608 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
14609 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
14610
14611 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
14612 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
14613 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
14614 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
14615 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
14616 the end of April this year.</p>
14617
14618 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14619 project?</strong></p>
14620
14621 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
14622 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
14623 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
14624 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
14625 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
14626 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
14627 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
14628 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
14629 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
14630 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
14631 Skolelinux.</p>
14632
14633 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
14634 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
14635 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
14636 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
14637 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
14638 the admin teachers.</p>
14639
14640 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14641 Edu?</strong></p>
14642
14643 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
14644 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
14645 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
14646
14647 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
14648 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
14649 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
14650 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
14651 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
14652
14653 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14654 Edu?</strong></p>
14655
14656 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
14657
14658 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14659
14660 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
14661 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
14662 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
14663 LibreOffice.</p>
14664
14665 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14666 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14667
14668 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
14669 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
14670 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
14671
14672       </div>
14673       <div class="tags">
14674
14675
14676         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>.
14677
14678
14679       </div>
14680     </div>
14681     <div class="padding"></div>
14682
14683     <div class="entry">
14684       <div class="title">
14685         <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>
14686       </div>
14687       <div class="date">
14688         25th March 2012
14689       </div>
14690       <div class="body">
14691         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14692
14693 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
14694 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
14695 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
14696 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
14697 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
14698 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
14699 and download as a
14700 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
14701 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14702
14703 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14704   <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"' />
14705     <p>Download video as
14706       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14707 </video></p>
14708
14709       </div>
14710       <div class="tags">
14711
14712
14713         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>.
14714
14715
14716       </div>
14717     </div>
14718     <div class="padding"></div>
14719
14720     <div class="entry">
14721       <div class="title">
14722         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
14723       </div>
14724       <div class="date">
14725         19th March 2012
14726       </div>
14727       <div class="body">
14728         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14729 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
14730 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
14731 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
14732 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
14733
14734 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14735
14736 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
14737 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
14738 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
14739 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
14740 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
14741 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
14742 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
14743 installations.</p>
14744
14745 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14746 project?</strong></p>
14747
14748 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
14749 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
14750 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
14751 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
14752 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
14753 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
14754 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
14755 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
14756 these things we decided to try it.</p>
14757
14758 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14759 Edu?</strong></p>
14760
14761 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
14762 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
14763 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
14764 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
14765 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
14766 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
14767 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
14768 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
14769
14770 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14771 Edu?</strong></p>
14772
14773 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
14774 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
14775 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
14776 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
14777 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
14778
14779 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14780
14781 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
14782 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
14783 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
14784 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
14785 that counts...)</p>
14786
14787 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14788 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14789
14790 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
14791 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
14792 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
14793 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
14794 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
14795 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
14796 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
14797 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
14798 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
14799 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
14800 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
14801
14802 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
14803 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
14804 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
14805
14806       </div>
14807       <div class="tags">
14808
14809
14810         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>.
14811
14812
14813       </div>
14814     </div>
14815     <div class="padding"></div>
14816
14817     <div class="entry">
14818       <div class="title">
14819         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
14820       </div>
14821       <div class="date">
14822         16th March 2012
14823       </div>
14824       <div class="body">
14825         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
14826 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
14827 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
14828 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
14829
14830 <ol>
14831
14832 <li>The documentation is written in a
14833 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
14834 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
14835 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
14836 docbook XML.</li>
14837
14838 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
14839 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
14840 with the translated text.</li>
14841
14842 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
14843 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
14844 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
14845 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
14846 images.</li>
14847
14848 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
14849 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
14850
14851 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
14852 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
14853
14854 </ol>
14855
14856 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
14857 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
14858 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
14859 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
14860 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
14861
14862 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
14863 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
14864 package</a>.</p>
14865
14866       </div>
14867       <div class="tags">
14868
14869
14870         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>.
14871
14872
14873       </div>
14874     </div>
14875     <div class="padding"></div>
14876
14877     <div class="entry">
14878       <div class="title">
14879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
14880       </div>
14881       <div class="date">
14882         11th March 2012
14883       </div>
14884       <div class="body">
14885         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
14886 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
14887 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14888 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
14889 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
14890 you have not done so already.</p>
14891
14892 <p>I plan to present the new version at
14893 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
14894 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
14895 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
14896
14897       </div>
14898       <div class="tags">
14899
14900
14901         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>.
14902
14903
14904       </div>
14905     </div>
14906     <div class="padding"></div>
14907
14908     <div class="entry">
14909       <div class="title">
14910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
14911       </div>
14912       <div class="date">
14913          9th March 2012
14914       </div>
14915       <div class="body">
14916         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
14917 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
14918 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14919 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
14920 more international audience.</p>
14921
14922 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14923 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
14924 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
14925 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
14926 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
14927 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
14928 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
14929
14930
14931 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14932
14933 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
14934 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
14935 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
14936 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
14937 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
14938 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
14939 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
14940 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
14941 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
14942 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
14943 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
14944
14945 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14946 project?</strong></p>
14947
14948 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
14949 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
14950 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
14951 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
14952 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
14953 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
14954 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
14955 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
14956 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
14957 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
14958 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
14959 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
14960 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
14961
14962 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14963 Edu?</strong></p>
14964
14965 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
14966 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
14967 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
14968 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
14969 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
14970 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
14971 Japan.</p>
14972
14973 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14974 Edu?</strong></p>
14975
14976 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
14977 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
14978 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
14979 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
14980 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
14981 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
14982 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
14983 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
14984 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
14985 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
14986 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
14987 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
14988 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
14989 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
14990 help.</p>
14991
14992 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14993
14994 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
14995 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
14996 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
14997 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
14998 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
14999 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
15000 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
15001 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
15002 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
15003 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
15004 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
15005
15006 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15007 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15008
15009 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
15010 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
15011 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
15012 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
15013 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
15014 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
15015 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
15016 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
15017 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
15018 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
15019 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
15020 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
15021
15022       </div>
15023       <div class="tags">
15024
15025
15026         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>.
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/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
15036       </div>
15037       <div class="date">
15038          7th March 2012
15039       </div>
15040       <div class="body">
15041         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
15042
15043 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
15044 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
15045 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
15046 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
15047 download as a
15048 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
15049 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
15050
15051 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
15052   <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"' />
15053     <p>Download video as
15054       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
15055 </video></p>
15056
15057       </div>
15058       <div class="tags">
15059
15060
15061         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>.
15062
15063
15064       </div>
15065     </div>
15066     <div class="padding"></div>
15067
15068     <div class="entry">
15069       <div class="title">
15070         <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>
15071       </div>
15072       <div class="date">
15073          4th March 2012
15074       </div>
15075       <div class="body">
15076         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
15077 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15078 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15079 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
15080 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
15081 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15082
15083       </div>
15084       <div class="tags">
15085
15086
15087         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>.
15088
15089
15090       </div>
15091     </div>
15092     <div class="padding"></div>
15093
15094     <div class="entry">
15095       <div class="title">
15096         <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>
15097       </div>
15098       <div class="date">
15099          3rd March 2012
15100       </div>
15101       <div class="body">
15102         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
15103 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
15104 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
15105 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
15106 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
15107 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
15108 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
15109 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
15110 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
15111 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
15112 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
15113 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
15114 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
15115 year...</p>
15116
15117 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
15118 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
15119 name,
15120 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
15121 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
15122 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
15123 mean). I've been following
15124 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
15125 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
15126 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
15127 Check it out. :)</p>
15128
15129       </div>
15130       <div class="tags">
15131
15132
15133         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>.
15134
15135
15136       </div>
15137     </div>
15138     <div class="padding"></div>
15139
15140     <div class="entry">
15141       <div class="title">
15142         <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>
15143       </div>
15144       <div class="date">
15145         27th February 2012
15146       </div>
15147       <div class="body">
15148         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
15149 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15150 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
15151 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
15152 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
15153 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
15154 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15155
15156       </div>
15157       <div class="tags">
15158
15159
15160         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>.
15161
15162
15163       </div>
15164     </div>
15165     <div class="padding"></div>
15166
15167     <div class="entry">
15168       <div class="title">
15169         <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>
15170       </div>
15171       <div class="date">
15172         19th February 2012
15173       </div>
15174       <div class="body">
15175         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
15176 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
15177 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15178 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15179 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
15180 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
15181 solution for your school.</p>
15182
15183       </div>
15184       <div class="tags">
15185
15186
15187         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>.
15188
15189
15190       </div>
15191     </div>
15192     <div class="padding"></div>
15193
15194     <div class="entry">
15195       <div class="title">
15196         <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>
15197       </div>
15198       <div class="date">
15199         14th February 2012
15200       </div>
15201       <div class="body">
15202         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
15203 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
15204 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
15205 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
15206 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
15207 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
15208 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
15209 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
15210 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
15211
15212 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
15213 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
15214 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
15215 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
15216 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
15217
15218 <blockquote><pre>
15219 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
15220 do
15221     printf "Failed disk $d: "
15222     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
15223 done
15224 </blockquote></pre>
15225
15226 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
15227 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
15228
15229 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
15230
15231 <blockquote><pre>
15232 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15233 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15234 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
15235 </blockquote></pre>
15236
15237 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
15238 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
15239 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
15240 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
15241 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
15242 mounted inside my box.</p>
15243
15244 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
15245 Software RAID in the
15246 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
15247 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
15248 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
15249 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
15250 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
15251 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
15252
15253       </div>
15254       <div class="tags">
15255
15256
15257         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>.
15258
15259
15260       </div>
15261     </div>
15262     <div class="padding"></div>
15263
15264     <div class="entry">
15265       <div class="title">
15266         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15267       </div>
15268       <div class="date">
15269         13th February 2012
15270       </div>
15271       <div class="body">
15272         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
15273 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
15274 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
15275 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
15276 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
15277 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
15278 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
15279 change the global proxy setting by editing
15280 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
15281 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
15282
15283 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
15284 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
15285 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
15286
15287 <blockquote><pre>
15288 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
15289 {
15290    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
15291        isPlainHostName(host) ||
15292        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
15293       return "DIRECT";
15294    else
15295       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
15296 }
15297 </pre></blockquote>
15298
15299 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
15300
15301 <blockquote><pre>
15302 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15303 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15304 </pre></blockquote>
15305
15306 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
15307 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
15308 would be used for
15309 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
15310 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
15311 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
15312 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
15313 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
15314 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
15315 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
15316 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
15317 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
15318 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
15319
15320 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
15321 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
15322 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
15323 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
15324 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
15325 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
15326
15327 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
15328 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
15329 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
15330 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
15331 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
15332 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
15333 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
15334 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
15335 the network setup changes.</p>
15336
15337 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
15338 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
15339 draft</a> and a
15340 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
15341 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
15342
15343       </div>
15344       <div class="tags">
15345
15346
15347         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>.
15348
15349
15350       </div>
15351     </div>
15352     <div class="padding"></div>
15353
15354     <div class="entry">
15355       <div class="title">
15356         <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>
15357       </div>
15358       <div class="date">
15359          5th February 2012
15360       </div>
15361       <div class="body">
15362         <p>Since the Lenny version of
15363 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
15364 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
15365 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
15366 in the morning.  This is done using the
15367 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
15368
15369 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
15370 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
15371 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
15372 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
15373 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
15374 the
15375 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
15376 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
15377 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
15378 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
15379 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
15380
15381 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
15382 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
15383 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
15384 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
15385 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
15386 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
15387 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
15388
15389 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
15390 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
15391 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
15392 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
15393 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
15394
15395       </div>
15396       <div class="tags">
15397
15398
15399         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>.
15400
15401
15402       </div>
15403     </div>
15404     <div class="padding"></div>
15405
15406     <div class="entry">
15407       <div class="title">
15408         <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>
15409       </div>
15410       <div class="date">
15411          4th February 2012
15412       </div>
15413       <div class="body">
15414         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
15415 publish the third beta version of
15416 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15417 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
15418 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
15419 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
15420 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15421 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
15422 on the project announcement list.</p>
15423
15424 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
15425 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
15426
15427 <ul>
15428
15429 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
15430   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
15431   the installation.</li>
15432
15433 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
15434   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
15435
15436 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
15437   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
15438   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
15439
15440 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
15441   for the local system administrator is created during installation
15442   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
15443   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
15444   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
15445   up to date on the system.</li>
15446
15447 </ul>
15448
15449 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
15450 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
15451 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
15452 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
15453
15454 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
15455 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
15456 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
15457 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
15458 will see you there?</p>
15459
15460       </div>
15461       <div class="tags">
15462
15463
15464         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>.
15465
15466
15467       </div>
15468     </div>
15469     <div class="padding"></div>
15470
15471     <div class="entry">
15472       <div class="title">
15473         <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>
15474       </div>
15475       <div class="date">
15476         27th January 2012
15477       </div>
15478       <div class="body">
15479         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
15480 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
15481 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15482 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
15483 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
15484 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
15485 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
15486
15487 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
15488 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
15489 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
15490 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
15491 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
15492 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
15493 not taken care of by this.</p>
15494
15495 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
15496 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
15497 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
15498 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
15499 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
15500 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
15501 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
15502 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
15503 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
15504 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
15505 firmware packages.</p>
15506
15507 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
15508 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
15509 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
15510 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
15511 initrd with extra firmware, the
15512 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
15513 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
15514 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
15515
15516 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
15517 network cards working.  For this,
15518 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
15519 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
15520 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
15521
15522 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
15523 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
15524 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
15525
15526 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
15527 try.</p>
15528
15529       </div>
15530       <div class="tags">
15531
15532
15533         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>.
15534
15535
15536       </div>
15537     </div>
15538     <div class="padding"></div>
15539
15540     <div class="entry">
15541       <div class="title">
15542         <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>
15543       </div>
15544       <div class="date">
15545         25th January 2012
15546       </div>
15547       <div class="body">
15548         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
15549 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
15550 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
15551 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
15552 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
15553
15554 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
15555 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
15556 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
15557 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
15558 this is done, log on to the central server and run
15559 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
15560 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
15561 will look similar to this:</p>
15562
15563 <p><blockquote><pre>
15564 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
15565 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
15566 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.
15567
15568 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
15569
15570 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15571 enter password: *******
15572 %
15573 </pre></blockquote></p>
15574
15575 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
15576 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
15577 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
15578 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
15579 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
15580 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
15581 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
15582 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
15583 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
15584 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
15585 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
15586 automatically.</p>
15587
15588 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
15589 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
15590
15591 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
15592 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
15593 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
15594
15595       </div>
15596       <div class="tags">
15597
15598
15599         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>.
15600
15601
15602       </div>
15603     </div>
15604     <div class="padding"></div>
15605
15606     <div class="entry">
15607       <div class="title">
15608         <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>
15609       </div>
15610       <div class="date">
15611         10th January 2012
15612       </div>
15613       <div class="body">
15614         <p>In the Squeeze version of
15615 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
15616 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
15617 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
15618 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
15619 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
15620 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
15621 first time.</p>
15622
15623 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
15624 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
15625 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
15626 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
15627
15628 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
15629 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
15630 new setting.</p>
15631
15632 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
15633 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
15634 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
15635
15636       </div>
15637       <div class="tags">
15638
15639
15640         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>.
15641
15642
15643       </div>
15644     </div>
15645     <div class="padding"></div>
15646
15647     <div class="entry">
15648       <div class="title">
15649         <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>
15650       </div>
15651       <div class="date">
15652          7th January 2012
15653       </div>
15654       <div class="body">
15655         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
15656 the second beta version of
15657 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
15658 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
15659 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
15660 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
15661 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15662 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
15663 on the project announcement list.</p>
15664
15665       </div>
15666       <div class="tags">
15667
15668
15669         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>.
15670
15671
15672       </div>
15673     </div>
15674     <div class="padding"></div>
15675
15676     <div class="entry">
15677       <div class="title">
15678         <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>
15679       </div>
15680       <div class="date">
15681          3rd January 2012
15682       </div>
15683       <div class="body">
15684         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
15685 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
15686 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
15687 interesting.</p>
15688
15689 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
15690 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
15691 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
15692 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
15693 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
15694 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
15695 wrap up its tasks.</p>
15696
15697 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
15698 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
15699 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
15700 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
15701 because I was typing.</P>
15702
15703 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
15704 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
15705 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
15706 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
15707 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
15708 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
15709 generate entropy.</p>
15710
15711 <p>The fix is in
15712 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
15713 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
15714 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
15715 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
15716
15717       </div>
15718       <div class="tags">
15719
15720
15721         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>.
15722
15723
15724       </div>
15725     </div>
15726     <div class="padding"></div>
15727
15728     <div class="entry">
15729       <div class="title">
15730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
15731       </div>
15732       <div class="date">
15733         21st November 2011
15734       </div>
15735       <div class="body">
15736         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
15737 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
15738 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
15739 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
15740 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
15741 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
15742 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
15743 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
15744 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
15745 the tools to do so.</p>
15746
15747 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
15748 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
15749 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
15750 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
15751
15752 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
15753 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
15754 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
15755 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
15756 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
15757 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
15758 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
15759 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
15760
15761 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
15762 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
15763 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
15764
15765 <p><pre>
15766 #!/usr/bin/perl
15767 use strict;
15768 use warnings;
15769 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
15770 BEGIN {
15771     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
15772     my %rhelmodules = (
15773         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
15774         );
15775     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
15776         eval "use $module;";
15777         if ($@) {
15778             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
15779             system("yum install -y $pkg");
15780             eval "use $module;";
15781         }
15782     }
15783 }
15784 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
15785
15786 upgrade_dell();
15787
15788 exit 0;
15789
15790 sub run_firmware_script {
15791     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
15792     unless ($script) {
15793         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
15794         exit 1
15795     }
15796     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
15797
15798     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
15799         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
15800     } else {
15801         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
15802     }
15803 }
15804
15805 sub run_firmware_scripts {
15806     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
15807     # Run firmware packages
15808     for my $dir (@dirs) {
15809         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
15810         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
15811         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
15812             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
15813             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
15814         }
15815         closedir $dh;
15816     }
15817 }
15818
15819 sub download {
15820     my $url = shift;
15821     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
15822     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
15823 }
15824
15825 sub upgrade_dell {
15826     my @dirs;
15827     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15828     chomp $product;
15829
15830     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
15831
15832         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
15833         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
15834
15835         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
15836             CLEANUP => 1
15837             );
15838         chdir($tmpdir);
15839         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
15840         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
15841         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
15842         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
15843         my $fwopts = "-q";
15844         if (@paths) {
15845             for my $url (@paths) {
15846                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
15847             }
15848             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
15849         } else {
15850             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15851             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15852         }
15853         chdir('/');
15854     } else {
15855         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15856         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15857     }
15858 }
15859
15860 sub fetch_dell_fw {
15861     my $path = shift;
15862     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
15863     download($url);
15864 }
15865
15866 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
15867 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
15868 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
15869 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
15870     my $filename = shift;
15871
15872     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15873     chomp $product;
15874     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
15875
15876     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
15877
15878     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
15879     my @paths;
15880     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
15881         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
15882         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
15883         my $oscode;
15884         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
15885             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
15886         } else {
15887             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
15888         }
15889         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
15890         {
15891             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
15892         }
15893     }
15894     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
15895         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
15896
15897         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
15898         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
15899
15900         my $cpath = $component->{path};
15901         for my $path (@paths) {
15902             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
15903                 push(@paths, $cpath);
15904             }
15905         }
15906     }
15907     return @paths;
15908 }
15909 </pre>
15910
15911 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
15912 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
15913 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
15914 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
15915 outdated.</p>
15916
15917       </div>
15918       <div class="tags">
15919
15920
15921         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15922
15923
15924       </div>
15925     </div>
15926     <div class="padding"></div>
15927
15928     <div class="entry">
15929       <div class="title">
15930         <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>
15931       </div>
15932       <div class="date">
15933          7th October 2011
15934       </div>
15935       <div class="body">
15936         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
15937 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
15938 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
15939 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
15940 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
15941 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
15942 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
15943 models.</p>
15944
15945 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
15946 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
15947 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
15948 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
15949
15950 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
15951 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
15952 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
15953 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
15954 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
15955 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
15956 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
15957 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
15958 distributed.</p>
15959
15960 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
15961
15962 <ul>
15963
15964 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
15965   other relevant equipment.</li>
15966
15967 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
15968
15969 </ul>
15970
15971 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
15972 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
15973 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
15974 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
15975 books available.</p>
15976
15977 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
15978 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
15979 libraries. :)</p>
15980
15981       </div>
15982       <div class="tags">
15983
15984
15985         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>.
15986
15987
15988       </div>
15989     </div>
15990     <div class="padding"></div>
15991
15992     <div class="entry">
15993       <div class="title">
15994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
15995       </div>
15996       <div class="date">
15997         17th September 2011
15998       </div>
15999       <div class="body">
16000         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
16001 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
16002 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
16003 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
16004 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
16005 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
16006 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
16007 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
16008
16009 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
16010
16011 <blockquote><pre>
16012 #!/bin/sh
16013 # apt-get install lsdvd
16014 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16015 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
16016 </pre></blockquote>
16017
16018 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
16019 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
16020 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
16021 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
16022
16023 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
16024 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
16025 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
16026 back as an ISO.
16027
16028 <blockquote><pre>
16029 #!/bin/sh
16030 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
16031 set -e
16032 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
16033 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16034 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
16035 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
16036 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
16037 </pre></blockquote>
16038
16039 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
16040
16041 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
16042 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
16043 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
16044 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
16045 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
16046
16047 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
16048 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
16049 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
16050 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
16051 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
16052 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
16053
16054       </div>
16055       <div class="tags">
16056
16057
16058         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>.
16059
16060
16061       </div>
16062     </div>
16063     <div class="padding"></div>
16064
16065     <div class="entry">
16066       <div class="title">
16067         <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>
16068       </div>
16069       <div class="date">
16070          4th August 2011
16071       </div>
16072       <div class="body">
16073         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
16074 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
16075 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
16076 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
16077 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
16078 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
16079 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
16080 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
16081 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
16082
16083 <p><blockquote>
16084 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
16085 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
16086 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
16087 </blockquote></p>
16088
16089 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
16090 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
16091 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
16092 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
16093 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
16094 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
16095 hard to explain.</p>
16096
16097 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
16098 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
16099 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
16100 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
16101 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
16102 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
16103 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
16104 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
16105 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
16106 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
16107 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
16108 mode).</p>
16109
16110 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
16111 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
16112 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
16113 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
16114 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
16115 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
16116 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
16117 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
16118 after visiting single user mode.</p>
16119
16120 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
16121 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
16122 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
16123 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
16124 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
16125 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
16126 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
16127 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
16128
16129 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
16130 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
16131 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
16132
16133       </div>
16134       <div class="tags">
16135
16136
16137         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>.
16138
16139
16140       </div>
16141     </div>
16142     <div class="padding"></div>
16143
16144     <div class="entry">
16145       <div class="title">
16146         <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>
16147       </div>
16148       <div class="date">
16149         30th July 2011
16150       </div>
16151       <div class="body">
16152         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
16153 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
16154 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
16155 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
16156 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
16157 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
16158 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
16159 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
16160 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
16161 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
16162 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
16163 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
16164 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
16165
16166 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
16167 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
16168 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
16169 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
16170 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
16171 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
16172 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
16173 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
16174 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
16175
16176 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
16177 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
16178 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
16179 is presented.</p>
16180
16181 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
16182 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
16183 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
16184 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
16185 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
16186 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
16187 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
16188 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
16189 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
16190 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
16191 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
16192 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
16193 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
16194 find time to push this forward.</p>
16195
16196       </div>
16197       <div class="tags">
16198
16199
16200         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>.
16201
16202
16203       </div>
16204     </div>
16205     <div class="padding"></div>
16206
16207     <div class="entry">
16208       <div class="title">
16209         <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>
16210       </div>
16211       <div class="date">
16212         29th July 2011
16213       </div>
16214       <div class="body">
16215         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
16216 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
16217 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
16218 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
16219 issues.</p>
16220
16221 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
16222 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
16223 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
16224
16225 <ol>
16226
16227 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
16228 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
16229 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
16230 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
16231 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
16232 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
16233 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
16234 Debian.</li>
16235
16236 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
16237 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
16238 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
16239 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
16240 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
16241 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
16242 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
16243 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
16244 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
16245 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
16246 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
16247 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
16248 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
16249
16250 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
16251 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
16252 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
16253 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
16254 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
16255 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
16256 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
16257 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
16258 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
16259 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
16260
16261 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
16262 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
16263 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
16264 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
16265 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
16266 latter behaviour.</li>
16267
16268 </ol>
16269
16270 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
16271 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
16272 it do not matter much.</p>
16273
16274 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
16275 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
16276 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
16277
16278       </div>
16279       <div class="tags">
16280
16281
16282         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16283
16284
16285       </div>
16286     </div>
16287     <div class="padding"></div>
16288
16289     <div class="entry">
16290       <div class="title">
16291         <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>
16292       </div>
16293       <div class="date">
16294         26th July 2011
16295       </div>
16296       <div class="body">
16297         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
16298 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
16299 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
16300 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
16301 security support for a few years.</p>
16302
16303 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
16304 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
16305 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
16306 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
16307 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
16308 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
16309 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
16310 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
16311 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
16312 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
16313 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
16314 easier in the future.</p>
16315
16316 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
16317 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
16318 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
16319 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
16320 do not have time for.</p>
16321
16322       </div>
16323       <div class="tags">
16324
16325
16326         Tags: <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>.
16327
16328
16329       </div>
16330     </div>
16331     <div class="padding"></div>
16332
16333     <div class="entry">
16334       <div class="title">
16335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
16336       </div>
16337       <div class="date">
16338         20th June 2011
16339       </div>
16340       <div class="body">
16341         <p>Reading
16342 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
16343 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
16344 parts of the
16345 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
16346 and
16347 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
16348 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
16349 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
16350 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
16351
16352       </div>
16353       <div class="tags">
16354
16355
16356         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>.
16357
16358
16359       </div>
16360     </div>
16361     <div class="padding"></div>
16362
16363     <div class="entry">
16364       <div class="title">
16365         <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>
16366       </div>
16367       <div class="date">
16368         30th April 2011
16369       </div>
16370       <div class="body">
16371         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
16372 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
16373 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
16374 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
16375 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
16376 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
16377 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
16378 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
16379 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
16380 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
16381
16382 <p>Where is it?  Visit
16383 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
16384 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
16385 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16386 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
16387
16388       </div>
16389       <div class="tags">
16390
16391
16392         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>.
16393
16394
16395       </div>
16396     </div>
16397     <div class="padding"></div>
16398
16399     <div class="entry">
16400       <div class="title">
16401         <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>
16402       </div>
16403       <div class="date">
16404         29th April 2011
16405       </div>
16406       <div class="body">
16407         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
16408 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
16409 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
16410 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
16411 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
16412 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
16413 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
16414 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
16415 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
16416 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
16417 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
16418 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
16419 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
16420
16421 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
16422 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
16423 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
16424 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
16425 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
16426 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
16427 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
16428 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
16429 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
16430 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
16431 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
16432 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
16433 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
16434
16435 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
16436 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
16437 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
16438 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
16439 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
16440 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
16441 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
16442 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
16443 it.</p>
16444
16445 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
16446 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
16447 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
16448 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
16449 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
16450 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
16451 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
16452
16453 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
16454 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
16455 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
16456 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
16457 and range= options.</p>
16458
16459 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
16460 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
16461 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
16462 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
16463 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
16464 to best handle this.  I've noticed
16465 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
16466 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
16467 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
16468 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
16469
16470 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
16471 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
16472 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
16473 discussions instead of only
16474 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
16475 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
16476 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
16477 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
16478 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
16479 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
16480
16481       </div>
16482       <div class="tags">
16483
16484
16485         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>.
16486
16487
16488       </div>
16489     </div>
16490     <div class="padding"></div>
16491
16492     <div class="entry">
16493       <div class="title">
16494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
16495       </div>
16496       <div class="date">
16497          6th April 2011
16498       </div>
16499       <div class="body">
16500         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
16501 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
16502 A few days ago the project
16503 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
16504 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
16505 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
16506 into Gnash.</p>
16507
16508       </div>
16509       <div class="tags">
16510
16511
16512         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>.
16513
16514
16515       </div>
16516     </div>
16517     <div class="padding"></div>
16518
16519     <div class="entry">
16520       <div class="title">
16521         <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>
16522       </div>
16523       <div class="date">
16524          3rd April 2011
16525       </div>
16526       <div class="body">
16527         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
16528 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
16529 update in English.</p>
16530
16531 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
16532 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
16533 of the British service
16534 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
16535 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
16536 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
16537 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
16538 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
16539 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
16540 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
16541 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
16542 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
16543 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
16544 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
16545 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
16546 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
16547
16548 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
16549 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
16550 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
16551 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
16552 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
16553 public infrastructure.</p>
16554
16555 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
16556 such service?</p>
16557
16558       </div>
16559       <div class="tags">
16560
16561
16562         Tags: <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>.
16563
16564
16565       </div>
16566     </div>
16567     <div class="padding"></div>
16568
16569     <div class="entry">
16570       <div class="title">
16571         <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>
16572       </div>
16573       <div class="date">
16574         28th January 2011
16575       </div>
16576       <div class="body">
16577         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
16578 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
16579 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
16580 available on the Internet, and check our locally
16581 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
16582 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
16583 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
16584 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
16585 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
16586 out which security holes were present in our free software
16587 collection.</p>
16588
16589 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
16590 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
16591 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
16592 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
16593 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
16594 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
16595 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
16596 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
16597 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
16598 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
16599 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
16600 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
16601 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
16602 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
16603 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
16604 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
16605
16606 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
16607 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
16608 check out, one could look up
16609 <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
16610 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
16611 The most recent one is
16612 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
16613 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
16614 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
16615
16616 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
16617 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
16618 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
16619 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
16620 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
16621 security issues out.</p>
16622
16623 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
16624 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
16625 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
16626 RHEL is providing
16627 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
16628 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
16629 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
16630
16631 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
16632 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
16633 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
16634 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
16635 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
16636 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
16637 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
16638 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
16639 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
16640 established soon.</p>
16641
16642 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
16643 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
16644 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
16645 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
16646 for their packages.</p>
16647
16648       </div>
16649       <div class="tags">
16650
16651
16652         Tags: <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>.
16653
16654
16655       </div>
16656     </div>
16657     <div class="padding"></div>
16658
16659     <div class="entry">
16660       <div class="title">
16661         <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>
16662       </div>
16663       <div class="date">
16664         23rd January 2011
16665       </div>
16666       <div class="body">
16667         <p>In the
16668 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
16669 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
16670 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
16671 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
16672 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
16673 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
16674 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
16675 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
16676 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
16677 one of my machines like this:</p>
16678
16679 <pre>
16680 loaded modules:
16681 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
16682 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
16683 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
16684 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
16685 10de:03ec pata_amd
16686 10de:03f6 sata_nv
16687 1022:1103 k8temp
16688 109e:036e bttv
16689 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
16690 11ab:4364 sky2
16691 </pre>
16692
16693 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
16694 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
16695
16696 <pre>
16697 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
16698     echo loaded pci modules:
16699     (
16700         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
16701         for address in * ; do
16702             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16703                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16704                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16705                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16706                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
16707                     echo "$id $module"
16708                 fi
16709             fi
16710         done
16711     )
16712     echo
16713 fi
16714 </pre>
16715
16716 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
16717 mappings:</p>
16718
16719 <pre>
16720 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
16721     echo loaded usb modules:
16722     (
16723         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
16724         for address in * ; do
16725             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16726                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16727                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16728                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16729                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
16730                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
16731                         echo "$id $module"
16732                     fi
16733                 fi
16734             fi
16735         done
16736     )
16737     echo
16738 fi
16739 </pre>
16740
16741 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
16742 well.</p>
16743
16744       </div>
16745       <div class="tags">
16746
16747
16748         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16749
16750
16751       </div>
16752     </div>
16753     <div class="padding"></div>
16754
16755     <div class="entry">
16756       <div class="title">
16757         <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>
16758       </div>
16759       <div class="date">
16760         16th January 2011
16761       </div>
16762       <div class="body">
16763         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
16764 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
16765 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
16766 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
16767 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
16768 the Wikipedia article on
16769 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
16770 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
16771 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
16772 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
16773 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
16774 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
16775 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
16776 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
16777 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
16778 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
16779 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
16780 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
16781
16782 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
16783 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
16784 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
16785 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
16786 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
16787 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
16788 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
16789 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
16790 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
16791 from last week</a>.</p>
16792
16793 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
16794 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
16795 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
16796 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
16797 was without royalties and license terms, check out
16798 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16799 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
16800
16801 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
16802 available from
16803 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
16804 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
16805 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
16806
16807 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
16808 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
16809 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
16810 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
16811
16812       </div>
16813       <div class="tags">
16814
16815
16816         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16817
16818
16819       </div>
16820     </div>
16821     <div class="padding"></div>
16822
16823     <div class="entry">
16824       <div class="title">
16825         <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>
16826       </div>
16827       <div class="date">
16828         12th January 2011
16829       </div>
16830       <div class="body">
16831         <p>Today I discovered
16832 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
16833 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
16834 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
16835 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
16836 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
16837 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
16838 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
16839 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16840 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
16841 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
16842 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
16843 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
16844 on the Google announcement is available from
16845 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
16846 A good read. :)</p>
16847
16848 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
16849 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
16850 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
16851 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
16852 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
16853 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
16854 browsers support H.264, and others support
16855 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
16856 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
16857 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
16858 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
16859 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
16860 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
16861 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
16862 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
16863
16864 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
16865 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
16866 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
16867 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
16868 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
16869 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
16870 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
16871
16872 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
16873 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
16874 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
16875 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
16876 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
16877 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
16878 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
16879
16880 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
16881 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
16882 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
16883 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
16884 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
16885 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
16886 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
16887
16888 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
16889 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
16890 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
16891 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
16892 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
16893 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
16894 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
16895 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
16896 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
16897 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
16898 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
16899 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
16900 I guess time will tell.</p>
16901
16902 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
16903 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
16904 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
16905
16906       </div>
16907       <div class="tags">
16908
16909
16910         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16911
16912
16913       </div>
16914     </div>
16915     <div class="padding"></div>
16916
16917     <div class="entry">
16918       <div class="title">
16919         <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>
16920       </div>
16921       <div class="date">
16922         30th December 2010
16923       </div>
16924       <div class="body">
16925         <p>After trying to
16926 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
16927 Ogg Theora</a> to
16928 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
16929 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
16930 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
16931 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
16932 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
16933 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
16934 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
16935
16936 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
16937 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
16938 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
16939 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
16940 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
16941 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
16942 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
16943
16944 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
16945 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
16946
16947       </div>
16948       <div class="tags">
16949
16950
16951         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>.
16952
16953
16954       </div>
16955     </div>
16956     <div class="padding"></div>
16957
16958     <div class="entry">
16959       <div class="title">
16960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
16961       </div>
16962       <div class="date">
16963         27th December 2010
16964       </div>
16965       <div class="body">
16966         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
16967 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
16968 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
16969 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
16970 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
16971 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
16972 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
16973 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
16974
16975 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
16976 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
16977 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
16978 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
16979 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
16980 page</a>.</p>
16981
16982 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
16983 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
16984 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
16985 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
16986 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
16987 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
16988 specification on equal terms.</p>
16989
16990 <blockquote>
16991
16992 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
16993 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
16994 open standard:</p>
16995
16996 <ul>
16997
16998 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
16999 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17000 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
17001 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
17002
17003 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17004 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
17005 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
17006 nominal fee.</li>
17007
17008 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
17009 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
17010 free basis.</li>
17011
17012 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17013
17014 </ul>
17015 </blockquote>
17016
17017 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
17018 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
17019 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
17020 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
17021 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
17022 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
17023 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
17024
17025 <blockquote>
17026
17027 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
17028
17029 <ol>
17030
17031 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
17032 tilgængelig.</li>
17033
17034 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
17035 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
17036
17037 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
17038 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
17039
17040 </ol>
17041
17042 </blockquote>
17043
17044 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
17045 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
17046
17047 <blockquote>
17048
17049 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
17050
17051 <ol>
17052
17053 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
17054 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
17055
17056 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
17057 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
17058 Standard themselves;</li>
17059
17060 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
17061 any party or in any business model;</li>
17062
17063 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
17064 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
17065 parties;</li>
17066
17067 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
17068 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
17069 parties.</li>
17070
17071 </ol>
17072
17073 </blockquote>
17074
17075 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
17076 its
17077 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
17078 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
17079
17080 <blockquote>
17081 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
17082
17083 <ul>
17084
17085 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
17086   democratic:
17087
17088          <ul>
17089
17090          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
17091             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
17092             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
17093             and managed.</li>
17094
17095          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
17096             method, can be changed through input from all
17097             participants.</li>
17098
17099          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
17100             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
17101
17102          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
17103             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
17104
17105          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
17106             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
17107             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
17108
17109          </ul>
17110
17111 </li>
17112
17113 </ul>
17114
17115 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
17116 <ul>
17117
17118 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
17119   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
17120   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
17121   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
17122   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
17123
17124 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
17125   a technical or economic barriers</li>
17126
17127 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
17128   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
17129   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
17130   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
17131   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
17132   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
17133   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
17134   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
17135   intended to function.</li>
17136
17137 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
17138   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
17139   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
17140
17141 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
17142   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
17143   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
17144   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
17145   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
17146   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
17147   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
17148   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
17149
17150       <ul>
17151
17152       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
17153         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
17154         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
17155
17156       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
17157         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
17158         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
17159         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
17160
17161       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
17162         licensor</li>
17163
17164       </ul>
17165 </li>
17166
17167 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
17168   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
17169   or restricted licensing terms</li>
17170
17171 </ul>
17172
17173 </blockquote>
17174
17175 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
17176 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
17177 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
17178 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
17179 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
17180 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
17181 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
17182 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
17183 Standards.</p>
17184
17185       </div>
17186       <div class="tags">
17187
17188
17189         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>.
17190
17191
17192       </div>
17193     </div>
17194     <div class="padding"></div>
17195
17196     <div class="entry">
17197       <div class="title">
17198         <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>
17199       </div>
17200       <div class="date">
17201         25th December 2010
17202       </div>
17203       <div class="body">
17204         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
17205 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
17206
17207 <blockquote>
17208
17209 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
17210 as follows:</p>
17211
17212 <ol>
17213
17214 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
17215 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
17216 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
17217
17218 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17219 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17220 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
17221 parties.</li>
17222
17223 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17224 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
17225 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
17226
17227 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
17228 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
17229
17230 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17231
17232 </ol>
17233
17234 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
17235 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
17236 products based on the standard.</p>
17237 </blockquote>
17238
17239 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
17240 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
17241 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
17242 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
17243 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
17244 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
17245 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
17246 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
17247
17248 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
17249
17250 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
17251 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
17252 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
17253 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
17254 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
17255 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
17256 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
17257 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
17258 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
17259 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
17260 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
17261 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
17262 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
17263 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
17264
17265 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
17266
17267 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
17268 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
17269 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
17270 documentation indicating this.</p>
17271
17272 <p>According to
17273 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
17274 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
17275 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
17276 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
17277 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
17278 report is correct.</p>
17279
17280 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
17281
17282 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
17283 container format</a> and both the
17284 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
17285 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
17286 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
17287
17288 <blockquote>
17289
17290 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
17291 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
17292 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
17293 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
17294 specification compliance.
17295
17296 </blockquote>
17297
17298 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
17299 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
17300 this is the term:<p>
17301
17302 <blockquote>
17303
17304 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
17305 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
17306 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
17307 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
17308 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
17309 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
17310 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
17311 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
17312 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
17313 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
17314 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
17315 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
17316
17317 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
17318 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
17319 </blockquote>
17320
17321 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
17322 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
17323 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
17324 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
17325 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
17326
17327 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
17328
17329 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
17330 Theora format.
17331 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
17332 and
17333 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
17334 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
17335 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
17336 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
17337 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
17338 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
17339 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
17340 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
17341
17342 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
17343
17344 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
17345
17346 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17347
17348 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
17349 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
17350 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
17351 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
17352 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
17353 this.</p>
17354
17355 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
17356 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
17357
17358       </div>
17359       <div class="tags">
17360
17361
17362         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17363
17364
17365       </div>
17366     </div>
17367     <div class="padding"></div>
17368
17369     <div class="entry">
17370       <div class="title">
17371         <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>
17372       </div>
17373       <div class="date">
17374         25th December 2010
17375       </div>
17376       <div class="body">
17377         <p>A few days ago
17378 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
17379 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
17380 2.0 of
17381 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
17382 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
17383 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
17384 Nothing very surprising there, given
17385 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
17386 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
17387 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
17388 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
17389 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
17390 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
17391 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
17392 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
17393 standard definition from its content.</p>
17394
17395 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
17396 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
17397 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
17398 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
17399 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
17400 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
17401 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
17402 background information about that story is available in
17403 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
17404 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
17405
17406 <blockquote>
17407 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
17408 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
17409 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
17410
17411 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
17412
17413 <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>
17414
17415 <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>
17416
17417 <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>
17418
17419 <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>
17420
17421 <p>
17422 <ul>
17423 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
17424 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
17425 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
17426 </ul>
17427 </p>
17428
17429 <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>
17430
17431 <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>
17432
17433 <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>
17434
17435 <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>
17436
17437 <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>
17438
17439
17440 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
17441 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
17442 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
17443 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
17444 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
17445 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
17446
17447 </p>
17448
17449 <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>
17450
17451 <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>
17452
17453 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
17454
17455 <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>
17456
17457 <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>
17458
17459 <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>
17460
17461 <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>
17462
17463 <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>
17464
17465 <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>
17466
17467 <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>
17468
17469 <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>
17470
17471 <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>
17472
17473 <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>
17474
17475 <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>
17476
17477 <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>
17478
17479 <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>
17480
17481 <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>
17482
17483 <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>
17484
17485 <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>
17486
17487 <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>
17488
17489 <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>
17490
17491 <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>
17492
17493 <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>
17494
17495 <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>
17496
17497 <p>On security:</p>
17498
17499 <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>
17500
17501 <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>
17502
17503 <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>
17504
17505 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
17506
17507 <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>
17508
17509 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
17510
17511 <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>
17512
17513 <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>
17514
17515 <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>
17516
17517 <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>
17518
17519 <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>
17520
17521 <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>
17522
17523 <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>
17524
17525 <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>
17526
17527 <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>
17528
17529 <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>
17530
17531 <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>
17532
17533 <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>
17534
17535 <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>
17536
17537 <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>
17538
17539 <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>
17540
17541 <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>
17542
17543 <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>
17544
17545 <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>
17546
17547 <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>
17548
17549 <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>
17550
17551 <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>
17552
17553 <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>
17554
17555 <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>
17556
17557 <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>
17558
17559 <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>
17560
17561 <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>
17562
17563 <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>
17564
17565 <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>
17566
17567 <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>
17568
17569 <p>Cordially,<br>
17570 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
17571 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
17572 </blockquote>
17573
17574       </div>
17575       <div class="tags">
17576
17577
17578         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>.
17579
17580
17581       </div>
17582     </div>
17583     <div class="padding"></div>
17584
17585     <div class="entry">
17586       <div class="title">
17587         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
17588       </div>
17589       <div class="date">
17590         25th December 2010
17591       </div>
17592       <div class="body">
17593         <p>Half a year ago I
17594 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
17595 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
17596 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
17597 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
17598
17599 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
17600 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
17601 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
17602 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
17603 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
17604 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
17605 got such a great test tool available.</p>
17606
17607       </div>
17608       <div class="tags">
17609
17610
17611         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>.
17612
17613
17614       </div>
17615     </div>
17616     <div class="padding"></div>
17617
17618     <div class="entry">
17619       <div class="title">
17620         <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>
17621       </div>
17622       <div class="date">
17623         22nd December 2010
17624       </div>
17625       <div class="body">
17626         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
17627 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
17628 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
17629 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
17630 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
17631 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
17632 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
17633 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
17634 university.</p>
17635
17636 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
17637 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
17638 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
17639 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
17640 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
17641 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
17642 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
17643 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
17644
17645 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
17646 I perform on a new model.</p>
17647
17648 <ul>
17649
17650 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
17651 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
17652 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
17653
17654 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
17655 installation, X.org is working.</li>
17656
17657 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
17658 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
17659 reported by the program.</li>
17660
17661 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
17662 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
17663 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
17664 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
17665 normally test this by playing
17666 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
17667 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
17668
17669 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
17670 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17671
17672 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
17673 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17674
17675 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
17676 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
17677
17678 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
17679 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
17680 few.</li>
17681
17682 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
17683 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
17684 notice this.</li>
17685
17686 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
17687 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
17688 resume.</li>
17689
17690 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
17691 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
17692 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
17693 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
17694 not.</li>
17695
17696 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
17697 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
17698 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
17699 existence.</li>
17700
17701 </ul>
17702
17703 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
17704 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
17705 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
17706 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
17707 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
17708 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
17709 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
17710 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
17711
17712       </div>
17713       <div class="tags">
17714
17715
17716         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>.
17717
17718
17719       </div>
17720     </div>
17721     <div class="padding"></div>
17722
17723     <div class="entry">
17724       <div class="title">
17725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
17726       </div>
17727       <div class="date">
17728         11th December 2010
17729       </div>
17730       <div class="body">
17731         <p>As I continue to explore
17732 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
17733 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
17734 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
17735
17736 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
17737 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
17738 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
17739 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
17740 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
17741 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
17742 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
17743 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
17744 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
17745 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
17746 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
17747 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
17748 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
17749 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
17750 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
17751 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
17752 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
17753 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
17754 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
17755 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
17756
17757 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
17758 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
17759 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
17760 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
17761 If the Skolelinux foundation
17762 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
17763 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
17764 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
17765 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
17766 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
17767 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
17768 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
17769 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
17770
17771 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
17772 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
17773 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
17774 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
17775 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
17776 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
17777 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
17778 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
17779 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
17780 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
17781 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
17782 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
17783 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
17784 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
17785 currencies.</p>
17786
17787 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
17788 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
17789 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
17790 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
17791 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
17792 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
17793 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
17794 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
17795 BitCoins.  Check out
17796 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
17797 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
17798 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
17799 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
17800 yet.</p>
17801
17802 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
17803 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
17804 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
17805 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
17806 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
17807
17808       </div>
17809       <div class="tags">
17810
17811
17812         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>.
17813
17814
17815       </div>
17816     </div>
17817     <div class="padding"></div>
17818
17819     <div class="entry">
17820       <div class="title">
17821         <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>
17822       </div>
17823       <div class="date">
17824         10th December 2010
17825       </div>
17826       <div class="body">
17827         <p>With this weeks lawless
17828 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
17829 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
17830 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
17831 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
17832 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
17833 A blog post from
17834 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
17835 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
17836 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
17837 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
17838 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
17839 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
17840 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
17841
17842 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
17843 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
17844 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
17845 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
17846 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
17847 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
17848 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
17849 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
17850 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
17851 Debian</a> soon.</p>
17852
17853 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
17854 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
17855 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
17856 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
17857 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
17858 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
17859 you can even get
17860 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
17861 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
17862 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
17863 on the current exchange rates.</p>
17864
17865 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
17866 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
17867 donations to the address
17868 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
17869
17870       </div>
17871       <div class="tags">
17872
17873
17874         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>.
17875
17876
17877       </div>
17878     </div>
17879     <div class="padding"></div>
17880
17881     <div class="entry">
17882       <div class="title">
17883         <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>
17884       </div>
17885       <div class="date">
17886          9th December 2010
17887       </div>
17888       <div class="body">
17889         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
17890 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
17891 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
17892 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
17893 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
17894 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
17895 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
17896 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
17897 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
17898 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
17899 operational.</p>
17900
17901 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
17902 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
17903 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
17904 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
17905 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
17906 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
17907 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
17908
17909       </div>
17910       <div class="tags">
17911
17912
17913         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>.
17914
17915
17916       </div>
17917     </div>
17918     <div class="padding"></div>
17919
17920     <div class="entry">
17921       <div class="title">
17922         <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>
17923       </div>
17924       <div class="date">
17925         29th November 2010
17926       </div>
17927       <div class="body">
17928         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
17929 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
17930 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
17931 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
17932 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
17933 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
17934
17935 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
17936 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
17937 will hold its
17938 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
17939 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
17940 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
17941 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
17942 vote this year.</p>
17943
17944       </div>
17945       <div class="tags">
17946
17947
17948         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>.
17949
17950
17951       </div>
17952     </div>
17953     <div class="padding"></div>
17954
17955     <div class="entry">
17956       <div class="title">
17957         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
17958       </div>
17959       <div class="date">
17960         27th November 2010
17961       </div>
17962       <div class="body">
17963         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
17964 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
17965 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
17966 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
17967 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
17968 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
17969 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
17970 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
17971
17972 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
17973 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
17974 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
17975 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
17976 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
17977 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
17978 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
17979 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
17980 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
17981 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
17982 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
17983
17984 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
17985 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
17986 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
17987 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
17988 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
17989 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
17990 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
17991 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
17992 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
17993 what is going on.</p>
17994
17995       </div>
17996       <div class="tags">
17997
17998
17999         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>.
18000
18001
18002       </div>
18003     </div>
18004     <div class="padding"></div>
18005
18006     <div class="entry">
18007       <div class="title">
18008         <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>
18009       </div>
18010       <div class="date">
18011         22nd November 2010
18012       </div>
18013       <div class="body">
18014         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
18015 upgrade testing of the
18016 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18017 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
18018 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
18019 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
18020
18021 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18022
18023 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18024
18025 <blockquote><p>
18026   apache2.2-bin
18027   aptdaemon
18028   baobab
18029   binfmt-support
18030   browser-plugin-gnash
18031   cheese-common
18032   cli-common
18033   cups-pk-helper
18034   dmz-cursor-theme
18035   empathy
18036   empathy-common
18037   freedesktop-sound-theme
18038   freeglut3
18039   gconf-defaults-service
18040   gdm-themes
18041   gedit-plugins
18042   geoclue
18043   geoclue-hostip
18044   geoclue-localnet
18045   geoclue-manual
18046   geoclue-yahoo
18047   gnash
18048   gnash-common
18049   gnome
18050   gnome-backgrounds
18051   gnome-cards-data
18052   gnome-codec-install
18053   gnome-core
18054   gnome-desktop-environment
18055   gnome-disk-utility
18056   gnome-screenshot
18057   gnome-search-tool
18058   gnome-session-canberra
18059   gnome-system-log
18060   gnome-themes-extras
18061   gnome-themes-more
18062   gnome-user-share
18063   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18064   gstreamer0.10-tools
18065   gtk2-engines
18066   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18067   gtk2-engines-smooth
18068   hamster-applet
18069   libapache2-mod-dnssd
18070   libapr1
18071   libaprutil1
18072   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
18073   libaprutil1-ldap
18074   libart2.0-cil
18075   libboost-date-time1.42.0
18076   libboost-python1.42.0
18077   libboost-thread1.42.0
18078   libchamplain-0.4-0
18079   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
18080   libcheese-gtk18
18081   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18082   libcryptui0
18083   libdiscid0
18084   libelf1
18085   libepc-1.0-2
18086   libepc-common
18087   libepc-ui-1.0-2
18088   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18089   libfreerdp0
18090   libgconf2.0-cil
18091   libgdata-common
18092   libgdata7
18093   libgdu-gtk0
18094   libgee2
18095   libgeoclue0
18096   libgexiv2-0
18097   libgif4
18098   libglade2.0-cil
18099   libglib2.0-cil
18100   libgmime2.4-cil
18101   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18102   libgnome2.24-cil
18103   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
18104   libgpod-common
18105   libgpod4
18106   libgtk2.0-cil
18107   libgtkglext1
18108   libgtksourceview2.0-common
18109   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18110   libmono-addins0.2-cil
18111   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
18112   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18113   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
18114   libmono-posix2.0-cil
18115   libmono-security2.0-cil
18116   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18117   libmono-system2.0-cil
18118   libmtp8
18119   libmusicbrainz3-6
18120   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
18121   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
18122   libopal3.6.8
18123   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
18124   libpt2.6.7
18125   libpython2.6
18126   librpm1
18127   librpmio1
18128   libsdl1.2debian
18129   libsrtp0
18130   libssh-4
18131   libtelepathy-farsight0
18132   libtelepathy-glib0
18133   libtidy-0.99-0
18134   media-player-info
18135   mesa-utils
18136   mono-2.0-gac
18137   mono-gac
18138   mono-runtime
18139   nautilus-sendto
18140   nautilus-sendto-empathy
18141   p7zip-full
18142   pkg-config
18143   python-aptdaemon
18144   python-aptdaemon-gtk
18145   python-axiom
18146   python-beautifulsoup
18147   python-bugbuddy
18148   python-clientform
18149   python-coherence
18150   python-configobj
18151   python-crypto
18152   python-cupshelpers
18153   python-elementtree
18154   python-epsilon
18155   python-evolution
18156   python-feedparser
18157   python-gdata
18158   python-gdbm
18159   python-gst0.10
18160   python-gtkglext1
18161   python-gtksourceview2
18162   python-httplib2
18163   python-louie
18164   python-mako
18165   python-markupsafe
18166   python-mechanize
18167   python-nevow
18168   python-notify
18169   python-opengl
18170   python-openssl
18171   python-pam
18172   python-pkg-resources
18173   python-pyasn1
18174   python-pysqlite2
18175   python-rdflib
18176   python-serial
18177   python-tagpy
18178   python-twisted-bin
18179   python-twisted-conch
18180   python-twisted-core
18181   python-twisted-web
18182   python-utidylib
18183   python-webkit
18184   python-xdg
18185   python-zope.interface
18186   remmina
18187   remmina-plugin-data
18188   remmina-plugin-rdp
18189   remmina-plugin-vnc
18190   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18191   rhythmbox-plugins
18192   rpm-common
18193   rpm2cpio
18194   seahorse-plugins
18195   shotwell
18196   software-center
18197   system-config-printer-udev
18198   telepathy-gabble
18199   telepathy-mission-control-5
18200   telepathy-salut
18201   tomboy
18202   totem
18203   totem-coherence
18204   totem-mozilla
18205   totem-plugins
18206   transmission-common
18207   xdg-user-dirs
18208   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
18209   xserver-xephyr
18210 </p></blockquote>
18211
18212 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18213
18214 <blockquote><p>
18215   cheese
18216   ekiga
18217   eog
18218   epiphany-extensions
18219   evolution-exchange
18220   fast-user-switch-applet
18221   file-roller
18222   gcalctool
18223   gconf-editor
18224   gdm
18225   gedit
18226   gedit-common
18227   gnome-games
18228   gnome-games-data
18229   gnome-nettool
18230   gnome-system-tools
18231   gnome-themes
18232   gnuchess
18233   gucharmap
18234   guile-1.8-libs
18235   libavahi-ui0
18236   libdmx1
18237   libgalago3
18238   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18239   libgtksourceview2.0-0
18240   liblircclient0
18241   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
18242   libspeexdsp1
18243   libsvga1
18244   rhythmbox
18245   seahorse
18246   sound-juicer
18247   system-config-printer
18248   totem-common
18249   transmission-gtk
18250   vinagre
18251   vino
18252 </p></blockquote>
18253
18254 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18255
18256 <blockquote><p>
18257   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18258 </p></blockquote>
18259
18260 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18261
18262 <blockquote><p>
18263 [nothing]
18264 </p></blockquote>
18265
18266 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18267
18268 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18269
18270 <blockquote><p>
18271   ksmserver
18272 </p></blockquote>
18273
18274 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18275
18276 <blockquote><p>
18277   kwin
18278   network-manager-kde
18279 </p></blockquote>
18280
18281 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18282
18283 <blockquote><p>
18284   arts
18285   dolphin
18286   freespacenotifier
18287   google-gadgets-gst
18288   google-gadgets-xul
18289   kappfinder
18290   kcalc
18291   kcharselect
18292   kde-core
18293   kde-plasma-desktop
18294   kde-standard
18295   kde-window-manager
18296   kdeartwork
18297   kdeartwork-emoticons
18298   kdeartwork-style
18299   kdeartwork-theme-icon
18300   kdebase
18301   kdebase-apps
18302   kdebase-workspace
18303   kdebase-workspace-bin
18304   kdebase-workspace-data
18305   kdeeject
18306   kdelibs
18307   kdeplasma-addons
18308   kdeutils
18309   kdewallpapers
18310   kdf
18311   kfloppy
18312   kgpg
18313   khelpcenter4
18314   kinfocenter
18315   konq-plugins-l10n
18316   konqueror-nsplugins
18317   kscreensaver
18318   kscreensaver-xsavers
18319   ktimer
18320   kwrite
18321   libgle3
18322   libkde4-ruby1.8
18323   libkonq5
18324   libkonq5-templates
18325   libnetpbm10
18326   libplasma-ruby
18327   libplasma-ruby1.8
18328   libqt4-ruby1.8
18329   marble-data
18330   marble-plugins
18331   netpbm
18332   nuvola-icon-theme
18333   plasma-dataengines-workspace
18334   plasma-desktop
18335   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
18336   plasma-runners-addons
18337   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
18338   plasma-scriptengine-python
18339   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
18340   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
18341   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
18342   plasma-scriptengines
18343   plasma-wallpapers-addons
18344   plasma-widget-folderview
18345   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18346   ruby
18347   sweeper
18348   update-notifier-kde
18349   xscreensaver-data-extra
18350   xscreensaver-gl
18351   xscreensaver-gl-extra
18352   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18353 </p></blockquote>
18354
18355 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18356
18357 <blockquote><p>
18358   ark
18359   google-gadgets-common
18360   google-gadgets-qt
18361   htdig
18362   kate
18363   kdebase-bin
18364   kdebase-data
18365   kdepasswd
18366   kfind
18367   klipper
18368   konq-plugins
18369   konqueror
18370   ksysguard
18371   ksysguardd
18372   libarchive1
18373   libcln6
18374   libeet1
18375   libeina-svn-06
18376   libggadget-1.0-0b
18377   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
18378   libgps19
18379   libkdecorations4
18380   libkephal4
18381   libkonq4
18382   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
18383   libkscreensaver5
18384   libksgrd4
18385   libksignalplotter4
18386   libkunitconversion4
18387   libkwineffects1a
18388   libmarblewidget4
18389   libntrack-qt4-1
18390   libntrack0
18391   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
18392   libplasmaclock4a
18393   libplasmagenericshell4
18394   libprocesscore4a
18395   libprocessui4a
18396   libqalculate5
18397   libqedje0a
18398   libqtruby4shared2
18399   libqzion0a
18400   libruby1.8
18401   libscim8c2a
18402   libsmokekdecore4-3
18403   libsmokekdeui4-3
18404   libsmokekfile3
18405   libsmokekhtml3
18406   libsmokekio3
18407   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
18408   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
18409   libsmokekparts3
18410   libsmokektexteditor3
18411   libsmokekutils3
18412   libsmokenepomuk3
18413   libsmokephonon3
18414   libsmokeplasma3
18415   libsmokeqtcore4-3
18416   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
18417   libsmokeqtgui4-3
18418   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
18419   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
18420   libsmokeqtscript4-3
18421   libsmokeqtsql4-3
18422   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
18423   libsmokeqttest4-3
18424   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
18425   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
18426   libsmokeqtxml4-3
18427   libsmokesolid3
18428   libsmokesoprano3
18429   libtaskmanager4a
18430   libtidy-0.99-0
18431   libweather-ion4a
18432   libxklavier16
18433   libxxf86misc1
18434   okteta
18435   oxygencursors
18436   plasma-dataengines-addons
18437   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
18438   plasma-widget-lancelot
18439   plasma-widgets-addons
18440   plasma-widgets-workspace
18441   polkit-kde-1
18442   ruby1.8
18443   systemsettings
18444   update-notifier-common
18445 </p></blockquote>
18446
18447 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
18448 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
18449 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
18450 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
18451
18452       </div>
18453       <div class="tags">
18454
18455
18456         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18457
18458
18459       </div>
18460     </div>
18461     <div class="padding"></div>
18462
18463     <div class="entry">
18464       <div class="title">
18465         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
18466       </div>
18467       <div class="date">
18468         22nd November 2010
18469       </div>
18470       <div class="body">
18471         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
18472 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
18473 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
18474 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
18475 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
18476 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
18477 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
18478 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
18479 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
18480
18481 <p>I found
18482 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
18483 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
18484 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
18485 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
18486 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
18487 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
18488
18489 <pre>
18490 #!/bin/sh
18491
18492 # Based on
18493 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
18494
18495 set -e
18496 set -x
18497
18498 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
18499     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
18500     exit 1
18501 else
18502     host="$1"
18503 fi
18504
18505 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
18506     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
18507     exit 1
18508 fi
18509
18510 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
18511 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18512 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18513 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
18514
18515 img=$host.img
18516 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
18517 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
18518
18519 parted $img mklabel msdos
18520 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
18521 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
18522 parted $img set 1 boot on
18523
18524 modprobe dm-mod
18525 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
18526 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
18527
18528 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
18529 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
18530 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
18531
18532 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
18533 losetup -d /dev/loop0
18534 </pre>
18535
18536 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
18537 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
18538
18539 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
18540 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
18541 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
18542 seem to work just fine.</p>
18543
18544       </div>
18545       <div class="tags">
18546
18547
18548         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>.
18549
18550
18551       </div>
18552     </div>
18553     <div class="padding"></div>
18554
18555     <div class="entry">
18556       <div class="title">
18557         <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>
18558       </div>
18559       <div class="date">
18560         20th November 2010
18561       </div>
18562       <div class="body">
18563         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
18564 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18565 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
18566 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
18567
18568 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
18569 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
18570 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
18571
18572 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18573
18574 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18575
18576 <blockquote><p>
18577   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
18578   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
18579   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
18580   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
18581   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
18582   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
18583   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
18584   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
18585   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
18586   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
18587   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18588   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18589   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
18590   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
18591   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
18592   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
18593   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18594   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
18595   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18596   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
18597   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
18598   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18599   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
18600   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
18601   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
18602   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18603   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18604   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
18605   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18606   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
18607   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
18608   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18609   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
18610   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
18611   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
18612   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
18613   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
18614   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
18615   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
18616   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
18617   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
18618   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
18619   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
18620   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
18621   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
18622   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
18623   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
18624   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
18625   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
18626   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
18627   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
18628   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
18629   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18630   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
18631   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
18632   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
18633   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
18634   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
18635   zip
18636 </p></blockquote>
18637
18638 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
18639
18640 <blockquote><p>
18641   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
18642   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
18643   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
18644   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
18645   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
18646   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
18647   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
18648   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
18649   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
18650   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
18651   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
18652   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18653   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
18654   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18655   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18656   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
18657   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18658   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
18659   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
18660   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
18661   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
18662   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
18663   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
18664   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
18665   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
18666   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
18667   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
18668   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
18669   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
18670 </p></blockquote>
18671
18672 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18673
18674 <blockquote><p>
18675   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18676 </p></blockquote>
18677
18678 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18679
18680 <blockquote><p>
18681 [nothing]
18682 </p></blockquote>
18683
18684 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18685
18686 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18687
18688 <blockquote><p>
18689   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
18690   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18691   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
18692   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
18693   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
18694   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
18695   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18696   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
18697   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
18698   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18699   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
18700   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
18701   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
18702   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
18703   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
18704   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
18705   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
18706   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
18707   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
18708   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
18709   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
18710   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
18711   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
18712   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
18713   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
18714   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
18715   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
18716   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
18717   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
18718   ttf-sazanami-gothic
18719 </p></blockquote>
18720
18721 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18722
18723 <blockquote><p>
18724   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
18725   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
18726   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
18727   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
18728   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
18729   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
18730   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
18731   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
18732   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
18733   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
18734   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
18735   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
18736   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
18737   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
18738   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18739   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18740   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
18741   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
18742   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18743   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
18744   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18745   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
18746   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18747   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18748   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
18749   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
18750   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
18751   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
18752   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
18753   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
18754   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
18755   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
18756   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
18757 </p></blockquote>
18758
18759 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18760
18761 <blockquote><p>
18762   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
18763   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
18764   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
18765   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
18766   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18767   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
18768   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18769 </p></blockquote>
18770
18771 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18772
18773 <blockquote><p>
18774   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
18775 </p></blockquote>
18776
18777       </div>
18778       <div class="tags">
18779
18780
18781         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>.
18782
18783
18784       </div>
18785     </div>
18786     <div class="padding"></div>
18787
18788     <div class="entry">
18789       <div class="title">
18790         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
18791       </div>
18792       <div class="date">
18793         20th November 2010
18794       </div>
18795       <div class="body">
18796         <p>Answering
18797 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
18798 call from the Gnash project</a> for
18799 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
18800 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
18801 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
18802 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
18803 releases out more often.</p>
18804
18805 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
18806 I have considered setting up a <a
18807 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
18808 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
18809 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
18810 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
18811 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
18812 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
18813 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
18814 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
18815 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
18816 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
18817 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
18818 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
18819
18820       </div>
18821       <div class="tags">
18822
18823
18824         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>.
18825
18826
18827       </div>
18828     </div>
18829     <div class="padding"></div>
18830
18831     <div class="entry">
18832       <div class="title">
18833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
18834       </div>
18835       <div class="date">
18836          9th November 2010
18837       </div>
18838       <div class="body">
18839         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
18840
18841 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
18842 3D linked in from
18843 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
18844 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
18845
18846       </div>
18847       <div class="tags">
18848
18849
18850         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>.
18851
18852
18853       </div>
18854     </div>
18855     <div class="padding"></div>
18856
18857     <div class="entry">
18858       <div class="title">
18859         <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>
18860       </div>
18861       <div class="date">
18862          7th November 2010
18863       </div>
18864       <div class="body">
18865         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
18866 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
18867 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
18868 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
18869 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
18870 working using this DVD.</p>
18871
18872 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
18873 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
18874 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
18875 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
18876 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
18877 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
18878 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
18879
18880 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
18881 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
18882 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
18883 Debian archive.</p>
18884
18885 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
18886 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
18887 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
18888 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
18889 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
18890 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
18891 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
18892 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
18893 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
18894 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
18895 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
18896 free X driver should work.</p>
18897
18898 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
18899 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
18900 DVD more useful again.</p>
18901
18902       </div>
18903       <div class="tags">
18904
18905
18906         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>.
18907
18908
18909       </div>
18910     </div>
18911     <div class="padding"></div>
18912
18913     <div class="entry">
18914       <div class="title">
18915         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
18916       </div>
18917       <div class="date">
18918         24th October 2010
18919       </div>
18920       <div class="body">
18921         <p>Some updates.</p>
18922
18923 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
18924 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
18925 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
18926 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
18927 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
18928 :)</p>
18929
18930 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
18931 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
18932 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
18933 It is called
18934 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
18935 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
18936 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
18937 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
18938 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
18939 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
18940
18941 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
18942 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
18943 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
18944 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
18945 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
18946 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
18947 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
18948 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
18949 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
18950 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
18951
18952       </div>
18953       <div class="tags">
18954
18955
18956         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>.
18957
18958
18959       </div>
18960     </div>
18961     <div class="padding"></div>
18962
18963     <div class="entry">
18964       <div class="title">
18965         <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>
18966       </div>
18967       <div class="date">
18968         19th October 2010
18969       </div>
18970       <div class="body">
18971         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
18972 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
18973 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
18974 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
18975 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
18976 AVM2 flash files.</p>
18977
18978 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
18979 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
18980 following text:</P>
18981
18982 <p><blockquote>
18983
18984   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
18985   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
18986
18987   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
18988
18989   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
18990
18991   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
18992   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
18993   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
18994   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
18995   days. The project web page is available from
18996   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
18997   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
18998   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
18999
19000   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
19001   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
19002   to get this to happen.</p>
19003
19004   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
19005   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
19006
19007 </blockquote></p>
19008
19009 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
19010 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
19011 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
19012 :)</p>
19013
19014       </div>
19015       <div class="tags">
19016
19017
19018         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>.
19019
19020
19021       </div>
19022     </div>
19023     <div class="padding"></div>
19024
19025     <div class="entry">
19026       <div class="title">
19027         <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>
19028       </div>
19029       <div class="date">
19030          9th October 2010
19031       </div>
19032       <div class="body">
19033         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
19034 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
19035 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
19036 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
19037 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
19038 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
19039 robots.</p>
19040
19041 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
19042 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
19043 a few less important features too.</p>
19044
19045 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
19046 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
19047 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
19048 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
19049
19050 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
19051 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
19052 source or binary package:</p>
19053
19054 <p><ul>
19055 <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>
19056 <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>
19057 <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>
19058 </ul></p>
19059
19060 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
19061 please let me know.</p>
19062
19063       </div>
19064       <div class="tags">
19065
19066
19067         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>.
19068
19069
19070       </div>
19071     </div>
19072     <div class="padding"></div>
19073
19074     <div class="entry">
19075       <div class="title">
19076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
19077       </div>
19078       <div class="date">
19079          3rd October 2010
19080       </div>
19081       <div class="body">
19082         <p><ul>
19083
19084 <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
19085 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
19086
19087 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
19088 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
19089 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
19090
19091 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
19092 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
19093 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
19094 simple setup.
19095
19096 </ul></p>
19097
19098       </div>
19099       <div class="tags">
19100
19101
19102         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>.
19103
19104
19105       </div>
19106     </div>
19107     <div class="padding"></div>
19108
19109     <div class="entry">
19110       <div class="title">
19111         <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>
19112       </div>
19113       <div class="date">
19114          9th September 2010
19115       </div>
19116       <div class="body">
19117         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
19118 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
19119 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
19120 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
19121 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
19122 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
19123 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
19124 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
19125 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
19126
19127 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
19128 written:</p>
19129
19130 <blockquote>
19131 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
19132 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
19133 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
19134 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
19135 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
19136
19137 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
19138 standard.</p>
19139 </blockquote>
19140
19141 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
19142 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
19143 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
19144 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
19145
19146 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
19147 read
19148 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
19149 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
19150 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
19151 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
19152 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
19153 the issue.  The solution is to support the
19154 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
19155 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
19156 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
19157
19158       </div>
19159       <div class="tags">
19160
19161
19162         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19163
19164
19165       </div>
19166     </div>
19167     <div class="padding"></div>
19168
19169     <div class="entry">
19170       <div class="title">
19171         <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>
19172       </div>
19173       <div class="date">
19174          4th September 2010
19175       </div>
19176       <div class="body">
19177         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
19178 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
19179 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
19180 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
19181 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
19182 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
19183 installed.</p>
19184
19185 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
19186 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
19187 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
19188 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
19189 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
19190 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
19191 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
19192 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
19193 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
19194
19195 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
19196 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
19197 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
19198 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
19199 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
19200 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
19201 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
19202 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
19203 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
19204 pages they want to visit.</p>
19205
19206 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
19207 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
19208 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
19209 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
19210 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
19211 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
19212 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
19213 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
19214 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
19215 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
19216 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
19217
19218       </div>
19219       <div class="tags">
19220
19221
19222         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>.
19223
19224
19225       </div>
19226     </div>
19227     <div class="padding"></div>
19228
19229     <div class="entry">
19230       <div class="title">
19231         <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>
19232       </div>
19233       <div class="date">
19234          1st September 2010
19235       </div>
19236       <div class="body">
19237         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
19238 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
19239 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
19240 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
19241 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
19242 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
19243 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
19244 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
19245 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
19246 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
19247 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
19248 drive around.</p>
19249
19250 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
19251 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
19252
19253 <p><pre>
19254 use Spykee;
19255 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
19256 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
19257 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
19258 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
19259 $spykee->left();
19260 sleep 2;
19261 $spykee->right();
19262 sleep 2;
19263 $spykee->forward();
19264 sleep 2;
19265 $spykee->back();
19266 sleep 2;
19267 $spykee->stop();
19268 </pre></p>
19269
19270 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
19271 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
19272 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
19273 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
19274 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
19275 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
19276 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
19277 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
19278 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
19279 going. :).</p>
19280
19281 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
19282 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
19283 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
19284 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
19285
19286       </div>
19287       <div class="tags">
19288
19289
19290         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>.
19291
19292
19293       </div>
19294     </div>
19295     <div class="padding"></div>
19296
19297     <div class="entry">
19298       <div class="title">
19299         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
19300       </div>
19301       <div class="date">
19302         30th August 2010
19303       </div>
19304       <div class="body">
19305         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
19306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
19307 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
19308 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
19309 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
19310 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
19311 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
19312
19313 <pre>
19314 % ln foo bar
19315 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
19316 %
19317 </pre>
19318
19319 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
19320 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
19321 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
19322 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
19323 nevertheless. :)</p>
19324
19325 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
19326 git from
19327 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
19328
19329       </div>
19330       <div class="tags">
19331
19332
19333         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>.
19334
19335
19336       </div>
19337     </div>
19338     <div class="padding"></div>
19339
19340     <div class="entry">
19341       <div class="title">
19342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
19343       </div>
19344       <div class="date">
19345         26th August 2010
19346       </div>
19347       <div class="body">
19348         <p>My file system sematics program
19349 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
19350 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
19351 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
19352 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
19353 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
19354 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
19355 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
19356 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
19357 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
19358 script:</p>
19359
19360 <pre>
19361 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
19362   mode_t retval = 0;
19363   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
19364   if (-1 != fd) {
19365     unlink(name);
19366     struct stat statbuf;
19367     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
19368       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
19369     }
19370     close(fd);
19371   }
19372   return retval;
19373 }
19374
19375 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
19376 int test_umask(void) {
19377   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
19378
19379   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
19380   mode_t newmode;
19381   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19382     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
19383            newmode);
19384   }
19385   umask(007);
19386   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19387     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
19388            newmode);
19389   }
19390
19391   umask (orig_umask);
19392   return 0;
19393 }
19394
19395 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19396   [...]
19397   test_umask();
19398   return 0;
19399 }
19400 </pre>
19401
19402 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
19403
19404 <pre>
19405 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19406 info: testing symlink creation
19407 info: testing subdirectory creation
19408 info: testing fcntl locking
19409   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19410   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19411   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19412   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19413   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19414   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19415 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19416 </pre>
19417
19418 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
19419 result:</p>
19420
19421 <pre>
19422 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19423 info: testing symlink creation
19424 info: testing subdirectory creation
19425 info: testing fcntl locking
19426   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19427   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19428   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19429   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19430   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19431   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19432 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19433   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
19434   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
19435 </pre>
19436
19437 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
19438 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
19439 directory.</p>
19440
19441 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
19442 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
19443
19444 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19445 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19446 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19447
19448       </div>
19449       <div class="tags">
19450
19451
19452         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>.
19453
19454
19455       </div>
19456     </div>
19457     <div class="padding"></div>
19458
19459     <div class="entry">
19460       <div class="title">
19461         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
19462       </div>
19463       <div class="date">
19464         15th August 2010
19465       </div>
19466       <div class="body">
19467         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
19468 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
19469 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
19470 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
19471 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
19472 long time.</p>
19473
19474       </div>
19475       <div class="tags">
19476
19477
19478         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>.
19479
19480
19481       </div>
19482     </div>
19483     <div class="padding"></div>
19484
19485     <div class="entry">
19486       <div class="title">
19487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
19488       </div>
19489       <div class="date">
19490          9th August 2010
19491       </div>
19492       <div class="body">
19493         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
19494 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
19495 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
19496 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
19497 generated configuration.</p>
19498
19499 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
19500 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
19501 without any manual configuration.</p>
19502
19503 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
19504 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
19505 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
19506 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
19507 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
19508 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
19509 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
19510 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
19511 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
19512 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
19513 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
19514 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
19515 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
19516 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
19517 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
19518 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
19519 use.</p>
19520
19521 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
19522 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
19523 working properly out of the box:</p>
19524
19525 <ul>
19526 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
19527 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
19528 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
19529 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
19530 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
19531 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
19532 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
19533 </ul>
19534
19535 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
19536
19537 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
19538 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
19539 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
19540 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
19541 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
19542
19543 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
19544 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
19545 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
19546 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
19547 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
19548 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
19549 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
19550 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
19551
19552 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
19553 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
19554 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
19555 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
19556 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
19557 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
19558 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
19559 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
19560 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
19561 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
19562 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
19563 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19564 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
19565 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
19566 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
19567 current DNS domain is used.</p>
19568
19569 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
19570 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
19571 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
19572 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
19573 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
19574 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
19575 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
19576 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
19577 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
19578 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
19579 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
19580 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
19581 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
19582
19583 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
19584 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
19585 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
19586 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
19587 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
19588 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
19589 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
19590 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
19591 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
19592 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
19593 do for now. :)</p>
19594
19595 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
19596 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
19597 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
19598 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
19599 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
19600 yet.</p>
19601
19602 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19603 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19604
19605 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
19606 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
19607 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
19608 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
19609
19610       </div>
19611       <div class="tags">
19612
19613
19614         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>.
19615
19616
19617       </div>
19618     </div>
19619     <div class="padding"></div>
19620
19621     <div class="entry">
19622       <div class="title">
19623         <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>
19624       </div>
19625       <div class="date">
19626          8th August 2010
19627       </div>
19628       <div class="body">
19629         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
19630 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
19631 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
19632 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
19633 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
19634 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
19635 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
19636
19637 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
19638 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
19639 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
19640 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
19641 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
19642 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
19643 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
19644
19645 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
19646 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
19647 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
19648 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
19649 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
19650
19651 <pre>
19652 /*
19653  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
19654  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
19655  * directory.
19656  * License: GPL v2 or later
19657  *
19658  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
19659  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
19660 */
19661
19662 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
19663 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
19664 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
19665
19666 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
19667
19668 #include &lt;errno.h>
19669 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
19670 #include &lt;stdio.h>
19671 #include &lt;string.h>
19672 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
19673 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
19674 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
19675 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
19676 #include &lt;unistd.h>
19677
19678 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19679 /*
19680  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
19681  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
19682  * below.
19683  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
19684  */
19685 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
19686 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
19687   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
19688 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
19689   char *zErrMsg;
19690   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19691   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
19692   unlink(name);
19693   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
19694   if( rc ){
19695     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
19696     sqlite3_close(db);
19697     return -1;
19698   }
19699
19700   /* create tables */
19701   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
19702   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
19703     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
19704     sqlite3_close(db);
19705     return -1;
19706   }
19707   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
19708   sqlite3_close(db);
19709   return 0;
19710 }
19711 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19712
19713 /*
19714  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
19715  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
19716  * done in the sqlite3 library.
19717  * See also
19718  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
19719  * POSIX specification
19720  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
19721  */
19722 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
19723   struct flock fl;
19724   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19725   unlink(name);
19726   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
19727   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
19728
19729   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
19730   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
19731   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19732   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19733   fl.l_len    = 1;
19734   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19735   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19736
19737   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19738   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19739   fl.l_len    = 510;
19740   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19741   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19742
19743   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19744   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19745   fl.l_len    = 1;
19746   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19747   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19748
19749   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19750   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19751   fl.l_len    = 1;
19752   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
19753   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19754
19755   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19756   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19757   fl.l_len    = 510;
19758   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19759
19760   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
19761   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19762   fl.l_len    = 2;
19763   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19764   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19765
19766   close(fd);
19767   return 0;
19768 }
19769
19770 /*
19771  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
19772  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
19773  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
19774  * slowing down file operations.
19775  */
19776 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
19777 #define LEVELS 5
19778   char *path = strdup("test");
19779   char *dirs[LEVELS];
19780   int level;
19781   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
19782   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
19783     char *newpath = NULL;
19784     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
19785       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
19786              path, strerror(errno));
19787       break;
19788     }
19789     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
19790     free(path);
19791     path = newpath;
19792   }
19793   return 0;
19794 }
19795
19796 /*
19797  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
19798  * KDE.
19799  */
19800 int test_symlinks(void) {
19801   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
19802   unlink("symlink");
19803   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
19804     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
19805   return 0;
19806 }
19807
19808 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19809   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
19810   test_symlinks();
19811   test_subdirectory_creation();
19812 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19813   test_sqlite_open();
19814 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19815   test_gcompris_locking();
19816   return 0;
19817 }
19818 </pre>
19819
19820 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
19821 this:</p>
19822
19823 <pre>
19824 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19825 info: testing symlink creation
19826 info: testing subdirectory creation
19827 info: sqlite worked
19828 info: testing fcntl locking
19829   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19830   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19831   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19832   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19833   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19834   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19835 </pre>
19836
19837 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
19838 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
19839 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
19840 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
19841 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
19842 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
19843 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
19844 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
19845
19846 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
19847 it. :)</p>
19848
19849 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19850 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19851 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19852
19853       </div>
19854       <div class="tags">
19855
19856
19857         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>.
19858
19859
19860       </div>
19861     </div>
19862     <div class="padding"></div>
19863
19864     <div class="entry">
19865       <div class="title">
19866         <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>
19867       </div>
19868       <div class="date">
19869          7th August 2010
19870       </div>
19871       <div class="body">
19872         <p>A few days ago, I
19873 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
19874 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
19875 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
19876 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
19877 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
19878 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
19879 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
19880 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
19881 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
19882
19883 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
19884 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
19885 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
19886 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
19887 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
19888 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
19889 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
19890 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
19891 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
19892 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
19893 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
19894 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
19895 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
19896 gave it a IP address.</p>
19897
19898 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
19899 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
19900 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
19901 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
19902 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
19903 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19904 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
19905 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
19906
19907 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
19908 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
19909 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
19910 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
19911 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
19912 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
19913
19914 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
19915 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
19916 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
19917 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
19918 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
19919 with UID and GID values.</p>
19920
19921 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19922 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19923
19924       </div>
19925       <div class="tags">
19926
19927
19928         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>.
19929
19930
19931       </div>
19932     </div>
19933     <div class="padding"></div>
19934
19935     <div class="entry">
19936       <div class="title">
19937         <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>
19938       </div>
19939       <div class="date">
19940          3rd August 2010
19941       </div>
19942       <div class="body">
19943         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
19944 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
19945 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
19946 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
19947 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
19948 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
19949 servers.</p>
19950
19951 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
19952 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
19953 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
19954 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
19955 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
19956 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
19957 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
19958 .uio.no.</p>
19959
19960 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
19961 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
19962 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
19963 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
19964 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
19965 university servers.</p>
19966
19967 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
19968 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
19969 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
19970 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
19971 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
19972 uses.</p>
19973
19974       </div>
19975       <div class="tags">
19976
19977
19978         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>.
19979
19980
19981       </div>
19982     </div>
19983     <div class="padding"></div>
19984
19985     <div class="entry">
19986       <div class="title">
19987         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
19988       </div>
19989       <div class="date">
19990         27th July 2010
19991       </div>
19992       <div class="body">
19993         <p>I discovered this while doing
19994 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
19995 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
19996 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
19997 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
19998 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
19999
20000 <p>An example is from todays
20001 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
20002 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
20003 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
20004 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
20005 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
20006 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
20007 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
20008
20009 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
20010
20011 <blockquote><pre>
20012 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
20013  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
20014   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
20015 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
20016  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
20017 </pre></blockquote>
20018
20019 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
20020 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
20021 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
20022 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
20023 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
20024 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
20025 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
20026 of dependency loops.</p>
20027
20028 <p>Thanks to
20029 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
20030 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
20031 dependencies
20032 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
20033 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
20034
20035 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
20036 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
20037 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
20038 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
20039 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
20040 it.</p>
20041
20042       </div>
20043       <div class="tags">
20044
20045
20046         Tags: <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>.
20047
20048
20049       </div>
20050     </div>
20051     <div class="padding"></div>
20052
20053     <div class="entry">
20054       <div class="title">
20055         <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>
20056       </div>
20057       <div class="date">
20058         27th July 2010
20059       </div>
20060       <div class="body">
20061         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
20062 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
20063 completed.</p>
20064
20065 <blockquote>
20066 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
20067 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
20068 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
20069 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
20070 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
20071 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
20072 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
20073 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
20074
20075 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
20076 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
20077 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
20078
20079 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
20080 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
20081 much.</p>
20082
20083 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
20084
20085 <ul>
20086 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
20087 <ul>
20088   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
20089          combination with some new artwork
20090   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
20091   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
20092   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
20093   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
20094   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
20095   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
20096   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
20097   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
20098   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
20099 </ul></li>
20100 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
20101     Enabled for:
20102 <ul>
20103   <li>PAM
20104   <li>LDAP
20105   <li>IMAP
20106   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
20107 </ul>
20108 </li>
20109 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
20110 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
20111     fetched from LDAP.</li>
20112 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
20113 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
20114 </ul>
20115 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
20116
20117 <ul>
20118 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
20119     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
20120     for testing.</li>
20121 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
20122     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
20123     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
20124 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
20125 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
20126 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
20127 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
20128     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
20129 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
20130     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
20131     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
20132 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
20133     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
20134     and help out with translations.</li>
20135 </ul>
20136
20137 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
20138
20139 <ul>
20140 <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>
20141 <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>
20142 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20143 </ul>
20144 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
20145
20146 <ul>
20147 <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>
20148 <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>
20149 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20150 </ul>
20151
20152 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
20153 get closer to the final release.</p>
20154
20155 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
20156
20157 <ul>
20158 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20159 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20160 </ul>
20161
20162 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
20163 <ul>
20164 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20165 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20166 </ul>
20167 <p>How to report bugs:
20168 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
20169
20170 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
20171 </blockquote>
20172
20173       </div>
20174       <div class="tags">
20175
20176
20177         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>.
20178
20179
20180       </div>
20181     </div>
20182     <div class="padding"></div>
20183
20184     <div class="entry">
20185       <div class="title">
20186         <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>
20187       </div>
20188       <div class="date">
20189         25th July 2010
20190       </div>
20191       <div class="body">
20192         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
20193 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
20194 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
20195 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
20196 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
20197
20198 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
20199 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
20200 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
20201 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
20202 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
20203 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
20204 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
20205
20206 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
20207 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
20208 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
20209 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
20210 up. :)</p>
20211
20212 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
20213 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
20214 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
20215
20216 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
20217 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
20218 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
20219 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
20220 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
20221 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
20222 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
20223 release another day.</p>
20224
20225 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
20226 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20227
20228       </div>
20229       <div class="tags">
20230
20231
20232         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>.
20233
20234
20235       </div>
20236     </div>
20237     <div class="padding"></div>
20238
20239     <div class="entry">
20240       <div class="title">
20241         <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>
20242       </div>
20243       <div class="date">
20244         18th July 2010
20245       </div>
20246       <div class="body">
20247         <p>Thanks to
20248 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
20249 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
20250 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
20251 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
20252 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
20253 only available from the development server, until more experience is
20254 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
20255
20256 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
20257 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
20258 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
20259 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
20260 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
20261 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
20262 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
20263
20264       </div>
20265       <div class="tags">
20266
20267
20268         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>.
20269
20270
20271       </div>
20272     </div>
20273     <div class="padding"></div>
20274
20275     <div class="entry">
20276       <div class="title">
20277         <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>
20278       </div>
20279       <div class="date">
20280         17th July 2010
20281       </div>
20282       <div class="body">
20283         <p>This is a
20284 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
20285 on my
20286 <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
20287 work</a> on
20288 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
20289 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
20290
20291 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
20292 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
20293 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
20294 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
20295
20296 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
20297 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
20298 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
20299
20300 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
20301
20302 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
20303 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
20304 the web.
20305
20306 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
20307 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
20308 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
20309 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
20310 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
20311 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
20312
20313 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
20314 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
20315 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
20316 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
20317 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
20318 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
20319 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
20320 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
20321 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
20322 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
20323 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
20324 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
20325 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
20326 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
20327 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
20328 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
20329
20330 <blockquote><pre>
20331 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20332   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20333   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20334   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20335   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20336   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20337   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20338
20339 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20340   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20341   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
20342   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
20343   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
20344   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
20345 </pre></blockquote>
20346
20347 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
20348 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
20349 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
20350 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20351 also exist.</p>
20352
20353 <blockquote><pre>
20354 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20355 objectclass: top
20356 objectclass: dnsdomain
20357 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20358 dc: tjener
20359 arecord: 10.0.2.2
20360 associateddomain: tjener.intern
20361
20362 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20363 objectclass: top
20364 objectclass: dnsdomain2
20365 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20366 dc: 2
20367 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
20368 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
20369 </pre></blockquote>
20370
20371 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
20372 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
20373 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
20374 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
20375 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
20376 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
20377 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
20378 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
20379 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
20380 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
20381 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
20382 instead.</p>
20383
20384 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
20385 like this:</p>
20386
20387 <blockquote><pre>
20388 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20389   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20390   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20391   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20392   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20393   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20394
20395 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20396   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
20397 </pre></blockquote>
20398
20399 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
20400 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
20401 reverse lookups.</p>
20402
20403 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
20404 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
20405 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
20406 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
20407
20408 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
20409 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
20410 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
20411
20412 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
20413 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
20414 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
20415 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
20416 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
20417
20418 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
20419 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
20420 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
20421 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
20422 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
20423
20424 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
20425 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
20426 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
20427 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
20428 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
20429 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
20430
20431 <blockquote><pre>
20432 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
20433     SUP top
20434     AUXILIARY
20435     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
20436           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
20437           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
20438           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
20439           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
20440     ))
20441 </pre></blockquote>
20442
20443 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
20444 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
20445 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
20446 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
20447 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
20448 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
20449
20450 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
20451
20452 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
20453 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
20454 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
20455 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
20456 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
20457
20458 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
20459 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
20460 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
20461 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
20462
20463 <blockquote><pre>
20464 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
20465 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
20466 </pre></blockquote>
20467
20468 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
20469 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
20470 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
20471 search result is this entry:</p>
20472
20473 <blockquote><pre>
20474 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20475 cn: dhcp
20476 objectClass: top
20477 objectClass: dhcpServer
20478 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20479 </pre></blockquote>
20480
20481 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
20482 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
20483 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
20484 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
20485 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
20486 The search result is this entry:</p>
20487
20488 <blockquote><pre>
20489 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20490 cn: DHCP Config
20491 objectClass: top
20492 objectClass: dhcpService
20493 objectClass: dhcpOptions
20494 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20495 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
20496 dhcpStatements: authoritative
20497 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
20498 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
20499 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
20500 </pre></blockquote>
20501
20502 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
20503 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
20504 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
20505 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
20506 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
20507 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
20508 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
20509 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
20510 related computer objects.</p>
20511
20512 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
20513 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
20514 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
20515 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
20516 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
20517 like:</p>
20518
20519 <blockquote><pre>
20520 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20521 cn: hostname
20522 objectClass: top
20523 objectClass: dhcpHost
20524 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20525 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
20526 </pre></blockquote>
20527
20528 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
20529 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
20530 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
20531 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
20532 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
20533 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
20534 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
20535 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
20536 structural object class.
20537
20538 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
20539
20540 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
20541 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
20542 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
20543 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
20544 in the configuration.</p>
20545
20546 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
20547 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
20548 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
20549 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
20550 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
20551 structure.</p>
20552
20553 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
20554 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
20555
20556 <blockquote><pre>
20557 ou=services
20558   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
20559     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
20560     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20561       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20562         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20563     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20564       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20565         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20566     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
20567       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
20568 </pre></blockquote>
20569
20570 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
20571 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
20572 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
20573 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
20574
20575 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
20576 like this:</p>
20577
20578 <blockquote><pre>
20579 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20580 dc: hostname
20581 objectClass: top
20582 objectClass: dhcpHost
20583 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20584 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
20585 associateddomain: hostname.intern
20586 arecord: 10.11.12.13
20587 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20588 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
20589 </pre></blockquote>
20590
20591 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
20592 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
20593 auxiliary object class.</p>
20594
20595       </div>
20596       <div class="tags">
20597
20598
20599         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>.
20600
20601
20602       </div>
20603     </div>
20604     <div class="padding"></div>
20605
20606     <div class="entry">
20607       <div class="title">
20608         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
20609       </div>
20610       <div class="date">
20611         14th July 2010
20612       </div>
20613       <div class="body">
20614         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
20615 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
20616 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
20617 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
20618 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
20619
20620 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
20621 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
20622
20623 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
20624 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
20625 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
20626 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
20627 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
20628 to a slave DNS server.</p>
20629
20630 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
20631 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
20632 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
20633 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
20634 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
20635 seem to work.</p>
20636
20637 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
20638 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
20639 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
20640 this:</p>
20641
20642 <blockquote><pre>
20643   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20644   cn: hostname
20645   objectClass: dhcphost
20646   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20647   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
20648   associateddomain: hostname.intern
20649   arecord: 10.11.12.13
20650   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20651   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
20652   ldapconfigsound: Y
20653 </pre></blockquote>
20654
20655 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
20656 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
20657 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
20658 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
20659
20660 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
20661 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
20662 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
20663 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
20664 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
20665 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
20666 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
20667 might be a good place to put it.</p>
20668
20669 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20670 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20671
20672       </div>
20673       <div class="tags">
20674
20675
20676         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>.
20677
20678
20679       </div>
20680     </div>
20681     <div class="padding"></div>
20682
20683     <div class="entry">
20684       <div class="title">
20685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
20686       </div>
20687       <div class="date">
20688         11th July 2010
20689       </div>
20690       <div class="body">
20691         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
20692 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
20693 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
20694 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
20695
20696 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
20697 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
20698 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
20699 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
20700 LTSP clients.</p>
20701
20702 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
20703 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
20704 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
20705
20706 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
20707 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
20708 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
20709
20710 <blockquote><pre>
20711 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
20712 #
20713 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
20714 #
20715 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
20716 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
20717 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
20718 #
20719 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
20720 # existence of attribute names.
20721 #
20722 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
20723 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
20724 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
20725 #
20726 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
20727 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
20728 #
20729 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
20730 #     SUP top
20731 #     AUXILIARY
20732 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
20733
20734 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
20735 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
20736     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
20737     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
20738         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
20739         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
20740             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
20741             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
20742             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
20743             # bass value on to clients
20744             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
20745         done
20746     done
20747 fi
20748 </pre></blockquote>
20749
20750 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
20751 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
20752 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
20753 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
20754 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
20755
20756 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20757 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20758
20759 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
20760 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
20761 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
20762 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
20763 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
20764 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
20765
20766       </div>
20767       <div class="tags">
20768
20769
20770         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>.
20771
20772
20773       </div>
20774     </div>
20775     <div class="padding"></div>
20776
20777     <div class="entry">
20778       <div class="title">
20779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20780       </div>
20781       <div class="date">
20782          9th July 2010
20783       </div>
20784       <div class="body">
20785         <p>Since
20786 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
20787 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
20788 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
20789 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
20790 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
20791 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
20792 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
20793 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
20794 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
20795 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
20796 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
20797 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
20798 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
20799
20800       </div>
20801       <div class="tags">
20802
20803
20804         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>.
20805
20806
20807       </div>
20808     </div>
20809     <div class="padding"></div>
20810
20811     <div class="entry">
20812       <div class="title">
20813         <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>
20814       </div>
20815       <div class="date">
20816          3rd July 2010
20817       </div>
20818       <div class="body">
20819         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
20820 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
20821 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
20822 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
20823 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
20824 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
20825 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
20826 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
20827
20828 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
20829 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
20830 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
20831 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
20832 publish the difference.</p>
20833
20834 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
20835
20836 <blockquote><p>
20837   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
20838   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
20839   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
20840   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
20841   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
20842   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20843   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
20844   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
20845 </p></blockquote>
20846
20847 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
20848
20849 <blockquote><p>
20850   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
20851   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
20852   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
20853   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
20854   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
20855   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
20856   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
20857   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
20858   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20859   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20860   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
20861   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
20862   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
20863   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
20864   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
20865   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
20866   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
20867   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
20868   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
20869   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
20870 </p></blockquote>
20871
20872 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
20873
20874 <blockquote><p>
20875   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
20876   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
20877   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20878   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20879   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
20880   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
20881   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
20882   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20883   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20884   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20885   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20886   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
20887   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
20888   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
20889   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
20890   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
20891   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
20892   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
20893   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
20894   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
20895   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
20896 </p></blockquote>
20897
20898 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
20899
20900 <blockquote><p>
20901   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
20902   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
20903   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
20904 </p></blockquote>
20905
20906 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
20907 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
20908 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
20909 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
20910 the difference somewhat.
20911
20912       </div>
20913       <div class="tags">
20914
20915
20916         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>.
20917
20918
20919       </div>
20920     </div>
20921     <div class="padding"></div>
20922
20923     <div class="entry">
20924       <div class="title">
20925         <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>
20926       </div>
20927       <div class="date">
20928          1st July 2010
20929       </div>
20930       <div class="body">
20931         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
20932 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
20933 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
20934 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
20935 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
20936 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
20937 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
20938 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
20939 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
20940
20941 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
20942
20943 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
20944 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
20945 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
20946 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
20947 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
20948 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
20949 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
20950 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
20951 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
20952 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
20953 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
20954 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
20955 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
20956 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
20957 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
20958
20959 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
20960
20961 <blockquote><pre>
20962 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
20963 </pre></blockquote>
20964
20965 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
20966 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
20967 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
20968 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
20969 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
20970 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
20971 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
20972 on how to get this working.</p>
20973
20974 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
20975 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
20976 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
20977 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
20978 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
20979 instructions I found in the
20980 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
20981 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
20982
20983 <blockquote><pre>
20984         debug-level             0
20985         reload-count            unlimited
20986         paranoia                no
20987
20988         enable-cache            passwd          yes
20989         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
20990         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
20991         suggested-size          passwd          211
20992         check-files             passwd          yes
20993         persistent              passwd          yes
20994         shared                  passwd          yes
20995         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
20996         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
20997
20998         enable-cache            group           yes
20999         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
21000         negative-time-to-live   group           20
21001         suggested-size          group           211
21002         check-files             group           yes
21003         persistent              group           yes
21004         shared                  group           yes
21005         max-db-size             group           33554432
21006         auto-propagate          group           yes
21007
21008         enable-cache            hosts           no
21009         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
21010         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
21011         suggested-size          hosts           211
21012         check-files             hosts           yes
21013         persistent              hosts           yes
21014         shared                  hosts           yes
21015         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
21016
21017         enable-cache            services        yes
21018         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
21019         negative-time-to-live   services        20
21020         suggested-size          services        211
21021         check-files             services        yes
21022         persistent              services        yes
21023         shared                  services        yes
21024         max-db-size             services        33554432
21025 </pre></blockquote>
21026
21027 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
21028 automatically like the one provided in
21029 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
21030 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
21031 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
21032 look like this:</p>
21033
21034 <blockquote><pre>
21035 passwd:         files ldap
21036 group:          files ldap
21037 shadow:         files ldap
21038 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
21039 networks:       files
21040 protocols:      files
21041 services:       files
21042 ethers:         files
21043 rpc:            files
21044 netgroup:       files ldap
21045 </pre></blockquote>
21046
21047 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
21048 shadow and netgroup.</p>
21049
21050 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
21051 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
21052 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
21053 attributes cached.
21054
21055 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
21056   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21057
21058 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
21059 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
21060 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
21061 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
21062 discovered sssd.</p>
21063
21064 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
21065
21066 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
21067 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
21068 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
21069 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
21070 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
21071 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
21072 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
21073 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
21074 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
21075 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
21076 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
21077 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
21078 version 1.2 is now in testing.
21079
21080 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
21081 roaming setup I want</p>
21082
21083 <blockquote><pre>
21084 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
21085 </pre></blockquote>
21086
21087 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
21088 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
21089
21090 <blockquote><pre>
21091 [sssd]
21092 config_file_version = 2
21093 reconnection_retries = 3
21094 sbus_timeout = 30
21095 services = nss, pam
21096 domains = INTERN
21097
21098 [nss]
21099 filter_groups = root
21100 filter_users = root
21101 reconnection_retries = 3
21102
21103 [pam]
21104 reconnection_retries = 3
21105
21106 [domain/INTERN]
21107 enumerate = false
21108 cache_credentials = true
21109
21110 id_provider = ldap
21111 auth_provider = ldap
21112 chpass_provider = ldap
21113
21114 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
21115 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21116 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
21117 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
21118 </pre></blockquote>
21119
21120 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
21121 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
21122
21123 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
21124 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
21125 modify it manually.</p>
21126
21127 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21128 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21129
21130       </div>
21131       <div class="tags">
21132
21133
21134         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>.
21135
21136
21137       </div>
21138     </div>
21139     <div class="padding"></div>
21140
21141     <div class="entry">
21142       <div class="title">
21143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
21144       </div>
21145       <div class="date">
21146         28th June 2010
21147       </div>
21148       <div class="body">
21149         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
21150 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
21151 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
21152 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
21153 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
21154 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
21155 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
21156 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
21157 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
21158 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
21159
21160 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
21161 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
21162 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
21163 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
21164 released.</p>
21165
21166 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
21167 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
21168 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
21169 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
21170
21171 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
21172 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21173
21174 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
21175 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
21176 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
21177 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
21178 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
21179
21180       </div>
21181       <div class="tags">
21182
21183
21184         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>.
21185
21186
21187       </div>
21188     </div>
21189     <div class="padding"></div>
21190
21191     <div class="entry">
21192       <div class="title">
21193         <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>
21194       </div>
21195       <div class="date">
21196         24th June 2010
21197       </div>
21198       <div class="body">
21199         <p>A while back, I
21200 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
21201 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
21202 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
21203 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
21204
21205 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
21206 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
21207 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
21208 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
21209
21210 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
21211 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
21212 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
21213 Debian Edu.</p>
21214
21215 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
21216 the
21217 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
21218 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
21219 available today from IETF.</p>
21220
21221 <pre>
21222 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
21223 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
21224 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
21225  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
21226         NAME 'dhcpHost'
21227         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
21228 -       SUP top
21229 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
21230         MUST cn
21231         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
21232         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
21233 </pre>
21234
21235 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
21236 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
21237 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
21238
21239 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21240 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21241
21242       </div>
21243       <div class="tags">
21244
21245
21246         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>.
21247
21248
21249       </div>
21250     </div>
21251     <div class="padding"></div>
21252
21253     <div class="entry">
21254       <div class="title">
21255         <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>
21256       </div>
21257       <div class="date">
21258         16th June 2010
21259       </div>
21260       <div class="body">
21261         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
21262 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
21263 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
21264 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
21265 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
21266 this:
21267
21268 <blockquote><pre>
21269 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21270 tasksel --new-install
21271 </pre></blockquote>
21272
21273 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
21274 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
21275 any output what so ever.
21276
21277 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
21278 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
21279 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
21280 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
21281 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
21282 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
21283 code like this:
21284
21285 <blockquote><pre>
21286 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21287 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
21288 $cmd
21289 </pre></blockquote>
21290
21291 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
21292 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
21293 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
21294 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
21295 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
21296 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
21297 installation.</p>
21298
21299 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
21300 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
21301 like this.</p>
21302
21303       </div>
21304       <div class="tags">
21305
21306
21307         Tags: <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>.
21308
21309
21310       </div>
21311     </div>
21312     <div class="padding"></div>
21313
21314     <div class="entry">
21315       <div class="title">
21316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
21317       </div>
21318       <div class="date">
21319         13th June 2010
21320       </div>
21321       <div class="body">
21322         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
21323 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
21324 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
21325 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
21326 pages.</p>
21327
21328 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
21329 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
21330 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
21331 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
21332 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
21333 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
21334 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
21335 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
21336 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
21337 see how the project is doing.</p>
21338
21339 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
21340 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
21341 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
21342 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
21343 Windows.  This is great.</p>
21344
21345       </div>
21346       <div class="tags">
21347
21348
21349         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>.
21350
21351
21352       </div>
21353     </div>
21354     <div class="padding"></div>
21355
21356     <div class="entry">
21357       <div class="title">
21358         <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>
21359       </div>
21360       <div class="date">
21361         13th June 2010
21362       </div>
21363       <div class="body">
21364         <p>My
21365 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
21366 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
21367 finally made the upgrade logs available from
21368 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
21369 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
21370 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
21371 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
21372
21373 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
21374 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
21375 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
21376 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
21377 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
21378 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
21379 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
21380 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
21381
21382 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
21383 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
21384 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
21385 too surprising.</p>
21386
21387 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
21388 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
21389 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
21390 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
21391 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
21392 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
21393 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
21394 continue.</p>
21395
21396 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
21397 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
21398   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
21399   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
21400   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
21401   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
21402   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
21403   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21404   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21405   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21406   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21407   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21408   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21409   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21410   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21411   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21412   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21413   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21414   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21415   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21416   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21417   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21418   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21419   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21420   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21421   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21422   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21423   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21424   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
21425   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
21426
21427 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
21428
21429 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
21430   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
21431   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
21432   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
21433   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21434   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
21435   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
21436   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
21437   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
21438   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
21439   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21440   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
21441   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
21442   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
21443   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
21444   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
21445   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
21446   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
21447   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
21448   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
21449   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
21450   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
21451   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
21452   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
21453   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
21454   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
21455   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
21456   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
21457   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
21458   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21459   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21460   zip</p>
21461
21462 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
21463
21464 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
21465   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
21466   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
21467   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
21468   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
21469   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
21470   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21471   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21472   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21473   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21474   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21475   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21476   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21477   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21478   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21479   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21480   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21481   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21482   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21483   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21484   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21485   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21486   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21487   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21488   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21489   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21490   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21491   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
21492
21493 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
21494 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
21495   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
21496   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
21497   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
21498   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
21499   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
21500   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
21501   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
21502   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
21503   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
21504   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
21505   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
21506   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
21507   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
21508   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
21509   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
21510   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
21511   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
21512   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21513   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
21514   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
21515   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
21516   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
21517   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
21518   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
21519   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
21520   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
21521   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
21522   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
21523   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
21524   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
21525   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
21526   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
21527   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
21528   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21529   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21530   xulrunner-1.9</p>
21531
21532
21533       </div>
21534       <div class="tags">
21535
21536
21537         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>.
21538
21539
21540       </div>
21541     </div>
21542     <div class="padding"></div>
21543
21544     <div class="entry">
21545       <div class="title">
21546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
21547       </div>
21548       <div class="date">
21549         11th June 2010
21550       </div>
21551       <div class="body">
21552         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
21553 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
21554 have been discovered and reported in the process
21555 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
21556 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
21557 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
21558 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
21559 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
21560
21561 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
21562 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
21563 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
21564 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
21565 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
21566 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
21567
21568 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
21569 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
21570 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21571 is created.  The bug report
21572 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
21573 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
21574 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
21575 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
21576 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
21577 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
21578 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
21579 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
21580 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
21581 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
21582 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
21583 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
21584 Debian Squeeze.</p>
21585
21586 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
21587 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
21588 trick:</p>
21589
21590 <blockquote><pre>
21591 #!/bin/sh
21592 set -ex
21593
21594 if [ "$1" ] ; then
21595     desktop=$1
21596 else
21597     desktop=gnome
21598 fi
21599
21600 from=lenny
21601 to=squeeze
21602
21603 exec &lt; /dev/null
21604 unset LANG
21605 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
21606 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
21607 fuser -mv .
21608 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
21609 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21610 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
21611 #!/bin/sh
21612 exit 101
21613 EOF
21614 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
21615 exit_cleanup() {
21616     umount $tmpdir/proc
21617 }
21618 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
21619 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
21620 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
21621
21622 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
21623
21624 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
21625 # to return the correct answers.
21626 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
21627     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
21628
21629 # Include the desktop and laptop task
21630 for test in desktop laptop ; do
21631     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
21632 #!/bin/sh
21633 exit 2
21634 EOF
21635     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
21636 done
21637
21638 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21639 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
21640 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
21641 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
21642
21643 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
21644 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21645 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21646 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
21647 fuser -mv
21648 </pre></blockquote>
21649
21650 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
21651 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
21652 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
21653 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
21654 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
21655 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
21656
21657 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
21658 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
21659 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
21660 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
21661 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
21662 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
21663 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
21664
21665 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
21666 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
21667 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
21668 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
21669 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
21670 packages.</p>
21671
21672       </div>
21673       <div class="tags">
21674
21675
21676         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>.
21677
21678
21679       </div>
21680     </div>
21681     <div class="padding"></div>
21682
21683     <div class="entry">
21684       <div class="title">
21685         <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>
21686       </div>
21687       <div class="date">
21688          6th June 2010
21689       </div>
21690       <div class="body">
21691         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
21692 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
21693 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
21694 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
21695 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
21696 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
21697 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
21698
21699 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
21700 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
21701 COLUMNS):</p>
21702
21703 <blockquote><pre>
21704 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
21705 previous=N
21706 PREVLEVEL=
21707 RUNLEVEL=
21708 runlevel=S
21709 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
21710 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
21711 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
21712 </pre></blockquote>
21713
21714 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
21715 script.</p>
21716
21717 <blockquote><pre>
21718 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
21719 previous=N
21720 PREVLEVEL=N
21721 RUNLEVEL=S
21722 runlevel=S
21723 </pre></blockquote>
21724
21725 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
21726 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
21727 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
21728
21729 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
21730 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
21731 choice.</p>
21732
21733       </div>
21734       <div class="tags">
21735
21736
21737         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>.
21738
21739
21740       </div>
21741     </div>
21742     <div class="padding"></div>
21743
21744     <div class="entry">
21745       <div class="title">
21746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
21747       </div>
21748       <div class="date">
21749          6th June 2010
21750       </div>
21751       <div class="body">
21752         <p>Via the
21753 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
21754 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
21755 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
21756 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
21757 following the standards wars of today.</p>
21758
21759       </div>
21760       <div class="tags">
21761
21762
21763         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>.
21764
21765
21766       </div>
21767     </div>
21768     <div class="padding"></div>
21769
21770     <div class="entry">
21771       <div class="title">
21772         <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>
21773       </div>
21774       <div class="date">
21775          3rd June 2010
21776       </div>
21777       <div class="body">
21778         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
21779 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
21780 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
21781 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
21782 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
21783
21784 <blockquote><pre>
21785 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
21786   vendor                    count
21787   Dell Computer Corporation     1
21788     PowerEdge 1750              1
21789   IBM                           1
21790     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
21791   Intel                         2
21792   [no-dmi-info]                 3
21793 maintainer:~#
21794 </pre></blockquote>
21795
21796 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
21797 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
21798 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
21799 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
21800 option to list the individual machines.</p>
21801
21802 <p>A larger list is
21803 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
21804 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
21805 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
21806 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
21807 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
21808 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
21809 collector.</p>
21810
21811       </div>
21812       <div class="tags">
21813
21814
21815         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>.
21816
21817
21818       </div>
21819     </div>
21820     <div class="padding"></div>
21821
21822     <div class="entry">
21823       <div class="title">
21824         <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>
21825       </div>
21826       <div class="date">
21827          1st June 2010
21828       </div>
21829       <div class="body">
21830         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
21831 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
21832 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
21833 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
21834 wait.</p>
21835
21836 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
21837 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
21838 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
21839 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
21840 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
21841 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
21842
21843 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
21844 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
21845 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
21846 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
21847 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
21848 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
21849 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
21850 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
21851
21852 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
21853
21854       </div>
21855       <div class="tags">
21856
21857
21858         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>.
21859
21860
21861       </div>
21862     </div>
21863     <div class="padding"></div>
21864
21865     <div class="entry">
21866       <div class="title">
21867         <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>
21868       </div>
21869       <div class="date">
21870         27th May 2010
21871       </div>
21872       <div class="body">
21873         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
21874 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
21875 issues are known and should be solved:
21876
21877 <p><ul>
21878
21879 <li>The wicd package seen to
21880 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
21881 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
21882 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
21883 seem to be on the case.</li>
21884
21885 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
21886 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
21887 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
21888 maintainer is on the case.</li>
21889
21890 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
21891 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
21892 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
21893 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
21894 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
21895 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
21896 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
21897 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
21898
21899 </ul></p>
21900
21901 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
21902 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
21903 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
21904 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
21905
21906 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21907 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21908 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21909 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21910
21911 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
21912
21913       </div>
21914       <div class="tags">
21915
21916
21917         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>.
21918
21919
21920       </div>
21921     </div>
21922     <div class="padding"></div>
21923
21924     <div class="entry">
21925       <div class="title">
21926         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
21927       </div>
21928       <div class="date">
21929         22nd May 2010
21930       </div>
21931       <div class="body">
21932         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
21933 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
21934 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
21935 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
21936
21937 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
21938 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
21939 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
21940 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
21941 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
21942 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
21943 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
21944 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
21945 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
21946 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
21947 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
21948 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
21949 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
21950 going to work.</p>
21951
21952 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
21953 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
21954 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
21955 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
21956 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
21957 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
21958 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
21959 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
21960 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
21961 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
21962 Edu.</p>
21963
21964 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
21965 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
21966 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
21967 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
21968 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
21969 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
21970
21971 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
21972 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
21973
21974       </div>
21975       <div class="tags">
21976
21977
21978         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>.
21979
21980
21981       </div>
21982     </div>
21983     <div class="padding"></div>
21984
21985     <div class="entry">
21986       <div class="title">
21987         <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>
21988       </div>
21989       <div class="date">
21990         19th May 2010
21991       </div>
21992       <div class="body">
21993         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
21994 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
21995 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
21996 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
21997 into unstable.  The
21998 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
21999 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
22000 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
22001 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
22002 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22003 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
22004 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
22005
22006 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
22007 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
22008 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
22009 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
22010 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
22011 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
22012 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
22013 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
22014
22015 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
22016 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
22017 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
22018 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
22019 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
22020 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
22021 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
22022
22023 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
22024 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
22025 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
22026 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
22027 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
22028 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
22029 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
22030 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
22031 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
22032 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
22033 on the home directory servers.</p>
22034
22035 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
22036 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
22037 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
22038 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
22039 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
22040 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
22041
22042 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22043 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22044
22045       </div>
22046       <div class="tags">
22047
22048
22049         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>.
22050
22051
22052       </div>
22053     </div>
22054     <div class="padding"></div>
22055
22056     <div class="entry">
22057       <div class="title">
22058         <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>
22059       </div>
22060       <div class="date">
22061         14th May 2010
22062       </div>
22063       <div class="body">
22064         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
22065 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
22066 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
22067 expected, if I am to believe the
22068 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22069 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
22070 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
22071 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
22072 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
22073 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
22074 version.</p>
22075
22076 More information about
22077 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22078 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
22079 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
22080 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22081
22082 <blockquote><pre>
22083 CONCURRENCY=none
22084 </pre></blockquote>
22085
22086 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22087 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22088 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22089 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22090
22091       </div>
22092       <div class="tags">
22093
22094
22095         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>.
22096
22097
22098       </div>
22099     </div>
22100     <div class="padding"></div>
22101
22102     <div class="entry">
22103       <div class="title">
22104         <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>
22105       </div>
22106       <div class="date">
22107         14th May 2010
22108       </div>
22109       <div class="body">
22110         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
22111 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
22112 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
22113 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
22114 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
22115 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
22116 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
22117 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
22118
22119 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
22120 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
22121 this on the collector host:</p>
22122
22123 <blockquote><pre>
22124 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
22125 </pre></blockquote>
22126
22127 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
22128 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
22129
22130 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
22131 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
22132 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
22133 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
22134 written yet.</p>
22135
22136       </div>
22137       <div class="tags">
22138
22139
22140         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>.
22141
22142
22143       </div>
22144     </div>
22145     <div class="padding"></div>
22146
22147     <div class="entry">
22148       <div class="title">
22149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
22150       </div>
22151       <div class="date">
22152         13th May 2010
22153       </div>
22154       <div class="body">
22155         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
22156 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
22157 has been
22158 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
22159
22160 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
22161 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
22162 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
22163 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
22164 based boot system.  Tollef is
22165 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
22166 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
22167 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
22168 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
22169 at the moment do not.</p>
22170
22171 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
22172 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
22173 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
22174 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
22175 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
22176 way forward.</p>
22177
22178 <p>In the mean time, based on the
22179 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22180 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
22181 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
22182 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
22183 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
22184 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
22185 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
22186 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
22187
22188       </div>
22189       <div class="tags">
22190
22191
22192         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>.
22193
22194
22195       </div>
22196     </div>
22197     <div class="padding"></div>
22198
22199     <div class="entry">
22200       <div class="title">
22201         <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>
22202       </div>
22203       <div class="date">
22204          6th May 2010
22205       </div>
22206       <div class="body">
22207         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
22208 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
22209 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
22210 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
22211 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22212 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
22213 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22214
22215 <blockquote><pre>
22216 CONCURRENCY=makefile
22217 </pre></blockquote>
22218
22219 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
22220 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
22221 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
22222 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
22223 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
22224 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
22225 make this happen.</p>
22226
22227 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
22228 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
22229 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
22230 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
22231 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
22232
22233 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
22234 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
22235 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
22236 fix the remaining issues.</p>
22237
22238 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22239 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22240 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22241 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22242
22243       </div>
22244       <div class="tags">
22245
22246
22247         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>.
22248
22249
22250       </div>
22251     </div>
22252     <div class="padding"></div>
22253
22254     <div class="entry">
22255       <div class="title">
22256         <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>
22257       </div>
22258       <div class="date">
22259          2nd May 2010
22260       </div>
22261       <div class="body">
22262         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
22263 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
22264 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
22265
22266 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
22267 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
22268 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
22269 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
22270 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
22271
22272 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
22273 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
22274
22275 <blockquote><pre>
22276 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22277 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
22278 Password expires                                        : never
22279 Password inactive                                       : never
22280 Account expires                                         : never
22281 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22282 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
22283 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22284 root@tjener:~#
22285 </pre></blockquote>
22286
22287 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
22288 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
22289 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
22290 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
22291 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
22292 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
22293
22294 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
22295 intended:</p>
22296
22297 <blockquote><pre>
22298 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
22299 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22300 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
22301 Password expires                                        : never
22302 Password inactive                                       : never
22303 Account expires                                         : never
22304 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22305 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
22306 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22307 root@tjener:~#
22308 </pre></blockquote>
22309
22310 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
22311 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
22312 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
22313
22314 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
22315 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
22316
22317 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
22318 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22319
22320 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
22321 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
22322 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
22323 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
22324 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
22325 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
22326 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
22327
22328 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
22329 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
22330 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
22331 change.</p>
22332
22333       </div>
22334       <div class="tags">
22335
22336
22337         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>.
22338
22339
22340       </div>
22341     </div>
22342     <div class="padding"></div>
22343
22344     <div class="entry">
22345       <div class="title">
22346         <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>
22347       </div>
22348       <div class="date">
22349         28th April 2010
22350       </div>
22351       <div class="body">
22352         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
22353 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
22354 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
22355 and go.</p>
22356
22357 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
22358 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
22359 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
22360 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
22361
22362 <ul>
22363
22364  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
22365    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
22366    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
22367    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
22368    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
22369    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
22370    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
22371    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
22372    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
22373    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
22374    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
22375    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
22376
22377  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
22378    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
22379    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
22380    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
22381    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22382    or the Fedora developed
22383    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
22384    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
22385
22386  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
22387    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
22388    directory, using unison.</li>
22389
22390  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
22391    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
22392    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
22393    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
22394    implemented.</li>
22395
22396  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
22397    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
22398
22399  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
22400    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
22401    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
22402
22403 </ul>
22404
22405 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
22406 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
22407 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
22408 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
22409 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
22410 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
22411 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
22412 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
22413 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
22414
22415 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22416 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22417
22418       </div>
22419       <div class="tags">
22420
22421
22422         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>.
22423
22424
22425       </div>
22426     </div>
22427     <div class="padding"></div>
22428
22429     <div class="entry">
22430       <div class="title">
22431         <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>
22432       </div>
22433       <div class="date">
22434         19th April 2010
22435       </div>
22436       <div class="body">
22437         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
22438 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
22439 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
22440 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
22441 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
22442 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
22443 restrictions on the web, for example from
22444 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
22445 epub-version from
22446 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
22447 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
22448 strongly recommend this book.</p>
22449
22450       </div>
22451       <div class="tags">
22452
22453
22454         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>.
22455
22456
22457       </div>
22458     </div>
22459     <div class="padding"></div>
22460
22461     <div class="entry">
22462       <div class="title">
22463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
22464       </div>
22465       <div class="date">
22466         14th April 2010
22467       </div>
22468       <div class="body">
22469         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
22470 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
22471 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
22472 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
22473 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
22474 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
22475 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
22476 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
22477 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
22478
22479 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
22480 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
22481 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
22482 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
22483 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
22484
22485 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
22486 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
22487
22488 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
22489 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
22490 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
22491 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
22492 to work properly.</p>
22493
22494 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
22495 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
22496 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
22497 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
22498 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
22499 time.</p>
22500
22501 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
22502 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
22503 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
22504 up in a few days.</p>
22505
22506       </div>
22507       <div class="tags">
22508
22509
22510         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>.
22511
22512
22513       </div>
22514     </div>
22515     <div class="padding"></div>
22516
22517     <div class="entry">
22518       <div class="title">
22519         <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>
22520       </div>
22521       <div class="date">
22522          6th March 2010
22523       </div>
22524       <div class="body">
22525         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
22526 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
22527 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
22528 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
22529 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
22530 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
22531
22532 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
22533 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
22534 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
22535 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
22536
22537 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
22538 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
22539 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
22540 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
22541 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
22542 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
22543
22544       </div>
22545       <div class="tags">
22546
22547
22548         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>.
22549
22550
22551       </div>
22552     </div>
22553     <div class="padding"></div>
22554
22555     <div class="entry">
22556       <div class="title">
22557         <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>
22558       </div>
22559       <div class="date">
22560         11th February 2010
22561       </div>
22562       <div class="body">
22563         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
22564 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
22565 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
22566 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
22567 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
22568 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
22569 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
22570
22571 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
22572
22573 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
22574 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
22575 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
22576 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
22577
22578       </div>
22579       <div class="tags">
22580
22581
22582         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>.
22583
22584
22585       </div>
22586     </div>
22587     <div class="padding"></div>
22588
22589     <div class="entry">
22590       <div class="title">
22591         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
22592       </div>
22593       <div class="date">
22594         27th January 2010
22595       </div>
22596       <div class="body">
22597         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
22598 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
22599 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
22600 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
22601 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
22602 further.</p>
22603
22604 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
22605 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
22606 configured to be a server for the
22607 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
22608 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
22609 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
22610 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
22611 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
22612 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
22613 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
22614 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
22615 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
22616 and Nagios configuration.</p>
22617
22618 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
22619 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
22620 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
22621 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
22622
22623 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
22624 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
22625 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
22626 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
22627 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
22628 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
22629 the machine.</p>
22630
22631 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
22632 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
22633 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
22634 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
22635
22636 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
22637 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
22638 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
22639 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
22640 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
22641 everything is taken care of.</p>
22642
22643       </div>
22644       <div class="tags">
22645
22646
22647         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>.
22648
22649
22650       </div>
22651     </div>
22652     <div class="padding"></div>
22653
22654     <div class="entry">
22655       <div class="title">
22656         <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>
22657       </div>
22658       <div class="date">
22659         12th August 2009
22660       </div>
22661       <div class="body">
22662         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
22663 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
22664 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
22665 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
22666
22667 <table>
22668 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22669 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22670 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
22671 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
22672 </table>
22673
22674 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
22675 got these numbers:</p>
22676
22677 <table>
22678 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22679 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
22680 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
22681 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
22682 </table>
22683
22684 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
22685
22686 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
22687 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
22688 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
22689 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
22690 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
22691
22692
22693 <table>
22694 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22695 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22696 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
22697 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
22698 </table>
22699
22700 <p>And with 'site:no':
22701
22702 <table>
22703 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22704 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
22705 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
22706 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
22707 </table>
22708
22709 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
22710 numbers.</p>
22711
22712       </div>
22713       <div class="tags">
22714
22715
22716         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>.
22717
22718
22719       </div>
22720     </div>
22721     <div class="padding"></div>
22722
22723     <div class="entry">
22724       <div class="title">
22725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
22726       </div>
22727       <div class="date">
22728          8th August 2009
22729       </div>
22730       <div class="body">
22731         <p>According to <a
22732 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
22733 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
22734 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
22735 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
22736 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
22737 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
22738 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
22739 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
22740 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
22741 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
22742
22743 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
22744 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
22745 seminar this autumn.</p>
22746
22747       </div>
22748       <div class="tags">
22749
22750
22751         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>.
22752
22753
22754       </div>
22755     </div>
22756     <div class="padding"></div>
22757
22758     <div class="entry">
22759       <div class="title">
22760         <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>
22761       </div>
22762       <div class="date">
22763         27th July 2009
22764       </div>
22765       <div class="body">
22766         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
22767 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
22768 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
22769 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
22770 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
22771 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
22772 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
22773
22774 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
22775 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
22776 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
22777
22778       </div>
22779       <div class="tags">
22780
22781
22782         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>.
22783
22784
22785       </div>
22786     </div>
22787     <div class="padding"></div>
22788
22789     <div class="entry">
22790       <div class="title">
22791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
22792       </div>
22793       <div class="date">
22794         22nd July 2009
22795       </div>
22796       <div class="body">
22797         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
22798 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
22799 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
22800 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
22801 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
22802 the package up to date.</p>
22803
22804 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
22805 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
22806 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
22807 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
22808 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
22809 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
22810 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
22811 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
22812 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
22813 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
22814 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
22815 working on the future release.</p>
22816
22817 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
22818 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
22819
22820       </div>
22821       <div class="tags">
22822
22823
22824         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>.
22825
22826
22827       </div>
22828     </div>
22829     <div class="padding"></div>
22830
22831     <div class="entry">
22832       <div class="title">
22833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
22834       </div>
22835       <div class="date">
22836         24th June 2009
22837       </div>
22838       <div class="body">
22839         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
22840 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
22841 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
22842 funded
22843 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
22844 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
22845 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
22846 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
22847 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
22848 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
22849
22850 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
22851 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
22852 boot:</p>
22853
22854 <ul>
22855
22856 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
22857
22858 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
22859    clock is in UTC.</li>
22860
22861 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
22862    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22863    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
22864
22865 </ul>
22866
22867 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
22868 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
22869 Villegas</a>.
22870
22871 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
22872 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
22873 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
22874 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
22875 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
22876 using this.</p>
22877
22878 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
22879 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
22880 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
22881 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
22882 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
22883 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
22884 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
22885
22886       </div>
22887       <div class="tags">
22888
22889
22890         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>.
22891
22892
22893       </div>
22894     </div>
22895     <div class="padding"></div>
22896
22897     <div class="entry">
22898       <div class="title">
22899         <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>
22900       </div>
22901       <div class="date">
22902          2nd May 2009
22903       </div>
22904       <div class="body">
22905         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
22906 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
22907 do not yet know them.</p>
22908
22909 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
22910 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
22911 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
22912 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
22913 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
22914 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
22915 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
22916 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
22917 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
22918 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
22919 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
22920
22921 <p>The second one is
22922 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
22923 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
22924 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
22925 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
22926 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
22927 and the company behind it is running
22928 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
22929 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
22930 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
22931 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
22932 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
22933 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
22934 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
22935 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
22936
22937 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
22938 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
22939 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
22940 surrounded by today.</p>
22941
22942       </div>
22943       <div class="tags">
22944
22945
22946         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
22947
22948
22949       </div>
22950     </div>
22951     <div class="padding"></div>
22952
22953     <div class="entry">
22954       <div class="title">
22955         <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>
22956       </div>
22957       <div class="date">
22958         28th April 2009
22959       </div>
22960       <div class="body">
22961         <p>Julien Blache
22962 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
22963 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
22964 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
22965 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
22966 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
22967 properties.</p>
22968
22969       </div>
22970       <div class="tags">
22971
22972
22973         Tags: <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>.
22974
22975
22976       </div>
22977     </div>
22978     <div class="padding"></div>
22979
22980     <div class="entry">
22981       <div class="title">
22982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
22983       </div>
22984       <div class="date">
22985          5th April 2009
22986       </div>
22987       <div class="body">
22988         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
22989 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
22990 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
22991 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
22992 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
22993 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
22994 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
22995 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
22996
22997 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
22998 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
22999 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
23000   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23001   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
23002
23003 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
23004 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
23005 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
23006 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
23007
23008 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
23009 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
23010 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
23011 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
23012
23013 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
23014 set -e
23015 URL="$1"
23016 SAVEFILE="$2"
23017 DURATION="$3"
23018 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
23019   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23020   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
23021 pid=$!
23022 sleep $DURATION
23023 kill $pid
23024 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
23025
23026       </div>
23027       <div class="tags">
23028
23029
23030         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>.
23031
23032
23033       </div>
23034     </div>
23035     <div class="padding"></div>
23036
23037     <div class="entry">
23038       <div class="title">
23039         <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>
23040       </div>
23041       <div class="date">
23042         30th March 2009
23043       </div>
23044       <div class="body">
23045         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
23046 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
23047 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
23048 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
23049 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
23050 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
23051 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
23052 application.</p>
23053
23054 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
23055 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
23056 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
23057 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
23058 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
23059 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
23060 blocked from doing so.</p>
23061
23062 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
23063 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
23064 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
23065 requirements change.</p>
23066
23067 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
23068 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
23069 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
23070
23071       </div>
23072       <div class="tags">
23073
23074
23075         Tags: <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>.
23076
23077
23078       </div>
23079     </div>
23080     <div class="padding"></div>
23081
23082     <div class="entry">
23083       <div class="title">
23084         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
23085       </div>
23086       <div class="date">
23087         29th March 2009
23088       </div>
23089       <div class="body">
23090         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
23091 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
23092 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
23093 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
23094 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
23095 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
23096 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
23097 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
23098 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
23099 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
23100 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
23101 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
23102 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
23103 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
23104 now. :)</p>
23105
23106       </div>
23107       <div class="tags">
23108
23109
23110         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>.
23111
23112
23113       </div>
23114     </div>
23115     <div class="padding"></div>
23116
23117     <div class="entry">
23118       <div class="title">
23119         <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>
23120       </div>
23121       <div class="date">
23122         29th March 2009
23123       </div>
23124       <div class="body">
23125         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
23126 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
23127 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
23128 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
23129 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
23130 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
23131
23132 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
23133 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
23134 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
23135 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
23136 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
23137 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
23138 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
23139 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
23140 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
23141 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
23142 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
23143 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
23144 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
23145
23146 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
23147 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
23148 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
23149 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
23150
23151 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
23152 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
23153
23154 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
23155 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
23156 new IETF work group?</p>
23157
23158       </div>
23159       <div class="tags">
23160
23161
23162         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>.
23163
23164
23165       </div>
23166     </div>
23167     <div class="padding"></div>
23168
23169     <div class="entry">
23170       <div class="title">
23171         <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>
23172       </div>
23173       <div class="date">
23174         28th February 2009
23175       </div>
23176       <div class="body">
23177         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
23178 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
23179 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
23180 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
23181 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
23182 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
23183 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
23184 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
23185 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
23186 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
23187 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
23188 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
23189 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
23190 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
23191 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
23192 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
23193 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
23194 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
23195 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
23196 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
23197 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
23198 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
23199 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
23200 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
23201 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
23202 machine.</p>
23203
23204 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
23205 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
23206 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
23207 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
23208 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
23209 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
23210 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
23211
23212 <pre>
23213 use LWP::Simple;
23214 use POSIX;
23215 use WWW::Mechanize;
23216 use Date::Parse;
23217 [...]
23218 sub get_support_info {
23219     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
23220     my $str;
23221
23222     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
23223         # fetch website from Dell support
23224         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";
23225         my $webpage = get($url);
23226         return undef unless ($webpage);
23227
23228         my $daysleft = -1;
23229         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
23230         foreach my $line (@lines) {
23231             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
23232             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23233             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
23234
23235             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
23236             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
23237             my $lastend = "";
23238             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
23239                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
23240
23241                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23242                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23243                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23244                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
23245                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
23246                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
23247                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
23248             }
23249             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23250             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23251                 if ($lastend lt $today);
23252         }
23253     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
23254         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
23255         my $url =
23256             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
23257         $mech->get($url);
23258         my $fields = {
23259             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
23260             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
23261             'country' => 'NO',
23262             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
23263             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
23264         };
23265         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
23266                             fields      => $fields );
23267         # Next step is screen scraping
23268         my $content = $mech->content();
23269
23270         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23271         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23272         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23273         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23274
23275         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23276
23277         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
23278             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
23279                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
23280             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
23281             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23282                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23283             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23284                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
23285
23286             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
23287
23288             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23289                 if ($end lt $today);
23290         }
23291     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
23292         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
23293         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
23294         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
23295             my $content =
23296                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
23297             if ($content) {
23298                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23299                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23300                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23301                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23302
23303                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
23304                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
23305
23306                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
23307
23308                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23309                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23310                     if ($end lt $today);
23311             }
23312         }
23313     }
23314     return $str;
23315 }
23316 </pre>
23317
23318 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
23319 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
23320 from dmidecode.</p>
23321
23322 <pre>
23323 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
23324                        "447707-B21");
23325 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
23326 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
23327                        "1234567");
23328 </pre>
23329
23330 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
23331 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
23332
23333 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
23334 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
23335 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
23336 do so.</p>
23337
23338       </div>
23339       <div class="tags">
23340
23341
23342         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>.
23343
23344
23345       </div>
23346     </div>
23347     <div class="padding"></div>
23348
23349     <div class="entry">
23350       <div class="title">
23351         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
23352       </div>
23353       <div class="date">
23354         20th February 2009
23355       </div>
23356       <div class="body">
23357         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
23358 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
23359 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
23360 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
23361 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
23362 the "missing" computer.</p>
23363
23364 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
23365 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
23366 code blocks as defined in the
23367 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
23368 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
23369 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
23370 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
23371 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
23372 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
23373 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
23374 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
23375 codes.</p>
23376
23377 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
23378 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
23379 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
23380 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
23381 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
23382 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
23383
23384 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
23385 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
23386 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
23387 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
23388 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
23389 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
23390 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
23391 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
23392 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
23393 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
23394
23395 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
23396 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
23397 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
23398
23399       </div>
23400       <div class="tags">
23401
23402
23403         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>.
23404
23405
23406       </div>
23407     </div>
23408     <div class="padding"></div>
23409
23410     <div class="entry">
23411       <div class="title">
23412         <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>
23413       </div>
23414       <div class="date">
23415         17th January 2009
23416       </div>
23417       <div class="body">
23418         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
23419 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
23420 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
23421 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
23422 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
23423 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
23424 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
23425 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
23426 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
23427 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
23428 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
23429 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
23430 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
23431 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
23432
23433 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
23434 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
23435 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
23436 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
23437 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
23438 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
23439 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
23440 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
23441 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
23442 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
23443 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
23444 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
23445 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
23446 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
23447 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
23448 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
23449 playing when the download is done.</p>
23450
23451 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
23452 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
23453 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
23454 too.</p>
23455
23456 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
23457 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
23458 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
23459 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
23460
23461       </div>
23462       <div class="tags">
23463
23464
23465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
23466
23467
23468       </div>
23469     </div>
23470     <div class="padding"></div>
23471
23472     <div class="entry">
23473       <div class="title">
23474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
23475       </div>
23476       <div class="date">
23477         28th December 2008
23478       </div>
23479       <div class="body">
23480         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
23481 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
23482 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
23483 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
23484 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
23485 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
23486 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
23487 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
23488 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
23489 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
23490 source, sink and mixer applications and
23491 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
23492 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
23493 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
23494 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
23495 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
23496 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
23497 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
23498 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
23499 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
23500
23501 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
23502 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
23503 larger stick as well.</p>
23504
23505       </div>
23506       <div class="tags">
23507
23508
23509         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>.
23510
23511
23512       </div>
23513     </div>
23514     <div class="padding"></div>
23515
23516     <div class="entry">
23517       <div class="title">
23518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
23519       </div>
23520       <div class="date">
23521          7th December 2008
23522       </div>
23523       <div class="body">
23524         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
23525 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
23526 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
23527 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
23528 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
23529 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
23530 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
23531 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
23532
23533 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
23534 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
23535 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
23536 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
23537 of these cards.</p>
23538
23539       </div>
23540       <div class="tags">
23541
23542
23543         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>.
23544
23545
23546       </div>
23547     </div>
23548     <div class="padding"></div>
23549
23550     <div class="entry">
23551       <div class="title">
23552         <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>
23553       </div>
23554       <div class="date">
23555         25th November 2008
23556       </div>
23557       <div class="body">
23558         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
23559 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
23560 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
23561 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
23562 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
23563 notes are available on
23564 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
23565 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
23566 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
23567 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
23568 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
23569 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
23570 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
23571 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
23572 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
23573
23574 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
23575 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
23576
23577       </div>
23578       <div class="tags">
23579
23580
23581         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>.
23582
23583
23584       </div>
23585     </div>
23586     <div class="padding"></div>
23587
23588     <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>
23589     <div id="sidebar">
23590
23591
23592
23593 <h2>Archive</h2>
23594 <ul>
23595
23596 <li>2015
23597 <ul>
23598
23599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23600
23601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23602
23603 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
23604
23605 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
23606
23607 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23608
23609 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
23610
23611 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
23612
23613 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23614
23615 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
23616
23617 </ul></li>
23618
23619 <li>2014
23620 <ul>
23621
23622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23623
23624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
23625
23626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
23627
23628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23629
23630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
23631
23632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23633
23634 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
23635
23636 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23637
23638 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23639
23640 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
23641
23642 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23643
23644 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
23645
23646 </ul></li>
23647
23648 <li>2013
23649 <ul>
23650
23651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
23652
23653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
23654
23655 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
23656
23657 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
23658
23659 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23660
23661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
23662
23663 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23664
23665 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23666
23667 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23668
23669 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
23670
23671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
23672
23673 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23674
23675 </ul></li>
23676
23677 <li>2012
23678 <ul>
23679
23680 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23681
23682 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
23683
23684 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
23685
23686 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
23687
23688 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
23689
23690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
23691
23692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
23693
23694 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23695
23696 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
23697
23698 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
23699
23700 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
23701
23702 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23703
23704 </ul></li>
23705
23706 <li>2011
23707 <ul>
23708
23709 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
23710
23711 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23712
23713 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
23714
23715 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23716
23717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23718
23719 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23720
23721 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23722
23723 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23724
23725 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
23726
23727 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23728
23729 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23730
23731 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
23732
23733 </ul></li>
23734
23735 <li>2010
23736 <ul>
23737
23738 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23739
23740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
23741
23742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
23743
23744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
23745
23746 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23747
23748 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
23749
23750 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
23751
23752 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
23753
23754 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
23755
23756 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
23757
23758 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
23759
23760 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
23761
23762 </ul></li>
23763
23764 <li>2009
23765 <ul>
23766
23767 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
23768
23769 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
23770
23771 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
23772
23773 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
23774
23775 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23776
23777 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
23778
23779 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
23780
23781 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23782
23783 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
23784
23785 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23786
23787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23788
23789 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23790
23791 </ul></li>
23792
23793 <li>2008
23794 <ul>
23795
23796 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
23797
23798 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23799
23800 </ul></li>
23801
23802 </ul>
23803
23804
23805
23806 <h2>Tags</h2>
23807 <ul>
23808
23809  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
23810
23811  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
23812
23813  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
23814
23815  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
23816
23817  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
23818
23819  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
23820
23821  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
23822
23823  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
23824
23825  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (112)</a></li>
23826
23827  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
23828
23829  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
23830
23831  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
23832
23833  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (17)</a></li>
23834
23835  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
23836
23837  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (288)</a></li>
23838
23839  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
23840
23841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
23842
23843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (19)</a></li>
23844
23845  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
23846
23847  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
23848
23849  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
23850
23851  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
23852
23853  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
23854
23855  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
23856
23857  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
23858
23859  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
23860
23861  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
23862
23863  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
23864
23865  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
23866
23867  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
23868
23869  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (264)</a></li>
23870
23871  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
23872
23873  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (19)</a></li>
23874
23875  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
23876
23877  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (53)</a></li>
23878
23879  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (86)</a></li>
23880
23881  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
23882
23883  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
23884
23885  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
23886
23887  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
23888
23889  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
23890
23891  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
23892
23893  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
23894
23895  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
23896
23897  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
23898
23899  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
23900
23901  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
23902
23903  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
23904
23905  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
23906
23907  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
23908
23909  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (33)</a></li>
23910
23911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
23912
23913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
23914
23915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
23916
23917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
23918
23919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
23920
23921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
23922
23923 </ul>
23924
23925
23926     </div>
23927     <p style="text-align: right">
23928  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
23929 </p>
23930
23931   </body>
23932 </html>