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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "english".
</h3>
25 <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>
31 <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian
<a
32 href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
<a
33 href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
34 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
35 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
36 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
39 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
40 for volunteers
</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
41 and progress is a bit slow. Anyway, today I broken the
70 percent
42 mark for the first rough translation. At the moment, less than
700
43 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate. With
44 my current progress of
10-
20 strings per day, it will take a while to
45 complete the translation. This graph show the updated progress:
</p>
47 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
49 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
50 commitments. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
51 the project files currently available from
52 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
54 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
56 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
58 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
59 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
60 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
61 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
67 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>.
72 <div class=
"padding"></div>
76 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda
</a>
82 <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
83 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
84 community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is
85 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
86 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
87 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
88 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.
</p>
90 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
92 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
93 in secondary (
15-
18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
94 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
95 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
96 IT.
3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
97 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
98 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
99 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
100 training is anyway very important
</p>
102 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
103 <a href=
"http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school
</a> (secondary) is a very
104 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
105 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
106 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
108 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
109 project?
</strong></p>
111 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
112 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
113 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
114 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
115 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
118 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
121 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
122 very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with
123 the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
124 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
125 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
126 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
127 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
128 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
131 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
134 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
135 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
136 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
137 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
138 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
139 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
140 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
141 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)
</p>
143 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
145 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
146 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
147 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
148 <a href=
"http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus
</a>
151 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
152 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
153 something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
154 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.
</p>
156 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
157 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
159 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
160 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
161 just because they are normally not open to change.
</p>
163 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
164 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
167 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
168 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
169 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had
20
170 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
171 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
172 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
173 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.
</p>
179 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>.
184 <div class=
"padding"></div>
188 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec
</a>
195 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
196 codec made
</a> it into
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> as
197 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716</a>, I had a look
198 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
199 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
200 area. A non-"working group" mailing list
201 <a href=
"https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec
</a>
203 <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
204 formal working group should be formed.
</p>
206 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out. There is already
207 <a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
208 email from someone
</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
209 participate in the ISO group. Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
210 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
211 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
212 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
213 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.
</p>
215 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
216 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
223 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>.
228 <div class=
"padding"></div>
232 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus
</a>
238 <p>Yesterday,
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> announced the
240 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716, the Definition
241 of the Opus Audio Codec
</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
242 intended for both VoIP, film and music. This is the first time, as
243 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec. In
244 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC
3533</a>, IETF
245 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
246 royalty free container for audio, video and movies. I hope IETF will
247 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
248 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
249 multimedia content on the Internet.
</p>
251 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
252 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
253 free specifications. Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
254 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.
</p>
256 <p>Visit the
<a href=
"http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page
</a> if
257 you want to learn more about the solution.
</p>
263 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>.
268 <div class=
"padding"></div>
272 <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>
279 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
280 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
281 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
282 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
283 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
285 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
286 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
287 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
288 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
290 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
291 PostScript formats at
292 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
293 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
299 Tags:
<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>.
304 <div class=
"padding"></div>
308 <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>
314 <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
315 <a href=
"http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
316 have been forced to open Office
</a>, and it made me remember and
317 revisit the great site
318 <a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots
</a> which allow you
319 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format. I
320 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)
</p>
326 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>.
331 <div class=
"padding"></div>
335 <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>
341 <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
342 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
343 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
344 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
345 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
346 English book. It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
347 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society. When the
348 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
349 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
350 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law. This
352 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
353 for volunteers
</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
354 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.
</p>
356 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the
50% mark. Then more than
50% of
357 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
358 titles and index entries are also counted). All parts from the
359 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated. So is
360 chapters six, seven and the conclusion. I created a graph to show the
363 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
365 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
366 entries into the docbook. They were missing with the docbook version
367 I initially started with. There are still quite a few index entries
368 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done. I
369 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
370 english version of the docbook source.
</p>
372 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
373 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
374 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
375 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
376 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
377 around? I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
378 me. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
379 project files currently available from
<a
380 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
382 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
384 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
386 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
387 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
388 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
389 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
395 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>.
400 <div class=
"padding"></div>
404 <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>
410 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> one can specify
411 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
412 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
413 also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
414 this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
415 with
<book
lang="de"
>, and the document will show up with the
416 correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
417 case for the language
418 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
419 am working with at the moment
</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.
</p>
421 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
422 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
423 all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
424 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
425 of them do not handle it at all.
</p>
427 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
428 this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
429 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
430 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
431 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
432 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
433 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
434 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
435 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
438 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
439 understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
440 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#
684391</a>), but due to a bug
441 (BTS
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#
682936</a>) the 'no'
442 language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
443 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
444 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
445 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
446 at the same time. :(
</p>
448 <p>The correct solution is to use
<book
lang="nb"
>, but it will
449 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
452 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/
</p>
458 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>.
463 <div class=
"padding"></div>
467 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?
</a>
473 <p>I tried to send this text to the
474 <a href=
"https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
475 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org
</a>, but it only accept messages
476 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
477 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
478 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
481 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
482 learning curve at the moment.
</p>
484 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
485 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
486 docbook to handle the process. The files to build the book are
488 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
489 The book got around
400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
490 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
491 software docbook processors. My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
494 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
495 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
496 formats. I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
501 <li>Using dblatex, the
<part
> handling is not the way I want to,
502 as
</part
> do not really end the
<part
>. (See
503 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #
683166</a>), the
504 xetex backend (needed to process UTF-
8) give incorrect hyphens in
505 index references spanning several pages (See
506 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #
682901</a>), and
507 I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
508 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #
682936</a>).
</li>
510 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
511 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
514 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
515 show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
516 footnote and text body, see
517 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #
683197</a>), and
518 fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
519 refs listed are not right).
</li>
521 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.
</li>
523 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
524 index problems the xmlto + fop processing.
</li>
528 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
529 of this book? Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
530 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?
</p>
532 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?
</p>
538 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>.
543 <div class=
"padding"></div>
547 <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>
553 <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
554 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
555 norwegian version
</a> of the book
556 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
557 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
558 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six. The source files as well as a
559 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
560 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
562 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
563 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
564 completely translated. This completes
26 percent of the number of
565 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus
74
566 percent left to translate. A graph of the progress is present at the
567 bottom of the github project page. There is still room for more
568 contributors. Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
569 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
572 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
573 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
580 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>.
585 <div class=
"padding"></div>
589 <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>
595 <p>I am currently working on a
596 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
597 to translate
</a> the book
598 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig
599 to Norwegian. And the source we base our translation on is the
600 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook
</a> version, to
601 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
602 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
603 tagged. The source files of this project is available from
604 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
606 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
607 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert. Is there a
608 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
609 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
610 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book? This will provide a
611 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
612 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version. If you can and want
613 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
614 send pull requests with fixes. :)
</p>
620 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>.
625 <div class=
"padding"></div>
629 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg
</a>
635 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
636 Skolelinux
</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
637 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
638 country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
639 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
640 to adjust and scale the just released
641 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
642 Wheezy
</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
643 happy to share his answers with you here.
</p>
645 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
647 <p>I'm a
44 year old country guy that have been working
12 years at
648 the same school as
50% IT-manager and
50% Teacher. My educational
649 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
650 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
651 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
652 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
653 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
654 perspective when working with IT.
</p>
656 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
657 project?
</strong></p>
659 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
660 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
661 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
662 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
663 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
664 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
666 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
669 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
670 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
671 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
672 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
673 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
674 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
675 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
676 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
677 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
678 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
679 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
680 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
681 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
682 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
683 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
684 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
685 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
686 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
687 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
688 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
689 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
690 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
693 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
696 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
697 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
698 year (
2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
699 sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
700 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
701 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.
</p>
703 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
704 install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
705 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
706 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
707 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
708 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
709 support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
710 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
711 need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
712 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
713 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
714 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
715 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
716 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
717 are done. This is important if you want to get a job.
</p>
719 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
720 magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
721 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
722 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
723 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
724 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
725 edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
726 there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.
</p>
728 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
729 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
730 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
731 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
732 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
733 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
734 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
735 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
736 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
737 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
738 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
739 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
740 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
743 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
744 will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
745 they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
746 look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
747 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
748 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
749 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
750 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
751 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.
</p>
753 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
755 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
756 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
757 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
760 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
761 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
763 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
764 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
765 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
766 flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
767 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
768 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
769 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
770 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
771 the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
772 open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
773 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
774 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
775 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
776 desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
777 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.
</p>
779 <p>Update
2012-
07-
09 08:
30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
780 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
781 article
<a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
782 management with Airtime
</a>,
783 <a href=
"http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime
</a> which
784 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
785 <a href=
"http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell
</a> which claim to
786 be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
787 useful to the aspiring radio producer.
</p>
793 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>.
798 <div class=
"padding"></div>
802 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?
</a>
808 <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
809 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
810 in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
811 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
812 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
813 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
814 Steinberg in his blog post
815 "
<a href=
"http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
816 you recognize the million pound chair?
</a>". Read it and weep for the
817 spending of your tax money.</p>
819 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
820 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
821 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
822 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
823 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
830 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>.
835 <div class="padding
"></div>
839 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html
">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
845 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu /
846 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
847 software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
848 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
849 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
850 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
851 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
852 receive. The software is
854 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/
">named FET</a>, and it provide a
855 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
856 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
857 both teachers and students. It is available both for
858 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html
">Linux, MacOSX and
861 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html
">the
862 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
866 <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
867 You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
869 <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
870 (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
871 (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
872 (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
873 (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
874 (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
875 sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
876 (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
879 <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
880 semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
882 <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
883 GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
885 <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
886 with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
888 <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
890 <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
893 <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
894 and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
895 non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
896 (as separate sets)</li>
898 <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
899 (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
902 <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
903 demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
906 <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
907 <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
908 <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
909 <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
910 <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
911 <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
912 <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
913 <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
914 <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
915 <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
916 students sets for each activity. (it is possible
917 also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
919 <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
920 <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
923 <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
925 <li>Break periods</li>
928 <li>Not available periods</li>
929 <li>Max/min days per week</li>
930 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
931 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
932 <li>Min hours daily</li>
933 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
935 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
938 <li>For students (sets):
940 <li>Not available periods</li>
941 <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
942 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
943 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
944 <li>Min hours daily</li>
945 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
947 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
950 <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
952 <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
953 <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
954 <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
955 <li>Min/max days between them</li>
956 <li>End(s) students day</li>
957 <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
958 <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
959 flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
960 <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
961 <li>Not overlapping</li>
962 <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
963 <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
967 <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
969 <li>Room not available periods</li>
972 <li>Home room(s)</li>
973 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
974 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
978 <li>For students (sets):
980 <li>Home room(s)</li>
981 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
982 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
985 <li>Preferred room(s):
987 <li>For a subject</li>
988 <li>For an activity tag</li>
989 <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
990 <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
994 <li>For a set of activities:
996 <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
1003 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
1004 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
1005 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
1006 manually, check it out.
1008 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
1009 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/
2012/
03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/
">a
1010 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
1011 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
1012 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos
">Debian Edu HowTo
1019 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>.
1024 <div class="padding
"></div>
1028 <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>
1034 <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a>
1035 project (Norwegian version of
1036 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> from
1037 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
1038 a problem with the municipalities using
1039 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/
">Zimbra</a>. When FiksGataMi send a
1040 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
1041 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
1042 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address. The intention is to make
1043 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
1044 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
1045 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
1046 Zimbra. Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
1047 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
1048 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
1049 the From: header.</p>
1051 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
1052 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
1053 problem. We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
1054 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
1055 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports. We have been in
1056 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
1057 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
1060 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
1061 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
1062 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
1063 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
1064 differently. Anyone know? Please let us know at
1065 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
1066 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
1072 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>.
1077 <div class="padding
"></div>
1081 <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>
1087 <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
1088 another interview with the people behind
1089 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
1090 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
1091 helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
1092 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
1093 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
1094 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.html
">Debian Edu
1095 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
1097 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1099 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
1100 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
1103 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1104 project?</strong></p>
1106 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
1107 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
1108 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
1109 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
1111 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1114 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
1115 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
1116 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
1117 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
1119 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1122 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
1123 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
1124 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
1125 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
1126 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
1127 technologies in school.</p>
1129 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1131 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
1132 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/
">Geany</a> and
1133 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator
">Terminator</a>.</p>
1135 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1136 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1138 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
1139 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
1140 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
1141 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
1143 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
1144 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
1145 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
1147 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
1148 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
1149 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
1150 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
1151 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
1152 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
1153 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
1154 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
1161 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>.
1166 <div class="padding
"></div>
1170 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html
">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1176 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1177 <a href="http://www.uit.no/
">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
1178 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
1179 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1180 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1181 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
1182 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1183 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1184 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
1185 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
1186 missing in my book.</p>
1188 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1189 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1190 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1191 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/
">Debconf
1192 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
1193 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/
">Petter's
1194 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
1200 Tags: <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>.
1205 <div class="padding
"></div>
1209 <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>
1215 <p>During my work on
1216 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.nb.html
">Debian Edu
1217 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
1218 addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
1219 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
1224 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
1225 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
1226 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
1227 system depend on tasksel tasks in
1228 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
1231 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
1232 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
1233 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
1234 at least try to enable it for these services:
1237 <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
1239 <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
1240 <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
1241 <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
1242 <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
1243 <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
1247 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
1248 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
1249 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
1250 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
1252 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
1253 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
1254 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
1256 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
1257 touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
1258 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
1259 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
1260 it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
1261 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
1263 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
1264 time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
1265 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
1268 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
1269 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
1270 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
1272 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
1273 change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
1274 paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
1275 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
1277 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
1278 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
1279 familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
1280 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
1282 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
1283 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
1284 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
1286 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
1287 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
1288 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
1290 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
1291 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
1292 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
588968">BTS report
1293 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
1294 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
1296 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
1299 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
1300 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
1301 <li>and probably more?</li>
1304 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
1305 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
1306 examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
1307 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
1308 some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
1309 could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
1310 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
1311 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
1314 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
1315 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
1316 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
1319 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
1320 interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
1321 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
1322 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
1323 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
1325 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
1326 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
1327 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
1328 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
1329 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
1330 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.
</li>
1332 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
1333 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
1334 There are at least three implementations,
1335 <a href=
"italc.sourceforge.net/">italc
</a>,
1336 <a href=
"http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula
</a> og
1337 <a href=
"http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes
</a> and we should pick one of
1338 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
1339 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
1340 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
1343 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
1344 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
1345 the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
1346 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
1347 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
1348 configuration and data with the central server. This should be
1353 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
1360 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>.
1365 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1369 <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>
1375 <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
1376 <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
1377 with face recognition
</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
1378 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
1379 recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who
1380 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
1381 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
1382 evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would
1383 be willing to pay for.
</p>
1385 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
1386 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
1387 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
1388 <a href=
"http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
1395 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>.
1400 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1404 <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>
1411 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
1412 reported how to get
</a> the support status out of Dell using an
1413 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
1414 <a href=
"http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
1415 by Daniel De Marco in february
</a>. Combined with my web scraping
1416 code for HP, Dell and IBM
1417 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
1418 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
1419 <a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
1420 web service
</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
1421 support status and get a machine readable result back.
</p>
1423 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
1427 % 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>
1428 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": ""})
1432 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
1433 support for other vendors. The python source is available on
1434 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.
</p>
1440 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>.
1445 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1449 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
</a>
1455 <p>Back in
2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
1456 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
1457 mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
1458 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
1459 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1460 Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
1462 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1464 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am
38 years old and live near Kiel,
1465 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
1466 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
1469 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
1470 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
1471 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
1472 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
1473 becoming an osteopath.
</p>
1475 <p>Starting in
2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
1476 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
1477 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
1478 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
1479 skills with communication skills.
</p>
1481 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1482 project?
</strong></p>
1484 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
1485 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
1486 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
1487 people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
1488 distributions that target being used for school networks.
</p>
1490 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
1491 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
1492 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between
12/
2010 and
03/
2011 we
1493 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
1494 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
1495 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
1496 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
1497 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
1498 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
</p>
1500 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
1501 people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
1502 protection experts, other IT professionals.
</p>
1504 <p>We came to two conclusions:
</p>
1506 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
1507 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
1508 by
100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
1509 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
1510 IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
1511 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
1512 possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
1513 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
1514 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
1515 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
1518 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
1519 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
1520 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
1521 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
1522 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
1523 tries to provide an approach for this.
</p>
1525 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
1526 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
1527 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
1528 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
1529 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
1532 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
1533 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
1534 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
1535 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
1536 non-existent until
2010/
2011.
</p>
1538 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
1539 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
1540 avoidance do exist.
</p>
1542 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
1543 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
1544 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
1545 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
1546 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
1547 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
1548 and probably a gain for all.
</p>
1550 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1553 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
1554 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
1555 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
1556 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
1557 project communication, honest communication within the group of
1558 developers, etc.
</p>
1560 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1563 <p>Every coin has two sides:
</p>
1565 <p>Technically:
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
1566 #
311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
1567 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
1568 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
1569 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
1570 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
1573 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
1574 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
1575 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
1576 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
1577 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
1578 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
1579 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
1580 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
1581 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
1582 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
1584 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1586 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
</p>
1588 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
1589 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
1590 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
</p>
1592 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In
2010 I started the
1593 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
1594 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
1595 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
</p>
1597 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
1598 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
1599 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
1600 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
1603 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
</p>
1605 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1606 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1608 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
1615 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>.
1620 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1624 <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>
1630 <p>A few years ago I wrote
1631 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
1632 to extract support status
</a> for your Dell and HP servers. Recently
1633 I have learned from colleges here at the
1634 <a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> that Dell have
1635 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service. Given
1636 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
1637 readable information about the support status. This perl code
1638 demonstrate how to do it:
</p>
1645 my $GUID = '
11111111-
1111-
1111-
1111-
111111111111';
1647 my $servicetag = $ARGV[
0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
1648 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
1650 -
> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
1651 -
> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
1652 -
> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
1654 my $a = $s-
>GetAssetInformation(
1655 SOAP::Data-
>name('guid')-
>value($GUID)-
>type(''),
1656 SOAP::Data-
>name('applicationName')-
>value($App)-
>type(''),
1657 SOAP::Data-
>name('serviceTags')-
>value($servicetag)-
>type(''),
1659 print Dumper($a -
> result) ;
1662 <p>The output can look like this:
</p>
1668 'EntitlementData' =
> [
1670 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
1671 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
1673 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
1677 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
1678 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
1680 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
1684 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
1685 'EndDate' =
> '
2007-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
1687 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
1692 'AssetHeaderData' =
> {
1693 'SystemModel' =
> 'GX620',
1694 'ServiceTag' =
> '
8DSGD2J',
1695 'SystemShipDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T19:
00:
00-
05:
00',
1697 'Region' =
> 'Europe',
1698 'SystemID' =
> 'PLX_GX620',
1699 'SystemType' =
> 'OptiPlex'
1705 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
1707 <a href=
"http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
1708 documentation
</a>, and according to
1709 <a href=
"http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
1710 comment
</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
1711 scraping HTML pages. :)
</p>
1713 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service. If
1714 you know of one, drop me an email. :)
</p>
1720 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>.
1725 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1729 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug
</a>
1735 <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
1736 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug
</a> arrived in the
1737 mail, and I've had a few days to test it. As all my machines are
1738 running Debian Squeeze, where
1739 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
1740 calibration software
</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
1741 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD. This worked
1742 just fine. So far I have only done the quick calibration. It was
1743 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
1746 <p>After calibration, I get a
1747 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
1748 profile
</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
1749 tools. KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
1750 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
1751 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
1752 monitor setups. But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
1753 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
1754 monitor. After searching a bit, I
1755 <a href=
"http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered
</a>
1756 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
1760 dispwin -d
1 profile.icc
1763 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor. The
1764 result was a bit more pink than I expected. I guess I picked the
1765 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
1772 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1777 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1781 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter
</a>
1787 <p>In
2003, a German teacher showed up on the
1788 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
1789 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
1790 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
1791 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
1792 since then, helping to make sure the
1793 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1794 Squeeze
</a> release became as good as it is..
</p>
1796 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1798 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
1799 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past
12
1800 years (since
2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
1801 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
1802 O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
1803 our computer network.
</p>
1805 <p>Now, in my early
40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
1806 spare time together with my wife, our son (
3 years) and our daughter
1809 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1810 project?
</strong></p>
1812 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
1813 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
1814 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
1815 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
1816 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt,
2005 (IIRC). Few
1817 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
1818 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
1819 than
7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
1820 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
1821 approximately
50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
1822 locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
1823 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
1824 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
1825 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
</p>
1827 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1830 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
1831 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
1832 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
1833 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
1834 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
1835 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
1836 labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
1837 administration costs tend towards zero.
</p>
1839 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1842 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
1843 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
1844 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
1845 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
1846 office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
1847 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
1848 capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
1849 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
1850 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
1851 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
1852 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
1853 i.e. harder to understand for novices.
</p>
1855 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1857 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
1858 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
1859 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
</p>
1861 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1862 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1866 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
1867 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
1868 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
1871 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
1872 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
1873 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
1874 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
1875 share among German Skolelinux schools.
</li>
1877 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
1878 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
1879 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
</li>
1881 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
1882 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
1883 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
1884 shared world wide (school books e.g.).
</li>
1886 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
1887 office suites is much above
20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
1888 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
</li>
1890 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
</li>
1892 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
1893 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
1894 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
1895 keep sending documents in ODF formats.
</li>
1903 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>.
1908 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1912 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML
</a>
1918 <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
1919 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
1920 government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his
1921 assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my
1922 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.
</p>
1924 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi. I just noted your
1925 <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>
1928 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
1929 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
1930 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard
" as claimed by the
1931 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
1932 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
1935 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is
1936 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around
2007,
1937 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
1938 at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
1939 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
1940 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
1941 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
1942 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
1943 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In
1944 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
1945 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
1946 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not
20 minutes
1947 of wasted effort.
</p>
1949 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
1950 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending
10
1951 minutes converting to ODF. :)
</p>
1954 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php
</a>
1956 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php
</a>
1957 for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)
</p>
1964 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>.
1969 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1973 <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>
1980 <a href=
"http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
1981 the ColorHug
</a>, a USB dongle from
1982 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski
</a> to calibrate
1983 the color on a computer screen. The software required is
1984 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
1985 in Debian
</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
1986 batch. Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
1987 opportunity to order. Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
1988 delivery. I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
1989 should go in the mail on monday. :)
</p>
1991 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
1992 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
1999 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2004 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2008 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner
</a>
2014 <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
2015 publish another interview with the people behind
2016 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>.
2017 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
2018 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
2019 details get right before release.
2021 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2023 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm
49 years old and living in
2024 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly
20 years as
2025 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
2026 international company for machinery and equipment. Since
2011 I'm a
2027 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
2028 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
2029 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
2030 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.
</p>
2032 <p>My first contact with linux was around
1993. Since that time I used
2033 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
2034 home since
2006.
</p>
2036 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2037 project?
</strong></p>
2039 <p>Once a day in the early year of
2001 when I wanted to fetch my
2040 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
2041 middle of
20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
2042 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
2043 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
2044 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".
</p>
2046 <p>Some weeks later every of the
10 classrooms had one computer
2047 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
2048 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
2049 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
2050 and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
2051 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
2052 building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
2053 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
2054 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
2055 costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
2056 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
2057 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
2058 prerelease
32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
2059 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
2060 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
2061 Bielefeld in December of
2006.
</p>
2063 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2066 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
2067 for me as today.
</p>
2069 <p>In the past there were advantages like:
</p>
2073 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
2074 they had little money to spent for computers and software.
</li>
2076 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
2079 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
2080 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
2081 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
2082 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
2085 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
2090 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
2091 came up in this way:
</p>
2095 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
2098 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
2099 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
2100 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.
</li>
2102 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
2103 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
2104 interfaces used in the past.
</li>
2106 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
2107 different needs.
</li>
2109 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.
</li>
2111 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
2112 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
2113 is sharing knowledge and minds.
</li>
2115 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
2116 solved today by Debian Edu.
</li>
2120 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2125 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
2126 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
2127 whole municipality areas.
</li>
2129 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
2130 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
2133 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.
</li>
2137 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2139 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
2140 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
2141 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
2142 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
2143 need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
2144 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.
</p>
2146 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
2147 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
2148 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
2149 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
2150 and the whole family. I probably forgot something.
</p>
2152 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2153 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2155 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
2156 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
2157 countries and areas all over the world.
</p>
2163 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>.
2168 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2172 <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>
2178 <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
2179 <img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
2181 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
2182 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
2183 But the last ones have not really been up to the task. My last
2184 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
2185 time, and cutting my head took forever. And the one before that did
2186 not work very well either. We have looked for something better for a
2187 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
2188 discovered that there are indeed better tools available. But these
2189 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers". The hair saloons
2190 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
2191 companies. The models they sell, are very different from the ones
2192 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal. The main difference is their
2193 efficiency. It would cut my hair in
5 minutes, instead of the
30-
40
2194 minutes required by my impotent Braun. The hairdresser I visited had
2195 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
2196 producer. But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.
</p>
2198 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it. This was not
2199 straight forward. The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
2200 did not want to sell anything to me. But searching for the model on
2201 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
2202 around NOK
4000,-. This was a bit much. We kept searching and
2203 finally found a Danish supplier
2204 <a href=
"http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
2205 it for around NOK
1800,-
</a>. We ordered one, and it arrived a few
2208 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for
8 hours when we started
2209 to use it, so we left it charging over night. Normally it will only
2210 need one hour to charge. The following evening we successfully tested
2211 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
2212 cutter. The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
2219 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2224 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2228 <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>
2234 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
2235 article today
</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
2236 <a href=
"http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke
</a> reports
2237 that the video editor application included with
2238 <a href=
"http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
2239 X
</a> have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
2240 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
2243 "
<a href=
"http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
2244 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
2245 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.
</a>"
2248 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
2251 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
2252 commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately.
"
2255 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
2256 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
2257 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html
">discovered
2258 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>. The HTC One X specification specifies that
2259 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
2261 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues
">Adaptive
2262 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
2263 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
2264 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/
">VoiceAge</a>. MP4 is
2265 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H
.264/MPEG-
4_AVC#Patent_licensing
">MPEG4 with
2266 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
2267 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/
">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
2269 <p>I know why I prefer
2270 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and open
2271 standards</a> also for video.</p>
2277 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
2282 <div class="padding
"></div>
2286 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html
">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
2292 <p>Here in Norway, the
2293 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=
339"> Ministry of
2294 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
2295 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder
">directory of
2296 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
2297 government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
2298 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
2299 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
2300 to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
2301 on the same level.</p>
2303 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
2304 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing
">Reasonable
2305 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
2306 directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
2307 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
2308 implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
2309 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
2310 willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
2311 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
2312 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
2313 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
2314 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
2315 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
2316 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
2317 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
2318 to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
2319 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
2320 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
2322 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
2323 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
2324 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
2325 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
2326 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
2327 in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
2328 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
2329 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
2331 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
2333 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2010/
11/rand-not-so-reasonable/
">RAND:
2334 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
2336 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
2337 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm
">blog
2338 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
2339 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
2340 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
2341 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder
">the
2342 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
2343 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
2344 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
2350 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>.
2355 <div class="padding
"></div>
2359 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html
">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
2365 <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and
2366 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
2367 setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
2368 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
2369 years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
2370 up in the recently released
2371 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze
">Debian
2372 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
2374 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2376 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
2377 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
2378 Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
2379 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
2380 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
2381 information technology and science/technology.</p>
2383 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2384 project?</strong></p>
2386 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
2387 project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
2388 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
2391 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2394 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
2395 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
2398 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2401 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
2402 downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
2403 setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
2404 possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
2405 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
2406 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
2407 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
2409 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN
">Debian LAN</a>
2410 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
2412 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2414 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
2415 on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
2416 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
2417 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
2419 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2420 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2422 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
2423 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
2424 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
2425 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
2426 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
2427 free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
2428 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.
</p>
2430 <p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
2431 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
2432 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
2433 the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
2434 "Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
2435 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
2436 fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
2437 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.
</p>
2443 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>.
2448 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2452 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye
</a>
2458 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
2459 like
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>,
2460 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
2462 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
2463 Edu Squeeze release manual
</a>.
2465 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2467 <p>I'm a
44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
2468 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.
</p>
2470 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2471 project?
</strong></p>
2473 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
2474 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
2475 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
2476 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
2477 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
2480 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2483 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2486 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
2487 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
2488 education system.
</p>
2490 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
2491 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
2492 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
2493 money on the latest hardware.
</p>
2495 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2497 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
2498 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
2499 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).
</p>
2501 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2502 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2504 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
2505 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
2506 you would hardly need a strategy.
</p>
2512 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>.
2517 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2521 <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>
2527 <p>Recently I have spent time with
2528 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a> on speeding
2529 up a
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
2530 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
2531 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
2532 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
2533 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
2534 the Multimedia menu would cause more than
20 000 IP packages to be
2535 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
2537 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
2538 ping times between the client and the server were in the range
2-
20
2539 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
2540 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
2541 the source of these NFS calls are access(
2) system calls for
2542 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(
2) calls to find
2543 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
2544 around
230 access(
2) calls.
</p>
2546 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
2547 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
2548 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
2549 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
2550 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
2551 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
2552 <a href=
"https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
2553 from
2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.
</p>
2555 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
2556 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
2557 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
2558 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
2559 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
2560 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
2561 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
2562 one icon from several hundred to less than
5, and make the KDE menu
2563 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
2564 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.
</p>
2566 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
2567 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
2568 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
2569 that is not really an option at the moment.
</p>
2571 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
2572 (at) lists.debian.org.
</p>
2578 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>.
2583 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2587 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News
</a>
2593 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
2594 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a> by
2595 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
2596 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
2597 for schools. Check out his article
2598 <a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
2599 distribution for education
</a> if you want to learn more.
</p>
2605 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>.
2610 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2614 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer
</a>
2620 <p>Germany is a core area for the
2621 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
2622 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
2623 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
2625 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2627 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
2628 Bochum, Germany. Since
1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
2629 "
<a href=
"http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
2630 Dortmund
</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
2631 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
2632 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
2633 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
2634 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
2636 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
2637 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
2638 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
2639 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
2640 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
2641 the end of April this year.</p>
2643 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2644 project?</strong></p>
2646 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
2647 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
2648 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
2649 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
2650 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
2651 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
2652 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
2653 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
2654 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
2655 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
2658 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
2659 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
2660 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
2661 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
2662 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
2663 the admin teachers.</p>
2665 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2668 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
2669 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
2670 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
2672 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
2673 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
2674 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
2675 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
2676 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
2678 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2683 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2685 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
2686 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
2687 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
2690 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2691 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2693 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
2694 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
2695 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
2701 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>.
2706 <div class="padding
"></div>
2710 <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>
2716 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
2718 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
2719 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
2720 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
2721 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
2722 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
2723 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/
38601767">vimeo</a>
2725 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg
2726 Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
2728 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie
" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
2729 <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
"' />
2730 <p>Download video as
2731 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg</a>.</p>
2738 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>.
2743 <div class="padding
"></div>
2747 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html
">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
2753 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2754 users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
2755 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/
2012/
03/msg00001.html
">the
2756 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
2757 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
2759 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2761 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
2762 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
2763 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
2764 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
2765 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
2766 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
2767 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
2770 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2771 project?</strong></p>
2773 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
2774 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
2775 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
2776 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
2777 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
2778 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
2779 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
2780 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
2781 these things we decided to try it.</p>
2783 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2786 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
2787 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
2788 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
2789 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
2790 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
2791 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about
25
2792 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
2793 proprietary software everywhere.
</p>
2795 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2798 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
2799 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
2800 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
2801 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
2802 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!
</p>
2804 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2806 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
2807 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
2808 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
2809 use Ubuntu and an Android
4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
2812 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2813 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2815 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
2816 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
2817 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
2818 applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
2819 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
2820 XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
2821 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
2822 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
2823 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
2824 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
2825 first
10,
000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in
2 hours.
</p>
2827 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
2828 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
2829 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.
</p>
2835 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>.
2840 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2844 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu
</a>
2850 <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
2851 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
2852 translated versions in sync. To do this we have come up with what we
2853 believe is a very efficient work flow.
</p>
2857 <li>The documentation is written in a
2858 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki
</a> (see for example
2859 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
2860 Squeeze release manual
</a>) with support for exporting the content as
2863 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
2864 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
2865 with the translated text.
</li>
2867 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
2868 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed. They can
2869 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
2870 the translation. There is even a system in place to handle translated
2873 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
2874 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.
</li>
2876 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
2877 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.
</li>
2881 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
2882 issue is that
<a href=
"http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
2883 we use in moinmoin
</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
2884 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
2885 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.
</p>
2887 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
2888 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
2895 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>.
2900 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2904 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!
</a>
2910 <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
2911 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> based
2912 on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
2913 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available
</a>
2914 from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
2915 you have not done so already.
</p>
2917 <p>I plan to present the new version at
2918 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
2919 meeting
</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
2920 in Oslo, Norway.
</p>
2926 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>.
2931 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2935 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker
</a>
2941 <p>Inspired by
<a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
2942 interview series
</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
2943 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2944 community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
2945 more international audience.
</p>
2947 <p>While
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2948 Skolelinux
</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
2949 Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
2950 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
2951 and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
2952 work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
2953 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
2956 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2958 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
2959 and we have three lovely children, aged
15,
14 and
4(!) I am the IT
2960 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
2961 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
2962 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
2963 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
2964 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
2965 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
2966 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
2967 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
2968 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
</p>
2970 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2971 project?
</strong></p>
2973 <p>In around
2004 or
5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
2974 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
2975 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
2976 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
2977 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
2978 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
2979 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
2980 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
2981 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
2982 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
2983 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
2984 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
2985 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
</p>
2987 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2990 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
2991 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
2992 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
2993 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
2994 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
2995 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
2998 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3001 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
3002 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
3003 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
3004 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
3005 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
3006 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
3007 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
3008 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
3009 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
3010 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
3011 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
3012 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
3013 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
3014 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
3017 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3019 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
3020 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
3021 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
3022 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
3023 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
3024 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
3025 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
3026 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
3027 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
3028 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
3029 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
</p>
3031 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3032 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3034 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
3035 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
3036 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
3037 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
3038 file formats and Word than they did
5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
3039 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
3040 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
3041 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
3042 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
3043 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
3044 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
3045 doesn't play flash, for example.
</p>
3051 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>.
3056 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3060 <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>
3066 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
3068 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
3069 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
3070 Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
3071 also available from
<a href=
"http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo
</a> and
3073 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
3074 Theora
</a> file. Check it out below.
</p>
3076 <p><video id=
"gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width=
"256" height=
"184" preload controls
>
3077 <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"'
/>
3078 <p>Download video as
3079 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
</a>.
</p>
3086 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>.
3091 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3095 <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>
3101 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
3102 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3103 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement is
3104 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available
</a>
3105 from the project announcement list. Check it out if you
3106 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
3112 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>.
3117 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3121 <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>
3127 <p>Many years ago, the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
3128 / Debian Edu project
</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
3129 for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher
3130 needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion",
3131 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
3132 national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and
3133 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
3134 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman
3135 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
3136 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
3137 animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got
3138 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
3139 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last
3142 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
3143 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
3145 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion
</a>.
3146 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
3147 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
3148 mean). I've been following
3149 <a href=
"https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
3150 mailing list
</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
3151 the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies.
3152 Check it out. :)
</p>
3158 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>.
3163 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3167 <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>
3173 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
3174 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3175 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement did for some
3176 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
3177 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available
</a>
3178 from the Debian development announcement list. Check it out if you
3179 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
3185 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>.
3190 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3194 <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>
3200 <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
3201 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
3202 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
3203 on Squeeze. The full announcement is
3204 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available
</a>
3205 on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
3206 solution for your school.
</p>
3212 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>.
3217 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3221 <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>
3227 <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems. Thanks to Linux
3228 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
3229 <a href=
"http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
3230 close
</a> this summer :). But once a disk is starting to behave
3231 funny, a practical problem present itself. How to get from the Linux
3232 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
3233 the disk when the computer is turned off? In my case I have SATA
3234 disks with a unique ID printed on the label. All I need is a way to
3235 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.
</p>
3237 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
3238 <a href=
"http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
3239 that hdparm -I
</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
3240 printed on the disk label. The following (almost) one-liner can be
3241 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:
</p>
3244 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
3246 printf "Failed disk $d: "
3247 hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
3251 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
3252 next time, and in case other find it useful.
</p>
3254 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(
</p>
3257 Failed disk sdd1: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
3258 Failed disk sdd2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
3259 Failed disk sde2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1840589
3262 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
3263 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
3264 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
3265 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label. The vendor
3266 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
3267 mounted inside my box.
</p>
3269 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
3270 Software RAID in the
3271 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard
</a>
3272 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
3273 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail. At the moment
3274 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
3275 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
3276 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.
</p>
3282 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>.
3287 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3291 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
3297 <p>New in the Squeeze version of
3298 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is the
3299 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
3300 based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
3301 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from
<tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat
</tt>, to
3302 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
3303 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
3304 change the global proxy setting by editing
3305 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat
</tt> and the change propagate
3306 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.
</p>
3308 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
3309 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
3310 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):
</p>
3313 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
3315 if (!isResolvable(host) ||
3316 isPlainHostName(host) ||
3317 dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
3320 return "PROXY webcache:
3128; DIRECT";
3324 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:
</p>
3327 http_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
3328 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
3331 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
3332 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
3334 <tt><a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a></tt>,
3335 and insert this extracted proxy URL in
<tt>/etc/environment
</tt> and
3336 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf
</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
3337 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
3338 javascript code is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
3339 able to build
</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
3340 library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
3341 is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
3342 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
3343 known alternative is known at the moment.
</p>
3345 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
3346 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
3347 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
3348 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
3349 feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
3350 announced, direct connections will be used instead.
</p>
3352 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
3353 or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
3354 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
3355 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
3356 distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
3357 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
3358 first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
3359 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
3360 the network setup changes.
</p>
3362 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
3363 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
3365 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
3366 page
</a> for those that want to learn more.
</p>
3372 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>.
3377 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3381 <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>
3387 <p>Since the Lenny version of
3388 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, a
3389 feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
3390 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
3391 in the morning. This is done using the
3392 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night
</a> Debian package.
</p>
3394 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
3395 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, this is done in
3396 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
3397 every hour from
16:
00 until
06:
00 to see if the machine is unused, and
3398 shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
3400 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup
</a>
3401 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around
07:
00 +-
3402 10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
3403 try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
3404 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.
</p>
3406 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
3407 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
3408 the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
3409 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
3410 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
3411 starting from
0 (or was it
1990?) every boot. If you have one of
3412 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.
</p>
3414 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
3415 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
3416 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
3417 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night
</tt> to enable it.
3418 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?
</p>
3424 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>.
3429 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3433 <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>
3439 <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
3440 publish the third beta version of
3441 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
3442 on Squeeze. If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
3443 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
3444 installing new machines, check it out. If you need a software
3445 solution for your school, check it out too. The full announcement is
3446 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available
</a>
3447 on the project announcement list.
</p>
3449 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
3450 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):
</p>
3454 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
3455 10.0.0.0/
8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
3456 the installation.
</li>
3458 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
3459 Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.
</li>
3461 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
3462 disabled queues are restarted every hour. This should cut down on
3463 the amount of manual administration needed for printers.
</li>
3465 <li>The set of initial users have been changed. Now a personal user
3466 for the local system administrator is created during installation
3467 instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
3468 and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
3469 membership. This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
3470 up to date on the system.
</li>
3474 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
3475 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home. I will use it look
3476 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
3477 final Squeeze release is published.
</p>
3479 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
3480 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
3481 gathering
</a> in Oslo. We will continue the work on the Squeeze
3482 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version. Perhaps I
3483 will see you there?
</p>
3489 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>.
3494 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3498 <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>
3504 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
3505 This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
3506 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
3507 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
3508 firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
3509 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
3510 work, but there are other use cases as well.
</p>
3512 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
3513 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
3514 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
3515 during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
3516 by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
3517 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
3518 not taken care of by this.
</p>
3520 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
3521 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware
</tt> which
3522 search through the
<tt>dmesg
</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
3523 firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
3524 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
3525 the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
3526 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
3527 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#
655507</a>), to allow PXE
3528 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
3529 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
3530 firmware packages.
</p>
3532 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
3533 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
3534 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
3535 included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
3536 initrd with extra firmware, the
3537 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware
</tt> script is
3538 provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
3539 PXE initrd with firmware packages.
</p>
3541 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
3542 network cards working. For this,
3543 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware
</tt> is
3544 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
3545 the same way as the other firmware related tools.
</p>
3547 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
3548 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
3549 non-free software, and it is their choice.
</p>
3551 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
3558 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>.
3563 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3567 <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>
3573 <p>The next version of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
3574 / Skolelinux
</a> will include a new tool
3575 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp
</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
3576 the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
3577 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.
</p>
3579 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
3580 central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
3581 as thin clients and wait
5 minutes after the last client booted to
3582 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
3583 this is done, log on to the central server and run
3584 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
</tt> in the
<tt>konsole
</tt> to use the
3585 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
3586 will look similar to this:
</p>
3588 <p><blockquote><pre>
3589 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
3590 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [
10.0.2.2] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
05.
3591 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.
3593 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
3595 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3596 enter password: *******
3598 </pre></blockquote></p>
3600 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
3601 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
3602 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
3603 automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
3604 then to log into
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa
</a>,
3605 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
3606 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
3607 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
3608 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
3609 group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
3610 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
3613 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
3614 enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.
</p>
3616 <p>Update
2012-
01-
28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
3617 hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
3618 original text, and have added it to the text now.
</p>
3624 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>.
3629 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3633 <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>
3639 <p>In the Squeeze version of
3640 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> soon
3641 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
3642 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
3643 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
3644 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
3645 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
3648 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
3649 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
3650 default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
3651 to see the page behind this new URL.
</p>
3653 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
3654 called as "
<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'
</tt>' to update LDAP with the
3657 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
3658 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
3659 from within Iceweasel instead.
</p>
3665 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>.
3670 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3674 <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>
3680 <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
3681 the second beta version of
3682 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>. If
3683 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
3684 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
3685 machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
3686 school, check it out too. The full announcement is
3687 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available
</a>
3688 on the project announcement list.
</p>
3694 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>.
3699 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3703 <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>
3709 <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
3710 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ready
3711 for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
3714 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
3715 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
3716 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
3717 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
3718 scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
3719 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
3720 wrap up its tasks.
</p>
3722 <p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
3723 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
3724 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
3725 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
3726 because I was typing.
</P>
3728 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
3729 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
3730 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
3731 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
3732 generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
3733 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
3734 generate entropy.
</p>
3737 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
3738 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a> version, and we
3739 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
3740 developers
</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.
</p>
3746 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>.
3751 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3755 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
3761 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
3762 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
3763 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
3764 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
3765 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
3766 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
3767 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
3768 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
3769 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
3770 the tools to do so.
</p>
3772 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
3773 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
3774 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
3775 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
3777 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
3778 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
3779 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
3780 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
3781 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
3782 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
3783 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
3784 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
3786 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
3787 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
3788 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
3794 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
3796 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
3798 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
3800 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
3801 eval "use $module;";
3803 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
3804 system("yum install -y $pkg");
3805 eval "use $module;";
3809 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
3815 sub run_firmware_script {
3816 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
3818 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
3821 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
3823 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
3824 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
3826 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
3830 sub run_firmware_scripts {
3831 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
3832 # Run firmware packages
3833 for my $dir (@dirs) {
3834 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
3835 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
3836 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
3837 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
3838 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
3846 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
3847 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
3852 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3855 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
3857 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
3858 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
3860 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
3864 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
3865 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
3866 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
3867 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
3870 for my $url (@paths) {
3871 fetch_dell_fw($url);
3873 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
3875 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3876 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3880 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3881 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3887 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
3891 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
3892 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
3893 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
3894 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
3895 my $filename = shift;
3897 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3899 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
3901 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
3903 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
3905 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
3906 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
3907 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
3909 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
3910 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
3912 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
3914 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
3916 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
3919 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
3920 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
3922 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
3923 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
3925 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
3926 for my $path (@paths) {
3927 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
3928 push(@paths, $cpath);
3936 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
3937 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
3938 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
3939 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
3946 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3951 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3955 <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>
3961 <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
3962 publishing houses how to handle electronic books. Surprisingly, the
3963 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
3964 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
3965 publishing houses. Time limited renting (
2-
3 years) is one proposed
3966 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
3967 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
3970 <p>Anyway, while reading
<a href=
"http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
3971 this debate
</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
3972 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
3973 to a better model. The idea is simple:
</p>
3975 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
3976 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
3977 solution to hand out free e-books. As a start, the books distributed
3978 by
<a href=
"http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg
</a> (abount
3979 36,
000 books),
<a href=
"http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg
</a>
3980 (
1149 books) and
<a href=
"http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
3981 Internet Archive
</a> (
3,
033,
748 books) could be included, but any book
3982 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
3985 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:
</p>
3989 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
3990 other relevant equipment.
</li>
3992 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.
</li>
3996 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
3997 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
3998 visiting the library. The site would be the distribution point for
3999 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
4000 books available.
</p>
4002 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this? I guess it would
4003 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
4010 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>.
4015 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4019 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage
</a>
4025 <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
4026 server. It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
4027 movie collection easily available. It also make it possible to let
4028 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
4029 down. I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
4030 subtitle options intact. It also ensure that the entire film is one
4031 file on the disk. As this is for personal use, the ripping is
4032 perfectly legal here in Norway.
</p>
4034 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:
</p>
4038 # apt-get install lsdvd
4039 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
4040 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=
1M
4043 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
4044 been looking for a better alternative. I have no idea why this I/O
4045 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
4046 something fishy with the DVDs in question. Or perhaps all three.
</p>
4048 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
4049 genisoimage. This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
4050 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
4055 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
4057 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
4058 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
4059 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
4060 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
4061 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
4064 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?
</p>
4066 <p>Update
2011-
09-
18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
4067 readom program from the wodim package. It is specially written to
4068 read optical media, and is called like this:
<tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
4069 f=image.iso
</tt>. It got
6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
4070 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.
</p>
4072 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
4073 <a href=
"http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
4074 program python-dvdvideo
</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
4075 for. Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
4076 creating a ISO image. The git source built and installed just fine in
4077 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.
</p>
4083 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>.
4088 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4092 <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>
4098 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
4099 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
4100 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
4101 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
4102 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
4103 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
4104 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
4105 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4106 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
4109 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4110 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
4111 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4114 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4115 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
4116 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4117 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4118 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
4119 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4120 hard to explain.
</p>
4122 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4123 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
4124 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
4125 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4126 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4127 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4128 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4129 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4130 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4131 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
4132 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4135 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
4136 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4137 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
4138 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
4139 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
4140 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
4141 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4142 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4143 after visiting single user mode.</p>
4145 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4146 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
4147 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4148 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4149 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4150 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4151 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
4152 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
4154 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4155 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
4156 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
4162 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>.
4167 <div class="padding
"></div>
4171 <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>
4177 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
4178 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
4179 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
4180 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
4181 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
4182 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
4183 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
4184 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
4185 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
4186 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
4187 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
4188 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
4189 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
4191 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
4192 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
4193 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
4194 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
4195 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
4196 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
4197 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
4198 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
4199 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
4201 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
4202 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
4203 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
4206 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
4207 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4208 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4209 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4210 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4211 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4212 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4213 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
4214 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4215 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4216 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4217 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
4218 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4219 find time to push this forward.</p>
4225 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>.
4230 <div class="padding
"></div>
4234 <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>
4240 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4241 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4242 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
4243 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4246 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4247 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4248 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
4252 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
4253 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4254 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4255 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4256 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
4257 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
4258 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4261 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4262 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4263 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4264 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4265 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4266 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4267 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
4268 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4269 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
4270 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
4271 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
4272 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
4273 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
4275 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
4276 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
4277 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
4278 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
4279 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
4280 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
4281 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
4282 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
4283 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
4284 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
4286 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
4287 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
4288 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
4289 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
4290 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
4291 latter behaviour.</li>
4295 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4296 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4297 it do not matter much.</p>
4299 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4300 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
4301 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
4307 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
4312 <div class="padding
"></div>
4316 <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>
4322 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
4323 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4324 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4325 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4326 security support for a few years.</p>
4328 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4329 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
4330 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4331 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
4332 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
4333 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
4334 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4335 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4336 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4337 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4338 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4339 easier in the future.</p>
4341 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
4342 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
4343 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
4344 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
4345 do not have time for.</p>
4351 Tags: <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>.
4356 <div class="padding
"></div>
4360 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html
">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
4367 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/
2011/
06/
20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/
">the
4368 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
4370 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA
">Autodesk</a>
4372 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/
2011/
06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html
">Microsoft
4373 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
4374 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs. Whenever I take
4375 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
4381 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>.
4386 <div class="padding
"></div>
4390 <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>
4396 <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
4397 <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
4398 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> started to
4399 work. It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
4400 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
4401 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
4402 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
4403 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
4404 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
4405 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
4407 <p>Where is it? Visit
4408 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/
">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
4409 to have a look. Please send feedback to the
4410 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
4411 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
4417 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>.
4422 <div class="padding
"></div>
4426 <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>
4432 <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
4433 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> in the
4434 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
4435 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
4436 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
4437 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/
">New Zealand version</a> of
4438 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
4439 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
4440 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
4441 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
4442 FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
4443 to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
4444 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
4446 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
4447 handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
4448 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
4449 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
4450 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
4451 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
4452 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
4453 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
4454 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
4455 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
4456 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
4457 know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
4458 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
4460 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
4461 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
4462 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
4463 each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
4464 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
4465 here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
4466 category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
4467 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
4470 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
4471 differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
4472 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
4473 quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
4474 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
4475 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
4476 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
4478 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
4479 near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
4480 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
4481 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
4482 and range= options.</p>
4484 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
4485 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
4486 to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
4487 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
4488 available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
4489 to best handle this. I've noticed
4490 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/
">SeeClickFix</a> added
4491 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
4492 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
4493 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
4495 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
4496 up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
4497 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/
">Gmane</a> to use for
4498 discussions instead of only
4499 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss
">a forum<a/>. Oh,
4500 well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
4501 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
4502 seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
4503 fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
4504 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
4510 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>.
4515 <div class="padding
"></div>
4519 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html
">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
4525 <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/
">The Gnash project</a> is still
4526 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
4527 A few days ago the project
4528 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/
2011-
04/msg00011.html
">announced</a>
4529 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many
4530 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
4537 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>.
4542 <div class="padding
"></div>
4546 <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>
4552 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
4553 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
4554 update in English.</p>
4556 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
4557 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
4558 of the British service
4559 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
4560 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
4561 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
4562 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
4563 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
4564 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
4565 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
4566 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
4567 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
4568 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
4569 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
4570 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
4571 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
4573 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
4574 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
4575 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
4576 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
4577 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
4578 public infrastructure.</p>
4580 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
4587 Tags: <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>.
4592 <div class="padding
"></div>
4596 <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>
4602 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
4603 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
4604 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
4605 available on the Internet, and check our locally
4606 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
4607 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
4608 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
4609 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
4610 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
4611 out which security holes were present in our free software
4614 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
4615 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
4616 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
4617 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
4618 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
4619 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
4620 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
4621 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
4622 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
4623 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
4624 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
4625 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
4626 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
4627 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
4628 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
4629 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
4631 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
4632 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
4633 check out, one could look up
4634 <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
4635 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
4636 The most recent one is
4637 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
4638 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
4639 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
4641 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
4642 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
4643 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
4644 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
4645 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
4646 security issues out.</p>
4648 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
4649 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
4650 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
4652 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
4653 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
4654 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
4656 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
4657 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
4658 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
4659 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
4660 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
4661 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
4662 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
4663 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
4664 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
4665 established soon.</p>
4667 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
4668 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
4669 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
4670 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
4671 for their packages.</p>
4677 Tags: <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>.
4682 <div class="padding
"></div>
4686 <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>
4693 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
4694 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
4695 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
4696 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
4697 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
4698 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
4699 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
4700 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
4701 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
4702 one of my machines like this:</p>
4706 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
4709 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
4718 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
4719 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
4722 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
4723 echo loaded pci modules:
4725 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
4726 for address in * ; do
4727 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4728 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4729 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4730 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
4731 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
4741 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
4745 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
4746 echo loaded usb modules:
4748 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
4749 for address in * ; do
4750 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4751 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4752 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4753 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
4754 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
4766 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
4773 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4778 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4782 <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>
4788 <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
4789 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H
.264 and WebM. Most video sites
4790 seem to use H
.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough,
4791 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
4792 H
.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
4793 the Wikipedia article on
4794 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video
</a>,
4795 this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
4796 different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is
4797 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
4798 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
4799 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
4800 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
4801 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
4802 Firefox. H
.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
4803 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
4804 Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
4805 Safari can install plugins to get it.
</p>
4807 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
4808 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
4809 HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser
4810 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In
4811 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a>, we provide first fallback to a
4812 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
4813 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
4814 Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an
<a
4815 href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
4816 from last week
</a>.
</p>
4818 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H
.264 is
4819 the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H
.264
4820 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
4821 are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H
.264
4822 was without royalties and license terms, check out
4823 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
4824 Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
4826 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
4828 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos
">the
4829 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look. I'm not aware of a
4830 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
4832 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
4833 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
4834 <video> tag support in browsers and not the video support
4835 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
4841 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
4846 <div class="padding
"></div>
4850 <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 <video></a>
4856 <p>Today I discovered
4857 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome
">via
4858 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
4859 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
">yesterday
4860 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video> in
4861 the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
4862 open" codec technology. If you believe H
.264 was free for everyone
4863 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
4864 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
4865 Free That Matters
</a>". It is not free of cost for creators of video
4866 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
4867 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
4868 licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information
4869 on the Google announcement is available from
4870 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome
">OSnews</a>.
4873 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
4874 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
4875 the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open
4876 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
4877 for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two
4878 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some
4879 browsers support H.264, and others support
4880 <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg Theora</a> and
4881 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/
">WebM</a>
4882 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/
">Dirac</a> is not really an option
4883 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
4884 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
4885 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
4886 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
">an
4887 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
4889 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
4890 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
4891 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/
2011/
01/simple_questions
">presents
4892 the mind set</a> of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions
4893 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
4894 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24245/
10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM
">presenting
4895 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
4897 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
4898 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This
4899 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
4900 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2011/
01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm
">todays
4901 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it
4902 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
4903 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
4905 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
4906 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
4907 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV
4908 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
4909 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
4910 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
4911 publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
4913 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the
4914 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
4915 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
4916 perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
4917 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
4918 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
4919 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
4920 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
4921 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
4922 video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be
4923 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
4924 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
4925 I guess time will tell.</p>
4927 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
4928 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html
">more
4929 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
4935 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
4940 <div class="padding
"></div>
4944 <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>
4951 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html
">compare
4953 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">the Digistan
4954 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
4955 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
4956 this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
4957 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
4958 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
4959 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
4961 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
4962 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse
">the
4963 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
4964 to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
4965 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
4966 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
4967 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
4969 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
4970 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
4976 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>.
4981 <div class="padding
"></div>
4985 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html
">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
4991 <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
4992 "<a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
4993 Open Standard
</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
4994 the term has been decided by Digistan. The term "Open Standard
" has
4995 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
4996 about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
4997 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
4998 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
5000 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
5001 standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
5002 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
5003 complete survey. More definitions are available on the
5004 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
">wikipedia
5007 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
5008 Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
5009 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
5010 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
5011 their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
5012 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
5013 specification on equal terms.</p>
5017 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
5018 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
5023 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5024 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5025 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
5026 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
5028 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5029 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
5030 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
5033 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
5034 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
5037 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
5042 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
5043 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/
">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
5044 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/
">this
5045 definition</a> in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
5046 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/
20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm
">their
5047 definition of a open standard</a>. Another from a different part of
5048 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
5052 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
5056 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
5059 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
5060 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
5062 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
5063 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.
</li>
5069 <p>Then there is
<a href=
"http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
5070 definition
</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.
</p>
5074 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is
</p>
5078 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
5079 manner equally available to all parties;
</li>
5081 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
5082 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
5083 Standard themselves;
</li>
5085 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
5086 any party or in any business model;
</li>
5088 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
5089 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
5092 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
5093 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
5100 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
5102 <a href=
"http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
5103 Standards Checklist
</a> with a fairly detailed description.
</p>
5106 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
5110 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
5115 <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
5116 participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
5117 imposed by the organization under which it is developed
5120 <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
5121 method, can be changed through input from all
5124 <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
5125 the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.
</li>
5127 <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
5128 and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.
</li>
5130 <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
5131 public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
5132 comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.
</li>
5140 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard
</p>
5143 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
5144 and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
5145 implementations to the interface described in the standard without
5146 undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
5147 protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.
</li>
5149 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
5150 a technical or economic barriers
</li>
5152 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
5153 interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
5154 program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
5155 programs and mutually to use the information which has been
5156 exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
5157 file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
5158 conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
5159 computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
5160 intended to function.
</li>
5162 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
5163 standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
5164 must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.
</li>
5166 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
5167 fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
5168 perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
5169 sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
5170 terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
5171 outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
5172 patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
5173 only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
5177 <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
5178 licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
5179 (also known as a reciprocity clause)
</li>
5181 <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
5182 or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
5183 essential to practice that standard (also known as a
5184 "defensive suspension" clause)
</li>
5186 <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
5192 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
5193 implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
5194 or restricted licensing terms
</li>
5200 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
5201 there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
5202 open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
5203 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
5204 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
5205 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
5206 competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
5207 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
5214 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>.
5219 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5223 <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>
5229 <p><a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
5230 Digistan definition
</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:
</p>
5234 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
5239 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
5240 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
5241 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.
</li>
5243 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5244 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5245 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
5248 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5249 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
5250 distribute, and use it freely.
</li>
5252 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
5253 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
</li>
5255 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
</li>
5259 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
5260 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
5261 products based on the standard.
</p>
5264 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
5265 and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
5266 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
5267 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
5268 <a href=
"http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
5269 July
2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
5270 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
5271 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.
</p>
5273 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?
</strong></p>
5275 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
5276 Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
5277 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation
</A> is such vendor, but
5278 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
5279 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
5280 obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
5281 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
5282 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've
5283 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
5284 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
5285 where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
5286 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
5287 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
5288 specification. But it seem unlikely.
</p>
5290 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?
</strong></p>
5292 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
5293 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
5294 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
5295 documentation indicating this.
</p>
5298 <a href=
"http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report
</a>
5299 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
5300 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
5301 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
5302 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
5303 report is correct.
</p>
5305 <p><strong>Specification freely available?
</strong></p>
5307 <p>The specification for the
<a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
5308 container format
</a> and both the
5309 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis
</a> and
5310 <a href=
"http://theora.org/doc/">Theora
</a> codeces are available on
5311 the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
5315 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
5316 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
5317 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
5318 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
5319 specification compliance.
5323 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
5324 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC
3533</a>, and
5325 this is the term:
<p>
5329 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
5330 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
5331 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
5332 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
5333 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
5334 included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
5335 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
5336 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
5337 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
5338 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
5339 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
5340 translate it into languages other than English.
</p>
5342 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
5343 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
</p>
5346 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
5347 this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
5348 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
5349 thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
5350 requirement for the Digistan definition.
</p>
5352 <p><strong>Royalty-free?
</strong></p>
5354 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
5356 <a href=
"http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA
</a>
5358 <a href=
"http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
5359 Jobs
</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
5360 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
5361 them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
5362 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
5363 without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
5364 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H
.264 codec
5365 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.
</p>
5367 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?
</strong></p>
5369 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.
</p>
5371 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
5373 <p>3 of
5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining
2
5374 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
5375 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
5376 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
5377 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
5380 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
5381 see if they are free and open standards.
</p>
5387 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
5392 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5396 <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>
5403 <a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
5404 article
</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
5406 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
5407 Interoperability Framework
</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
5408 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
5409 Nothing very surprising there, given
5410 <a href=
"http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
5411 reports
</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
5412 this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
5413 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
5414 open standard from version
1</a> was very good, and something I
5415 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
5416 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
5417 definition from Digistan
</A>. Version
2 have removed the open
5418 standard definition from its content.
</p>
5420 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
5421 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
5422 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
5423 in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
5424 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
5425 <a href=
"http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
5426 source
</a> to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
5427 background information about that story is available in
5428 <a href=
"http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article
</a> from
5429 Linux Journal in
2002.
</p>
5432 <p>Lima,
8th of April,
2002<br>
5433 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ
<br>
5434 General Manager of Microsoft Perú
</p>
5438 <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>
5440 <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>
5442 <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>
5444 <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>
5448 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen.
</li>
5449 <li>Permanence of public data.
</li>
5450 <li>Security of the State and citizens.
</li>
5454 <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>
5456 <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>
5458 <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>
5460 <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>
5462 <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>
5465 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:
<br>
5466 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software
</li>
5467 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software
</li>
5468 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use
</li>
5469 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought
</li>
5470 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.
</li>
5474 <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>
5476 <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>
5478 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:
</p>
5480 <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>
5482 <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>
5484 <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>
5486 <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>
5488 <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>
5490 <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>
5492 <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>
5494 <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>
5496 <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>
5498 <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>
5500 <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>
5502 <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>
5504 <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>
5506 <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>
5508 <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>
5510 <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>
5512 <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>
5514 <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>
5516 <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>
5518 <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>
5520 <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>
5524 <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>
5526 <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>
5528 <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>
5530 <p>In respect of the guarantee:
</p>
5532 <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>
5534 <p>On Intellectual Property:
</p>
5536 <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>
5538 <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>
5540 <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>
5542 <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>
5544 <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>
5546 <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>
5548 <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>
5550 <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>
5552 <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>
5554 <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>
5556 <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>
5558 <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>
5560 <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>
5562 <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>
5564 <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>
5566 <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>
5568 <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>
5570 <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>
5572 <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>
5574 <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>
5576 <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>
5578 <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>
5580 <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>
5582 <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>
5584 <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>
5586 <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>
5588 <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>
5590 <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>
5592 <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>
5595 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ
<br>
5596 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.
</p>
5603 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>.
5608 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5612 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong
</a>
5618 <p>Half a year ago I
5619 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
5620 a bit
</a> about
<a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots
</a>,
5621 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
5622 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.
</p>
5624 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
5625 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
5626 different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
5627 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
5628 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
5629 for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
5630 got such a great test tool available.
</p>
5636 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>.
5641 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5645 <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>
5651 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
5652 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
5653 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
5654 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5655 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
5656 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
5657 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5658 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5661 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5662 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
5663 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5664 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
5665 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5666 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5667 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5668 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
5670 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
5671 I perform on a new model.
</p>
5675 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5676 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
5677 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
5679 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
5680 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
5682 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
5683 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5684 reported by the program.
</li>
5686 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5687 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
5688 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5689 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
5690 normally test this by playing
5691 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5692 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
5694 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
5695 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
5697 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5698 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
5700 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
5701 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
5703 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5704 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
5707 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
5708 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5711 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
5712 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5715 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5716 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5717 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
5718 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5721 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5722 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5723 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5728 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5729 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
5730 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
5731 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5732 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
5733 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
5734 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5735 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
5741 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>.
5746 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5750 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
5756 <p>As I continue to explore
5757 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
5758 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5759 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
5761 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5762 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5763 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5764 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5765 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5766 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
5767 all transactions. There I can see that my address
5768 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
5769 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
5770 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
5771 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
5772 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
5773 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
5774 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5775 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5776 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5777 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
5778 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5779 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5780 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
5782 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5783 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5784 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5785 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5786 If the Skolelinux foundation
5787 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
5788 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5789 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5790 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
5791 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
5792 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
5793 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5794 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
5796 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5797 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
5798 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5799 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5800 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
5801 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5802 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
5803 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5804 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5805 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5806 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
5807 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5808 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5809 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5812 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5813 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5814 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5815 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
5816 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5817 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5818 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5819 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
5821 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
5822 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
5823 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5824 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5827 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
5828 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
5829 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5830 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
5831 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
5837 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>.
5842 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5846 <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>
5852 <p>With this weeks lawless
5853 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5854 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
5855 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5856 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5857 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5859 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5860 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5861 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5862 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
5863 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5864 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5865 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
5867 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
5868 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5869 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5870 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5871 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
5872 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
5873 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5874 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
5875 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5876 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
5878 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5879 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5880 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5881 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
5882 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
5883 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5885 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
5886 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
5887 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
5888 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
5890 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5891 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5892 donations to the address
5893 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
5899 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>.
5904 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5908 <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>
5914 <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
5915 student assosiation
<a href=
"http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
5916 Osloensis
</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
5917 get their own
3D printer. They wanted to learn from me based on my
5918 work in the area. After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
5919 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
5920 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon. I look
5921 forward to see how this goes. This monday their volunteer driver
5922 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
5923 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the
3D printer
5926 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
5927 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational. I really look
5928 forward to being able to print all the cool
3D designs published on
5929 <a href=
"http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse
</a>. I even got
5930 some
3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
5931 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
5932 very cool
3D scanner.
</p>
5938 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>.
5943 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5947 <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>
5953 <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5954 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
5955 gathering
</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway. I
5956 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
5957 Squeeze release. The gathering is open for everyone interested in
5958 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
5960 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
5961 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
5963 <a href=
"http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
5964 for
2010</a>. Membership is open for all, and currently there are
388
5965 people registered as members. Last year
32 members cast their vote in
5966 the memberdb based election system. I hope more people find time to
5973 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>.
5978 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5982 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
5988 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
5989 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
5990 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
5991 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
5992 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
5993 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
5994 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
5995 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
5997 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
5998 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
5999 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
6000 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6001 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6002 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
6003 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6004 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6005 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
6006 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6007 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
6009 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6010 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6011 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
6012 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6013 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
6014 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6015 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6016 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6017 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6018 what is going on.
</p>
6024 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>.
6029 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6033 <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>
6039 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6040 upgrade testing of the
6041 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6042 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
6043 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6044 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
6046 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
6048 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
6055 browser-plugin-gnash
6062 freedesktop-sound-theme
6064 gconf-defaults-service
6079 gnome-desktop-environment
6083 gnome-session-canberra
6088 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6094 libapache2-mod-dnssd
6097 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6100 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
6101 libboost-python1.42
.0
6102 libboost-thread1.42
.0
6104 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
6106 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
6113 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6128 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6133 libgtksourceview2.0-common
6134 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6135 libmono-addins0.2-cil
6136 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6137 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6138 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6139 libmono-posix2.0-cil
6140 libmono-security2.0-cil
6141 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6142 libmono-system2.0-cil
6145 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6146 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6156 libtelepathy-farsight0
6165 nautilus-sendto-empathy
6169 python-aptdaemon-gtk
6171 python-beautifulsoup
6186 python-gtksourceview2
6197 python-pkg-resources
6204 python-twisted-conch
6210 python-zope.interface
6215 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6222 system-config-printer-udev
6224 telepathy-mission-control-
5
6237 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
6245 fast-user-switch-applet
6264 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
6266 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6272 system-config-printer
6279 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
6282 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6285 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
6291 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
6293 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
6299 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
6306 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
6322 kdeartwork-emoticons
6324 kdeartwork-theme-icon
6328 kdebase-workspace-bin
6329 kdebase-workspace-data
6343 kscreensaver-xsavers
6358 plasma-dataengines-workspace
6360 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
6361 plasma-runners-addons
6362 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
6363 plasma-scriptengine-python
6364 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
6365 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
6366 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
6367 plasma-scriptengines
6368 plasma-wallpapers-addons
6369 plasma-widget-folderview
6370 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6374 xscreensaver-data-extra
6376 xscreensaver-gl-extra
6377 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6380 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
6384 google-gadgets-common
6402 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
6407 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
6416 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
6418 libplasmagenericshell4
6432 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
6433 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
6435 libsmokektexteditor3
6443 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
6449 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
6461 plasma-dataengines-addons
6462 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
6463 plasma-widget-lancelot
6464 plasma-widgets-addons
6465 plasma-widgets-workspace
6469 update-notifier-common
6472 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
6473 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
6474 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
6475 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
6481 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>.
6486 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6490 <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>
6496 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
6497 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
6498 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
6499 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
6500 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
6501 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
6502 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
6503 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
6504 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
6507 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
6508 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
6509 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
6510 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
6511 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
6512 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
6518 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6523 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
6524 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
6530 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6531 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
6535 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
6536 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
6537 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
6538 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6541 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6542 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6544 parted $img mklabel msdos
6545 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
6546 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6547 parted $img set
1 boot on
6550 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6551 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6553 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
6554 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6555 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6557 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6558 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6561 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6562 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
6564 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6565 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
6566 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
6567 seem to work just fine.
</p>
6573 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>.
6578 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6582 <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>
6588 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
6589 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6590 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
6591 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
6593 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
6594 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
6595 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
6597 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
6599 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
6602 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
6603 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
6604 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
6605 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
6606 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
6607 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
6608 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
6609 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
6610 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
6611 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
6612 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6613 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6614 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
6615 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
6616 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
6617 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
6618 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
6619 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
6620 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6621 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
6622 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
6623 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6624 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
6625 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
6626 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
6627 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6628 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6629 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
6630 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6631 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
6632 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
6633 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6634 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
6635 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
6636 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
6637 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
6638 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
6639 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
6640 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
6641 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
6642 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
6643 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
6644 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
6645 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
6646 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
6647 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
6648 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
6649 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
6650 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
6651 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
6652 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
6653 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
6654 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6655 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
6656 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
6657 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
6658 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
6659 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
6663 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
6666 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
6667 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
6668 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
6669 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
6670 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
6671 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
6672 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
6673 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
6674 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
6675 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
6676 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
6677 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6678 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
6679 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
6680 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
6681 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
6682 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6683 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
6684 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
6685 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
6686 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
6687 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
6688 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
6689 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
6690 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6691 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6692 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6693 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6694 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6697 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
6700 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6703 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
6709 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
6711 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
6714 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
6715 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6716 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6717 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6718 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6719 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6720 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6721 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6722 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6723 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6724 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6725 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6726 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6727 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6728 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
6729 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6730 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6731 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6732 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6733 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6734 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6735 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6736 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6737 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6738 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6739 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6740 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6741 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6742 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6746 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
6749 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6750 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6751 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6752 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6753 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6754 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6755 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6756 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6757 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6758 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6759 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6760 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6761 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6762 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6763 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6764 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6765 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
6766 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6767 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6768 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
6769 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6770 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6771 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6772 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6773 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6774 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6775 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6776 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
6777 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
6778 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6779 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
6780 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
6781 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
6784 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
6787 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
6788 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
6789 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
6790 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
6791 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6792 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
6793 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6796 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
6799 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
6806 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>.
6811 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6815 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
6822 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
6823 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
6824 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
6825 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
6826 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
6827 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
6828 releases out more often.
</p>
6830 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
6831 I have considered setting up a
<a
6832 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
6833 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
6834 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
6835 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
6836 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
6837 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
6838 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
6839 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
6840 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
6841 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
6842 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
6843 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
6849 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>.
6854 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6858 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
6864 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
6866 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
6868 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
6869 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
6875 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>.
6880 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6884 <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>
6890 <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
6891 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> DVD, which is
6892 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
6893 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard. Even
6894 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
6895 working using this DVD.
</p>
6897 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
6898 installing recommended packages by default. We want the same set of
6899 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
6900 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD. I created
6901 a patch for debian-cd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
6902 report #
601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
6903 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.
</p>
6905 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
6906 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
6907 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
6910 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
6911 were using most space. A few large packages are well know;
6912 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont. But I also
6913 discovered that lilypond used
106 MiB and fglrx-driver used
53 MiB.
6914 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
6915 when looking a bit closer I discovered that
99 MiB of the
106 MiB were
6916 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
6917 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
6918 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
6919 documentation. Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
6920 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
6921 free X driver should work.
</p>
6923 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
6924 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
6925 DVD more useful again.
</p>
6931 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>.
6936 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6940 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
6946 <p>Some updates.
</p>
6948 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
6949 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
6950 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
6951 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
6952 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
6955 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
6956 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
6957 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
6959 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
6960 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
6961 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
6962 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
6963 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
6964 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
6966 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
6967 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
6968 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
6969 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
6970 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
6971 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
6972 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
6973 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
6974 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
6975 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
6981 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>.
6986 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6990 <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>
6996 <p><a href=
"http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project
</a> is the
6997 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
6998 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
6999 funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
7000 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
7001 AVM2 flash files.
</p>
7003 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
7004 <a href=
"http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge
</a> with the
7009 <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
7010 only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
7012 <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer
</p>
7014 <p>Deadline to sign up by:
24th December
2010</p>
7016 <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
7017 format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
7018 web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
7019 format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
7020 days. The project web page is available from
7021 http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
7022 of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
7023 the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.
</p>
7025 <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
7026 time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
7027 to get this to happen.
</p>
7029 <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
7030 <a href=
"http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/
32</a> .
</p>
7034 <p>I hope you will support this effort too. I hope more than
10
7035 people will participate to make this happen. The more money the
7036 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
7043 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>.
7048 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7052 <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>
7058 <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
7059 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
7060 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
7061 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
7062 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
7063 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
7066 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
7067 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them. There are
7068 a few less important features too.
</p>
7070 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
7071 but I never got around to releasing the current source. I decided
7072 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
7073 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.
</p>
7075 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
7076 published the source and deb. If you got a spykee robot, grab the
7077 source or binary package:
</p>
7080 <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>
7081 <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>
7082 <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>
7085 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
7086 please let me know.
</p>
7092 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>.
7097 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7101 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for
2010-
10-
03</a>
7109 <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
7110 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly
</a></li>
7112 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
7113 <a href=
"http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
7114 already been misused at Heathrow
</a>.
</li>
7116 <li><a href=
"http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
7117 Webcasting
</a> - interesting alternative for
7118 <ahref=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch
</a> with
7127 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>.
7132 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7136 <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>
7142 <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
7143 camera, a Canon IXUS
130. It was instructive and very disturbing to
7144 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
7145 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
7146 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
7147 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the
7148 problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-
4, H
.264 and the
7149 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
7150 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
7152 <p>On page
27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
7156 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-
4 standard
7157 and may be used for encoding MPEG-
4 compliant video and/or decoding
7158 MPEG-
4 compliant video that was encoded only (
1) for a personal and
7159 non-commercial purpose or (
2) by a video provider licensed under the
7160 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-
4 compliant video.
</p>
7162 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-
4
7166 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
7167 (MPEG-
4/H
.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
7168 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
7169 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.
</p>
7171 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
7173 "
<a href=
"http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
7174 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
7175 MPEG-LA
</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
7176 "<a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H
.264 Is Not
7177 The Sort Of Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
7178 the issue. The solution is to support the
7179 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and
7180 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg
7181 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
7187 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling
">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
7192 <div class="padding
"></div>
7196 <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>
7202 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote
">Debian
7203 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7204 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
7205 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
7206 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
7207 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7210 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7211 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf
">Skolelinux
7212 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7213 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7214 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian
7215 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
7216 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7217 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7218 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7220 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7221 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7222 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
7223 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7224 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7225 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7226 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7227 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7228 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7229 pages they want to visit.</p>
7231 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7232 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7233 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7234 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7235 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7236 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7237 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7238 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7239 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
7240 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7241 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7247 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>.
7252 <div class="padding
"></div>
7256 <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>
7262 <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application. The last few
7263 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
7264 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
7265 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
7266 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
7267 allow me to drive the robot around. I picked PerlQt as I have had
7268 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
7269 browsing the web for examples. Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
7270 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
7271 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
7272 libqt-perl. Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
7275 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
7276 controlling the robot. Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
7280 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
7281 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
7282 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
7283 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
7295 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
7296 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
7297 implement the protocol used by the robot. I've implemented several of
7298 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
7299 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote. First I
7300 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
7301 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
7302 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
7303 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
7306 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
7307 where to make it available first. I will add a link to
7308 <a href=
"http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki
</a> for
7309 those that want to check back later to find it.
</p>
7315 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>.
7320 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7324 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs
</a>
7330 <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
7331 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
7332 post about sshfs
</a>. He reported another problem with sshfs. It
7333 fail to handle hard links properly. A simple way to spot this is to
7334 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree. These should have
7335 a link count
>1, but on sshfs the count is
1. I just tested to see
7336 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:
</p>
7340 ln: creating hard link `bar' =
> `foo': Function not implemented
7344 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
7345 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
7346 avoid surprised unix programs. Not as useful as working file locking
7347 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
7348 nevertheless. :)
</p>
7350 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
7352 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a></p>
7358 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>.
7363 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7367 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs
</a>
7373 <p>My file system sematics program
7374 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
7375 a few days ago
</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
7376 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit. I'm
7377 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
7378 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs. My friend
7379 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
7380 Edu, but stopped because of problems. I asked today what the problems
7381 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
7382 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
7386 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
7388 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
7391 struct stat statbuf;
7392 if (-
1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
7393 retval = statbuf.st_mode &
0x1ff;
7400 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
7401 int test_umask(void) {
7402 printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
7404 mode_t orig_umask = umask(
000);
7406 if (
0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
7407 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
000\n",
7411 if (
0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
7412 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
007\n",
7420 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
7427 <p>Sure enough. On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:
</p>
7430 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7431 info: testing symlink creation
7432 info: testing subdirectory creation
7433 info: testing fcntl locking
7434 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
7435 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
7436 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
7437 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
7438 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
7439 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
7440 info: testing umask effect on file creation
7443 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
7447 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7448 info: testing symlink creation
7449 info: testing subdirectory creation
7450 info: testing fcntl locking
7451 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
7452 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
7453 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
7454 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
7455 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
7456 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
7457 info: testing umask effect on file creation
7458 error: Wrong file mode
644 when creating using mode
666 and umask
000
7459 error: Wrong file mode
640 when creating using mode
666 and umask
007
7462 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
7463 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
7466 <p>Update
2010-
08-
26: Reported the issue in
7467 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #
594498</a></p>
7469 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
7470 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
7471 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
7477 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>.
7482 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7486 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent
</a>
7492 <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
7493 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
7494 to crush dissent
</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
7495 well. Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
7496 should go down. In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
7503 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>.
7508 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7512 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients
</a>
7518 <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
7519 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
7520 configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
7521 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
7522 generated configuration.
</p>
7524 <p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
7525 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
7526 without any manual configuration.
</p>
7528 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
7529 the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
7530 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
7531 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
7532 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
7533 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
7534 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
7535 after around
50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
7536 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
7537 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
7538 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
7539 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
7540 same username and password to the KDE
4.4 desktop. At no point during
7541 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
7542 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
7543 fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
7546 <p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
7547 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
7548 working properly out of the box:
</p>
7551 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.
</li>
7552 <li>Web proxy URL.
</li>
7553 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).
</li>
7554 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.
</li>
7555 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)
</li>
7556 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)
</li>
7557 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)
</li>
7560 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)
</p>
7562 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
7563 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
7564 administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
7565 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
7566 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.
</p>
7568 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
7569 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
7570 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
7571 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
7572 /etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
7573 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
7574 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
7575 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.
</p>
7577 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
7578 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
7579 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
7580 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
7581 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
7582 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
7583 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
7584 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
7585 LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
7586 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
7587 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
7588 such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
7589 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
7590 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
7591 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
7592 current DNS domain is used.
</p>
7594 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
7595 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
7596 found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
7597 Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
7598 server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
7599 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
7600 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
7601 log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
7602 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
7603 network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
7604 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
7605 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
7606 should switch those to use sssd too?
</p>
7608 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
7609 located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
7610 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
7611 attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
7612 path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
7613 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
7614 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
7615 smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
7616 edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
7617 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
7620 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
7621 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
7622 more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
7623 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
7624 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
7627 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
7628 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
7630 <p>Update
2010-
08-
09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
7631 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
7632 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
7633 implement it for Debian Edu. :)
</p>
7639 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>.
7644 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7648 <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>
7654 <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
7655 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
7656 Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
7657 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
7658 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
7659 mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
7660 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.
</p>
7662 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
7663 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
7664 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
7665 underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
7666 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
7667 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
7668 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.
</p>
7670 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
7671 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
7672 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
7673 it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
7674 help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:
</p>
7678 * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
7679 * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
7681 * License: GPL v2 or later
7683 * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
7684 * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
7687 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS
64
7688 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE
1
7689 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
1
7691 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
7693 #include
<errno.h
>
7694 #include
<fcntl.h
>
7695 #include
<stdio.h
>
7696 #include
<string.h
>
7697 #include
<stdlib.h
>
7698 #include
<sys/file.h
>
7699 #include
<sys/stat.h
>
7700 #include
<sys/types.h
>
7701 #include
<unistd.h
>
7705 * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
7706 * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
7708 * See also
<URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5
>.
7710 #include
<sqlite3.h
>
7711 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
7712 "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
7713 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
7715 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
7718 int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
7720 printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
7726 rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,
0, &zErrMsg);
7727 if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
7728 printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
7732 printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
7736 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
7739 * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
7740 * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows
2003. This is
7741 * done in the sqlite3 library.
7743 *
<URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/
2001-
08/msg00854.html
> and the
7744 * POSIX specification
7745 *
<URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/
009695399/functions/fcntl.html
>.
7747 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
7749 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
7751 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0644);
7752 printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
7754 fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
7755 fl.l_pid = getpid();
7756 printf(" Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
7757 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
7759 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
7760 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7762 printf(" Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
7763 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
7765 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
7766 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7768 printf(" Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824");
7769 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
7771 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
7772 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7774 printf(" Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
7775 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
7777 fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
7778 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7780 printf(" Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
7781 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
7783 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7785 printf(" Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824");
7786 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
7788 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
7789 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7796 * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
7797 * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
7798 * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
7799 * slowing down file operations.
7801 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
7803 char *path = strdup("test");
7806 printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
7807 for (level =
0; level
< LEVELS; level++) {
7808 char *newpath = NULL;
7809 if (-
1 == mkdir(path,
0777)) {
7810 printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
7811 path, strerror(errno));
7814 asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
7822 * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
7825 int test_symlinks(void) {
7826 printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
7828 if (-
1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
7829 printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
7833 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
7834 printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
7836 test_subdirectory_creation();
7839 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
7840 test_gcompris_locking();
7845 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
7849 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7850 info: testing symlink creation
7851 info: testing subdirectory creation
7853 info: testing fcntl locking
7854 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
7855 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
7856 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
7857 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
7858 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
7859 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
7862 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
7863 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
7864 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
7865 the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
7866 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
7867 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
7868 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
7869 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.
</p>
7871 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
7874 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
7875 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
7876 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
7882 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>.
7887 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7891 <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>
7897 <p>A few days ago, I
7898 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
7899 to install
</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
7900 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
7901 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
7902 university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
7903 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
7904 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
7905 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
7906 around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.
</p>
7908 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
7909 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
7910 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
7911 servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
7912 configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
7913 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
7914 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
7915 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
7916 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
7917 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
7918 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
7919 a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
7920 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
7921 gave it a IP address.
</p>
7923 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
7924 entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
7925 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
7926 server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
7927 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
7928 pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
7929 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
7930 uppercase version of $domain.
</p>
7932 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
7933 directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
7934 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
7935 the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
7936 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
7937 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(
</p>
7939 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
7940 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
7941 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
7942 authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
7943 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
7944 with UID and GID values.
</p>
7946 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
7947 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
7953 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>.
7958 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7962 <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>
7968 <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
7969 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
7970 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
7971 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
7972 infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
7973 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
7976 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
7977 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
7978 /etc/mklocaluser.d/
20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
7979 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
7980 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
7981 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
7982 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
7985 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
7986 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
7987 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
7988 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
7989 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
7990 university servers.
</p>
7992 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
7993 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
7994 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
7995 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
7996 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
8003 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>.
8008 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8012 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
8018 <p>I discovered this while doing
8019 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
8020 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
8021 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
8022 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
8023 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
8025 <p>An example is from todays
8026 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
8027 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
8028 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
8029 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
8030 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
8031 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
8032 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
8034 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
8037 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
8038 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
8039 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
8040 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
8041 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
8044 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
8045 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
8046 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
8047 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
8048 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
8049 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
8050 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
8051 of dependency loops.
</p>
8054 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
8055 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
8057 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
8058 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
8060 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
8061 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
8062 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
8063 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
8064 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
8071 Tags:
<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>.
8076 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8080 <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>
8086 <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
8087 with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
8091 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
8092 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
8093 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
8094 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
8095 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
8096 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
8097 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
8098 language of choice, please let us know too.
</p>
8100 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
8101 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
8102 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.
</p>
8104 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
8105 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
8108 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version
</p>
8111 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
8113 <li>Desktop environment KDE
4.4 =
> the new KDE desktop in
8114 combination with some new artwork
8115 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
3.5
8116 <li>OpenOffice.org
3.2
8117 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
9.3
8118 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
10.04.2
8119 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.6.10
8120 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.0
8121 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.10.4
8122 <li>3D modeler Blender
2.49.2 (new application)
8123 <li>Video editor Kdenlive
0.7.7 (new application)
8125 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
8131 <li>SMTP (sender verification)
8134 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
</li>
8135 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
8136 fetched from LDAP.
</li>
8137 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
</li>
8138 <li>General cleanup (not finished)
</li>
8140 <p>The following features are not working as they should
</p>
8143 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
8144 scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
8146 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
8147 and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
8148 clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.
</li>
8149 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.
</li>
8150 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.
</li>
8151 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.
</li>
8152 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
8153 netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.
</li>
8154 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
8155 some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
8156 jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.
</li>
8157 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
8158 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
8159 and help out with translations.
</li>
8162 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use
</p>
8165 <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>
8166 <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>
8167 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
8169 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use
</p>
8172 <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>
8173 <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>
8174 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
8177 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
8178 get closer to the final release.
</p>
8180 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are
</p>
8183 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
8184 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
8187 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are
</p>
8189 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
8190 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
8192 <p>How to report bugs:
8193 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla
</p>
8195 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</p>
8202 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>.
8207 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8211 <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>
8217 <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
8218 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
8219 Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
8220 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
8221 getting rid of password questions one at the time.
</p>
8223 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
8224 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
8225 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
8226 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
8227 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
8228 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
8229 package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.
</p>
8231 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
8232 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
8233 password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
8234 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
8237 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
8238 Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
8239 also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.
</p>
8241 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
8242 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
8243 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
8244 the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
8245 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
8246 time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
8247 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
8248 release another day.
</p>
8250 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
8251 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
8257 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>.
8262 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8266 <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>
8273 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
8274 opengeodata blog entry
</a>, I just discovered that the
8275 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
8276 <a href=
"http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
8277 for calculating routes
</a>. The support is still experimental and
8278 only available from the development server, until more experience is
8279 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.
</p>
8281 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
8282 was provided by
<a href=
"http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade
</a>,
8283 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
8284 the issue. I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
8285 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
8286 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
8287 www.openstreetmap.org front page.
</p>
8293 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>.
8298 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8302 <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>
8309 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
8311 <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
8313 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
8314 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
8316 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
8317 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
8318 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
8319 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
8321 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
8322 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
8323 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
8325 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
8327 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
8328 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
8331 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
8332 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
8333 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
8334 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
8335 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
8336 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
8338 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
8339 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
8340 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
8341 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
8342 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
8343 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
8344 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
8345 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
8346 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
8347 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
8348 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
8349 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
8350 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
8351 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
8352 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
8353 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
8356 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8357 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8358 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8359 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8360 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8361 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8362 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8364 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8365 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8366 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
8367 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
8368 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
8369 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
8372 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
8373 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
8374 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
8375 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8379 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8381 objectclass: dnsdomain
8382 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8385 associateddomain: tjener.intern
8387 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8389 objectclass: dnsdomain2
8390 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8392 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
8393 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
8396 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
8397 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
8398 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
8399 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
8400 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
8401 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
8402 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
8403 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
8404 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
8405 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
8406 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
8409 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
8413 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8414 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8415 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8416 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8417 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8418 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8420 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8421 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
8424 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
8425 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
8426 reverse lookups.
</p>
8428 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
8429 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
8430 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
8431 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
8433 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
8434 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
8435 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
8437 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
8438 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
8439 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
8440 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
8441 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
8443 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
8444 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
8445 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
8446 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
8447 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
8449 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
8450 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
8451 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
8452 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
8453 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
8454 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
8457 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
8460 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
8461 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8462 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8463 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8464 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8468 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8469 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8470 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8471 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8472 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8473 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
8475 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
8477 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8478 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
8479 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8480 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8481 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
8483 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8484 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8485 stored. These are the relevant entries from
8486 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
8489 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8490 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8493 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8494 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8495 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
8496 search result is this entry:
</p>
8499 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8502 objectClass: dhcpServer
8503 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8506 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8507 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
8508 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8509 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8510 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8511 The search result is this entry:
</p>
8514 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8517 objectClass: dhcpService
8518 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8519 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8520 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8521 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8522 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
8523 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
8524 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
8527 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
8528 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8529 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8530 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8531 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
8532 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
8533 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8534 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8535 related computer objects.
</p>
8537 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8538 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
8539 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8540 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8541 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
8545 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8548 objectClass: dhcpHost
8549 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
8550 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8553 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8554 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8555 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
8556 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8557 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
8558 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8559 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8560 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8561 structural object class.
8563 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
8565 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8566 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8567 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8568 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8569 in the configuration.
</p>
8571 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8572 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8573 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8574 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8575 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8578 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8579 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
8583 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8584 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8585 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8586 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8587 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8588 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8589 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8590 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8591 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8592 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8595 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8596 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8597 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8598 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
8600 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8604 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8607 objectClass: dhcpHost
8608 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8609 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8610 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8611 arecord:
10.11.12.13
8612 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
8613 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8616 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8617 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8618 auxiliary object class.
</p>
8624 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>.
8629 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8633 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
8639 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8640 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8641 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8642 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8643 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
8645 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8646 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
8648 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8649 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
8650 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8651 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8652 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8653 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
8655 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8656 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8657 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8658 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8659 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
8662 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8663 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8664 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
8668 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8670 objectClass: dhcphost
8671 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8672 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8673 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8674 arecord:
10.11.12.13
8675 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
8676 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8680 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8681 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8682 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
8683 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
8685 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8686 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8687 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8688 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8689 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8690 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8691 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8692 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
8694 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8695 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
8701 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>.
8706 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8710 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
8716 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8717 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8718 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8719 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
8721 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8722 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
8723 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8724 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8727 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8728 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8729 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
8731 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8732 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8733 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
8736 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8738 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8740 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8741 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8742 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8744 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8745 # existence of attribute names.
8747 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8748 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8749 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8751 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8752 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
8754 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8757 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8759 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8760 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8761 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8762 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
8763 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8764 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8765 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8766 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8767 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8768 # bass value on to clients
8769 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8775 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8776 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8777 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8778 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8779 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
8781 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8782 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
8784 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8785 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
8786 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8787 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
8788 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
8789 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
8795 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>.
8800 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8804 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
8811 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8812 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8813 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
8814 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
8815 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8816 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
8817 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8818 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
8819 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8820 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
8821 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
8822 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8823 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
8829 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>.
8834 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8838 <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>
8844 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
8845 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8846 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
8847 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
8848 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8849 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8850 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
8851 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
8853 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8854 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
8855 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
8856 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8857 publish the difference.
</p>
8859 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8862 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8863 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
8864 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8865 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8866 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8867 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8868 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8869 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8872 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
8875 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8876 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8877 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
8878 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8879 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
8880 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
8881 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8882 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
8883 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
8884 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
8885 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8886 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
8887 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8888 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
8889 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8890 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
8891 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
8892 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8893 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8894 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8897 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8900 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8901 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8902 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8903 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8904 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8905 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8906 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8907 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8908 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8909 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8910 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8911 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8912 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8913 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8914 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8915 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8916 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8917 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8918 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8919 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8920 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8923 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8926 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8927 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8928 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8931 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8932 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8933 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8934 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8935 the difference somewhat.
8941 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>.
8946 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8950 <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>
8956 <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
8957 a bit troubling. Laptops are typically used also when not connected
8958 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
8959 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
8960 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
8961 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
8962 in Debian. Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
8963 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
8964 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.
</p>
8966 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
8968 This is the traditional method with a twist. The password caching is
8969 provided by libpam-ccreds (version
10-
4 or later is needed on
8970 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd. The directory
8971 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP. If one want to use
8972 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
8973 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal. If one is happy having a
8974 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
8975 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
8976 using libpam-mklocaluser. A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
8977 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
8978 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #
568577</a> is in the
8979 archive. Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
8980 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
8981 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/. This
8982 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.
</p>
8984 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured
</p>
8987 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
8990 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
8991 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site. Make sure the
8992 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
8993 sent in clear text to the LDAP server. I've been unable to get TLS
8994 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
8995 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
8996 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
8997 on how to get this working.
</p>
8999 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
9000 caching until
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #
485282</a>
9001 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
9002 currently in /etc/nscd.conf. The changes are in the fields
9003 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
9004 instructions I found in the
9005 <a href=
"http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops
</a>
9006 instructions by Flyn Computing.
</p>
9010 reload-count unlimited
9013 enable-cache passwd yes
9014 positive-time-to-live passwd
2592000
9015 negative-time-to-live passwd
20
9016 suggested-size passwd
211
9017 check-files passwd yes
9018 persistent passwd yes
9020 max-db-size passwd
33554432
9021 auto-propagate passwd yes
9023 enable-cache group yes
9024 positive-time-to-live group
2592000
9025 negative-time-to-live group
20
9026 suggested-size group
211
9027 check-files group yes
9028 persistent group yes
9030 max-db-size group
33554432
9031 auto-propagate group yes
9033 enable-cache hosts no
9034 positive-time-to-live hosts
2592000
9035 negative-time-to-live hosts
20
9036 suggested-size hosts
211
9037 check-files hosts yes
9038 persistent hosts yes
9040 max-db-size hosts
33554432
9042 enable-cache services yes
9043 positive-time-to-live services
2592000
9044 negative-time-to-live services
20
9045 suggested-size services
211
9046 check-files services yes
9047 persistent services yes
9049 max-db-size services
33554432
9052 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
9053 automatically like the one provided in
9054 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #
496915</a>, the file
9055 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
9056 directory service on the machine. /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
9063 hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
9069 netgroup: files ldap
9072 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
9073 shadow and netgroup.
</p>
9075 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
9076 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
9077 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
9080 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
9081 libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
9083 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
9084 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
9085 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
9086 LDAP database is available. I have not tested such setup, because I
9087 discovered sssd.
</p>
9089 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser
</h2>
9091 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
9092 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
9093 <a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd
</a> package from Redhat.
9094 It is part of the
<a href=
"http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA
</A> project
9095 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
9096 machines. The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
9097 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
9098 libpam-ccreds. It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS. Version
9099 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
9100 in version
1.5 expected to show up later in
2010. Because the
9101 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package
</a>
9102 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
9103 version
1.2 is now in testing.
9105 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
9106 roaming setup I want
</p>
9109 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
9112 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
9113 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf
</tt>.
9117 config_file_version =
2
9118 reconnection_retries =
3
9124 filter_groups = root
9126 reconnection_retries =
3
9129 reconnection_retries =
3
9133 cache_credentials = true
9136 auth_provider = ldap
9137 chpass_provider = ldap
9139 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
9140 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9141 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
9142 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
9145 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking. Had to set
9146 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.
</p>
9148 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
9149 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
9150 modify it manually.
</p>
9152 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9153 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9159 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>.
9164 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9168 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
9174 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
9175 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
9176 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
9177 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
9178 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
9179 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
9180 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
9181 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
9182 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
9183 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
9185 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
9186 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
9187 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
9188 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
9191 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
9192 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
9193 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
9194 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
9196 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
9197 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9199 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
9200 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
9201 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
9202 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
9203 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
9209 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>.
9214 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9218 <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>
9225 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
9226 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
9227 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
9228 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
9230 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
9231 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
9232 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
9233 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
9235 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
9236 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
9237 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
9240 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
9242 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
9243 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
9244 available today from IETF.
</p>
9247 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
9248 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
9250 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
9252 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
9256 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
9257 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
9260 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
9261 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
9262 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
9264 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9265 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9271 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>.
9276 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9280 <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>
9286 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
9287 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
9288 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
9289 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
9290 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
9294 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9295 tasksel --new-install
9298 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
9299 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
9300 any output what so ever.
9302 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
9303 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
9304 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
9305 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
9306 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
9307 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
9311 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9312 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
9316 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
9317 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
9318 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
9319 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
9320 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
9321 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
9324 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
9325 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
9332 Tags: <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>.
9337 <div class="padding
"></div>
9341 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html
">Officeshots taking shape</a>
9347 <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
9348 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/
">OfficeShots</a>
9349 is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
9350 <a href="http://browsershots.org/
">BrowserShots</a> is for web
9353 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
9354 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
9355 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
9356 interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
9357 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
9358 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
9359 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
9360 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
9361 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
9362 see how the project is doing.</p>
9364 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
9365 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
9366 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
9367 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
9368 Windows. This is great.</p>
9374 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>.
9379 <div class="padding
"></div>
9383 <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>
9390 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
9391 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
9392 finally made the upgrade logs available from
9393 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
9394 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
9395 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
9396 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
9398 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
9399 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
9400 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
9401 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
9402 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
9403 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
9404 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
9405 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
9407 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
9408 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
9409 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
9412 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
9413 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
9414 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
9415 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
9416 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
9417 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
9418 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
9421 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
9422 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
9423 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
9424 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
9425 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
9426 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
9427 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
9428 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9429 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9430 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9431 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9432 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9433 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9434 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9435 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9436 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9437 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9438 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9439 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9440 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9441 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9442 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9443 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9444 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9445 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9446 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9447 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9448 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9449 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
9450 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
9452 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
9454 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
9455 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
9456 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
9457 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
9458 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9459 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
9460 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
9461 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
9462 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
9463 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
9464 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9465 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
9466 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9467 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
9468 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
9469 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
9470 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
9471 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
9472 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
9473 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
9474 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
9475 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
9476 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
9477 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
9478 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9479 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
9480 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
9481 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
9482 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
9483 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9484 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9487 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
9489 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
9490 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
9491 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
9492 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
9493 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
9494 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
9495 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9496 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9497 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9498 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9499 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9500 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9501 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9502 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9503 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9504 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9505 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9506 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9507 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9508 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9509 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9510 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9511 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9512 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9513 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9514 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9515 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9516 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
9518 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
9519 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
9520 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9521 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
9522 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
9523 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9524 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
9525 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
9526 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9527 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
9528 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
9529 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
9530 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
9531 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
9532 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
9533 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
9534 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
9535 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9536 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9537 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9538 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
9539 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9540 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
9541 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
9542 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9543 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9544 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
9545 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
9546 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
9547 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
9548 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
9549 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
9550 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
9551 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
9552 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
9553 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9554 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9562 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>.
9567 <div class="padding
"></div>
9571 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
9577 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
9578 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
9579 have been discovered and reported in the process
9580 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
9581 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
9582 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
9583 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
9584 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
9586 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
9587 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
9588 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
9589 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
9590 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
9591 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
9593 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
9594 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
9595 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9596 is created. The bug report
9597 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
9598 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
9599 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
9600 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
9601 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
9602 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
9603 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
9604 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
9605 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
9606 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
9607 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
9608 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
9611 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
9612 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
9630 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
9631 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
9633 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
9634 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9635 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
9639 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
9643 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
9644 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
9645 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
9647 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
9649 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
9650 # to return the correct answers.
9651 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
9652 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
9654 # Include the desktop and laptop task
9655 for test in desktop laptop ; do
9656 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
9660 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
9663 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9664 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
9665 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
9666 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
9668 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
9669 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9670 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9671 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
9675 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
9676 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
9677 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
9678 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
9679 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
9680 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
9682 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
9683 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
9684 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
9685 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
9686 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
9687 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
9688 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
9690 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
9691 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
9692 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
9693 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
9694 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
9701 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>.
9706 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9710 <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>
9716 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
9717 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
9718 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
9719 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
9720 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
9721 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9722 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
9724 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9725 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9734 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9736 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9739 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9743 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
9750 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9751 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
9752 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
9754 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9755 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9762 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>.
9767 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9771 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
9778 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9779 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
9780 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
9781 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
9782 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
9788 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>.
9793 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9797 <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>
9803 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9804 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9805 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
9806 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9807 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
9810 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9812 Dell Computer Corporation
1
9815 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
9821 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9822 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
9823 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9824 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
9825 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
9828 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9829 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9830 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
9831 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9832 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9833 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9840 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>.
9845 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9849 <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>
9855 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9856 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
9857 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9858 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9861 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9862 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
9863 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9864 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9865 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
9866 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
9868 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9869 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9870 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
9871 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9872 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9873 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9874 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
9875 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
9877 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
9883 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>.
9888 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9892 <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>
9898 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9899 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9900 issues are known and should be solved:
9904 <li>The wicd package seen to
9905 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
9906 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
9907 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9908 seem to be on the case.
</li>
9910 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9911 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
9912 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
9913 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
9915 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9916 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9917 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
9918 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9919 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9920 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9921 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9922 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
9926 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9927 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
9928 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9929 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
9931 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9932 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9933 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9934 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
9936 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
9942 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>.
9947 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9951 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
9957 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9958 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
9959 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9960 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
9962 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
9963 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9964 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
9965 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9966 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9967 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9968 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
9969 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9970 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
9971 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9972 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9973 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9974 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9977 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9978 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9979 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9980 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9981 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
9982 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9983 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
9984 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9985 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9986 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9989 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9990 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9991 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9992 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
9993 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9994 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
9996 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9997 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10003 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>.
10008 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10010 <div class=
"entry">
10011 <div class=
"title">
10012 <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>
10018 <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
10019 Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
10020 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser
</a>
10021 package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
10023 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python
</a>
10024 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
10025 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd
</a> package
10026 passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
10027 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
10028 package we need is in experimental (version
10-
4) since Saturday, and
10029 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.
</p>
10031 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
10032 roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
10033 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
10034 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
10035 for nscd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
10036 #
485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
10037 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
10038 care of the caching of passwords and group information.
</p>
10040 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
10041 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
10042 problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
10043 package to version
1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
10044 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
10045 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
10046 and I am sure we will find a good solution.
</p>
10048 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
10049 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
10050 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
10051 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
10052 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
10053 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
10054 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
10055 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
10056 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
10057 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
10058 on the home directory servers.
</p>
10060 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
10061 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
10062 is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
10063 message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
10064 a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
10065 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.
</p>
10067 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10068 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10074 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>.
10079 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10081 <div class=
"entry">
10082 <div class=
"title">
10083 <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>
10089 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
10090 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
10091 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
10092 expected, if I am to believe the
10093 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10094 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
10095 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
10096 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
10097 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
10098 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
10101 More information about
10102 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10103 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
10104 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
10105 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
10109 </pre></blockquote>
10111 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10112 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10113 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10114 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
10120 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>.
10125 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10127 <div class=
"entry">
10128 <div class=
"title">
10129 <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>
10135 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
10136 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
10137 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
10138 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
10139 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
10140 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
10141 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
10142 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
10144 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
10145 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
10146 this on the collector host:
</p>
10149 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
10150 </pre></blockquote>
10152 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
10153 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
10155 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
10156 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
10157 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
10158 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
10165 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>.
10170 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10172 <div class=
"entry">
10173 <div class=
"title">
10174 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
10180 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
10181 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
10183 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
10185 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
10186 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
10187 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
10188 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
10189 based boot system. Tollef is
10190 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
10191 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
10192 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
10193 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
10194 at the moment do not.
</p>
10196 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
10197 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
10198 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
10199 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
10200 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
10203 <p>In the mean time, based on the
10204 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10205 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
10206 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
10207 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
10208 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
10209 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
10210 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
10211 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
10217 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>.
10222 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10224 <div class=
"entry">
10225 <div class=
"title">
10226 <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>
10232 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
10233 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
10234 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
10235 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
10236 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10237 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
10238 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
10241 CONCURRENCY=makefile
10242 </pre></blockquote>
10244 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
10245 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
10246 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
10247 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
10248 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
10249 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
10250 make this happen.
</p>
10252 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
10253 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
10254 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
10255 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
10256 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
10258 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
10259 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
10260 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
10261 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
10263 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10264 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10265 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10266 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
10272 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>.
10277 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10279 <div class=
"entry">
10280 <div class=
"title">
10281 <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>
10287 <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
10288 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
10289 change the password on the first login attempt.
</p>
10291 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
10292 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
10293 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
10294 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
10295 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.
</p>
10297 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
10298 settings in /etc/shadow:
</p>
10301 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10302 Last password change : May
02,
2010
10303 Password expires : never
10304 Password inactive : never
10305 Account expires : never
10306 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
10307 Maximum number of days between password change :
99999
10308 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
10310 </pre></blockquote>
10312 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
10313 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
10314 lowest value possible (January
1th
1970), and the maximum password age
10315 to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
10316 simple, I went for
30 years (
30 *
365 =
10950) and January
2th (to
10317 avoid testing if
0 is a valid value).
</p>
10319 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
10323 root@tjener:~# chage -d
1 test; chage -M
10950 test
10324 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10325 Last password change : Jan
02,
1970
10326 Password expires : never
10327 Password inactive : never
10328 Account expires : never
10329 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
10330 Maximum number of days between password change :
10950
10331 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
10333 </pre></blockquote>
10335 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
10336 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
10337 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).
</p>
10339 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
10340 sure only the user itself have the account password?
</p>
10342 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
10343 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10345 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02 17:
20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
10346 shadow(
8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
10347 last password change to zero (
0) will force the password to be changed
10348 on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
10349 I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
10350 Squeeze, and '
<tt>chage -d
0 username
</tt>' do work there. I have not
10351 tested it on Lenny yet.
</p>
10353 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02-
19:
05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
10354 equivalent command to expire a password is '
<tt>passwd -e
10355 username
</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
10362 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>.
10367 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10369 <div class=
"entry">
10370 <div class=
"title">
10371 <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>
10377 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
10378 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
10379 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
10382 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
10383 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
10384 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
10385 The setup would consist of the following:
</p>
10389 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
10390 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
10391 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
10392 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
10393 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
10394 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
10395 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
10396 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
10397 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
10398 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
10399 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
10400 the fish protocol in KDE?
</li>
10402 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
10403 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
10404 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
10405 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
10406 <a href=
"http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
10407 or the Fedora developed
10408 <a href=
"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
10409 Security Services Daemon
</a> packages.
</li>
10411 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
10412 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
10413 directory, using unison.
</li>
10415 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
10416 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
10417 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
10418 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
10421 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
10422 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.
</li>
10424 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
10425 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
10426 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.
</li>
10430 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
10431 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
10432 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
10433 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
10434 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#
566718</a>) and nslcd (or
10435 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
10436 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
10437 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
10438 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.
</p>
10440 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10441 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10447 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>.
10452 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10454 <div class=
"entry">
10455 <div class=
"title">
10456 <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>
10462 <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
10463 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
10464 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
10465 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
10466 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
10467 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
10468 restrictions on the web, for example from
10469 <a href=
"http://craphound.com/content/">his own site
</a>. I read the
10471 <a href=
"http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks
</a> using
10472 <a href=
"http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader
</a> and my N810. I
10473 strongly recommend this book.
</p>
10479 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>.
10484 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10486 <div class=
"entry">
10487 <div class=
"title">
10488 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?
</a>
10494 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
10495 NUUG presentation
</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
10496 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
10497 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
10498 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
10499 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
10500 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
10501 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
10502 users and cryptographic keys instead.
</p>
10504 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
10505 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
10506 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
10507 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
10508 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.
</p>
10510 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
10511 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?
</p>
10513 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
10514 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
10515 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
10516 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
10517 to work properly.
</p>
10519 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
10520 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
10521 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
10522 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
10523 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
10526 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
10527 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
10528 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
10529 up in a few days.
</p>
10535 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>.
10540 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10542 <div class=
"entry">
10543 <div class=
"title">
10544 <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>
10550 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
10551 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
10552 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
10553 package in
2004 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#
230422</a>),
10554 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
10555 Today, this finally paid off.
</p>
10557 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
10558 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
10559 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
10560 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.
</p>
10562 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
10563 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
10564 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
10565 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
10566 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
10567 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.
<p>
10573 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>.
10578 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10580 <div class=
"entry">
10581 <div class=
"title">
10582 <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>
10588 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
10589 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> was finally
10590 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
10591 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
10592 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
10593 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
10594 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.
</p>
10596 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?
</p>
10598 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
10599 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
10600 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
10601 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.
</p>
10607 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>.
10612 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10614 <div class=
"entry">
10615 <div class=
"title">
10616 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration
</a>
10622 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
10623 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
10624 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
10625 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
10626 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
10629 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
10630 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
10631 configured to be a server for the
10632 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
10633 system
</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
10634 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
10635 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
10636 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
10637 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
10638 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
10639 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
10640 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
10641 and Nagios configuration.
</p>
10643 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
10644 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
10645 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
10646 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
</p>
10648 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
10649 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
10650 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
10651 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
10652 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
10653 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
10656 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
10657 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
10658 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
10659 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
</p>
10661 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
10662 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
10663 administrator need to run "
<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
10664 nagiosadmin
</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
10665 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
10666 everything is taken care of.</p>
10672 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>.
10677 <div class="padding
"></div>
10679 <div class="entry
">
10680 <div class="title
">
10681 <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>
10687 <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
10688 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
10689 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage. I searched using
10690 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
10693 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10694 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
10695 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
10696 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
10699 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
10700 got these numbers:</p>
10703 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10704 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
10705 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299 </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
10706 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187 </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
10709 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
10711 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
10712 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
10713 they are conduced in another country. Because of this, I did the same
10714 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
10715 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
10719 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10720 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
10721 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
10722 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
10725 <p>And with 'site:no':
10728 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10729 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
10730 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
10731 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186 </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
10734 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
10741 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>.
10746 <div class="padding
"></div>
10748 <div class="entry
">
10749 <div class="title
">
10750 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html
">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
10757 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/
2009/
08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html
">a
10758 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
10759 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages. His interesting point is that the
10760 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
10761 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
10762 can be fixed in ISO. Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
10763 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
10764 close to solving the problems. I was part of the Norwegian committee
10765 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
10766 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
10768 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
10769 with the future ahead of it. We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
10770 seminar this autumn.</p>
10776 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>.
10781 <div class="padding
"></div>
10783 <div class="entry
">
10784 <div class="title
">
10785 <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>
10791 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
10792 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
10793 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
10794 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
10795 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
10796 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
10797 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
10799 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
10800 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
10801 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
10807 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>.
10812 <div class="padding
"></div>
10814 <div class="entry
">
10815 <div class="title
">
10816 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html
">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
10822 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
10823 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
10824 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
10825 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
10826 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
10827 the package up to date.</p>
10829 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
10830 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
10831 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
10832 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
10833 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
10834 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
10835 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
10836 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/
">Savannah</a>, and continue
10837 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
10838 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
10839 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
10840 working on the future release.</p>
10842 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
10843 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
10849 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>.
10854 <div class="padding
"></div>
10856 <div class="entry
">
10857 <div class="title
">
10858 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html
">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
10864 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
10865 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
10866 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
10868 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint
">developer
10869 gathering</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
10870 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
10871 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
10872 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
10873 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.</p>
10875 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
10876 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
10881 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
10883 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
10884 clock is in UTC.</li>
10886 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
10887 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot
">dependency
10888 based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
10892 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
10893 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/
">Carlos
10896 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
10897 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
10898 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
10899 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
10900 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
10903 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
10904 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
10905 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
10906 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
10907 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
10908 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
10909 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
10915 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>.
10920 <div class="padding
"></div>
10922 <div class="entry
">
10923 <div class="title
">
10924 <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>
10930 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
10931 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
10932 do not yet know them.</p>
10934 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/
">valgrind</a>, a
10935 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
10936 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
10937 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
10938 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
10939 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
10940 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
10941 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
10942 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
10943 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
10944 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
10946 <p>The second one is
10947 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity
">Coverity</a> which is
10948 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
10949 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
10950 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
10951 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
10952 and the company behind it is running
10953 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/
">a community service</a> for the
10954 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
10955 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
10956 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
10957 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
10958 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
10959 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
10960 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
10962 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
10963 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
10964 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
10965 surrounded by today.</p>
10971 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
10976 <div class="padding
"></div>
10978 <div class="entry
">
10979 <div class="title
">
10980 <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>
10987 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/
2009/
04/
12/
214">claim that no
10988 patch is better than a useless patch</a>. I completely disagree, as a
10989 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
10990 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
10991 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
10998 Tags: <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>.
11003 <div class="padding
"></div>
11005 <div class="entry
">
11006 <div class="title
">
11007 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html
">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
11013 <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
11014 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net. The
11015 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
11016 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
11017 vlc. I finally found a way to do it today. I spent an hour or so
11018 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation. The
11019 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
11020 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
11022 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
11024 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
11025 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
11026 --intf=dummy
</pre></blockquote>
11028 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
11029 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
11030 dummy interface. The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
11031 sure no X interface is needed.
</p>
11033 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
11034 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
11035 the vlc process with SIGTERM. Here is a complete script
11036 <tt>vlc-record
</tt> to use from
<tt>at
</tt> or
<tt>cron
</tt>:
</p>
11038 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
11043 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
11044 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
11045 --intf=dummy < /dev/null
> /dev/null
2>&
1 &
11049 wait $pid
</pre></blockquote>
11055 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>.
11060 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11062 <div class=
"entry">
11063 <div class=
"title">
11064 <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>
11070 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
11071 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
11072 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
11073 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
11074 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
11075 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
11076 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
11079 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
11080 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
11081 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
11082 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
11083 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
11084 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
11085 blocked from doing so.
</p>
11087 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
11088 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
11089 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
11090 requirements change.
</p>
11092 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
11093 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
11094 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
11100 Tags:
<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>.
11105 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11107 <div class=
"entry">
11108 <div class=
"title">
11109 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
11115 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
11116 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
11117 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
11118 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
11119 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
11120 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
11121 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
11122 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
11123 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
11124 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
11125 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
11126 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
11127 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
11128 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
11135 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>.
11140 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11142 <div class=
"entry">
11143 <div class=
"title">
11144 <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>
11150 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
11151 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
11152 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
11153 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
11154 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
11155 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
11157 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
11158 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
11159 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
11160 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
11161 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
11162 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
11163 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
11164 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
11165 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
11166 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
11167 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
11168 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
11169 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
11171 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
11172 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
11173 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
11174 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
11176 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
11177 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
11179 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
11180 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
11181 new IETF work group?
</p>
11187 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>.
11192 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11194 <div class=
"entry">
11195 <div class=
"title">
11196 <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>
11202 <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
11203 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
11204 contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service)
11205 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
11206 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
11207 each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract
11208 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
11209 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
11210 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
11211 machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import
11212 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
11213 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
11214 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
11215 for the relevant machines. This make the support status information
11216 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
11217 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
11218 The result of this work documented that
27% of the machines in the
11219 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
11220 them.
27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
11221 using machines a bit longer than the
3 years a normal support contract
11222 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
11223 services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
11224 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
11225 them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
11226 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
11229 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
11230 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
11231 Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
11232 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
11233 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML
11234 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
11235 introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:
</p>
11240 use WWW::Mechanize;
11243 sub get_support_info {
11244 my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
11247 if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
11248 # fetch website from Dell support
11249 my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no
&cs=nodhs1
&l=no
&s=dhs
&ServiceTag=$serial";
11250 my $webpage = get($url);
11251 return undef unless ($webpage);
11254 my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
11255 foreach my $line (@lines) {
11256 next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
11257 $line =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
11258 $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$
1/;
11260 my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
11261 @f = @f[
13 .. $#f];
11263 while ($f[
3] eq "DELL") {
11264 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[
0,
5,
7,
10];
11266 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11267 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11268 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11269 localtime(str2time($endstr)));
11270 $str .= "$type $start -
> $end ";
11271 @f = @f[
14 .. $#f];
11272 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
11274 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11275 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11276 if ($lastend lt $today);
11278 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
11279 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-
>new();
11281 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
11284 'BODServiceID' =
> 'NA',
11285 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' =
> '',
11287 'productNumber' =
> $productnumber,
11288 'serialNumber1' =
> $serial,
11290 $mech-
>submit_form( form_number =
> 2,
11291 fields =
> $fields );
11292 # Next step is screen scraping
11293 my $content = $mech-
>content();
11295 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
11296 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11297 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11298 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11300 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11302 while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
11303 my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
11304 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
11305 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
11306 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11307 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11308 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11309 localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
11311 $str .= "$type ($status) $start -
> $end ";
11313 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11314 if ($end lt $today);
11316 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
11317 # This code ignore extended support contracts.
11318 my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{
4}).+\]-/;
11319 if ($producttype
&& $serial) {
11321 get("http://www-
947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty
&brandind=
5000008&Submit=Submit
&type=$producttype
&serial=$serial");
11323 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
11324 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11325 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11326 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11328 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
11329 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
11331 $str .= "($status) -
> $end ";
11333 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11334 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11335 if ($end lt $today);
11343 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
11344 serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched
11345 from dmidecode.
</p>
11348 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "
1234567890"
11350 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge
2950", "
1234567");
11351 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries
345 -[
867061X]-",
11355 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
11356 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)
</p>
11358 <p>Update
2009-
03-
06: The IBM page do not include extended support
11359 contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do
11360 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
11367 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>.
11372 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11374 <div class=
"entry">
11375 <div class=
"title">
11376 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center
</a>
11382 <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
11383 in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the
11384 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
11385 removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a
11386 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
11387 the "missing" computer.
</p>
11389 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
11390 <a href=
"http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx
</a> to write and read bar
11391 code blocks as defined in the
11392 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
11393 Standard
</a>. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
11394 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
11395 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard
11396 allow up to
2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project
11397 with
<a href=
"http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
11398 writer written in postscript
</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
11399 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
11402 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
11403 machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are
11404 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
11405 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
11406 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
11407 locations, and can detect movements and removals.
</p>
11409 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
11410 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I
11411 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
11412 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked
11413 fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
11414 side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space
11415 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
11416 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
11417 about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
11418 to
60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.
</p>
11420 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
11421 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
11422 easier automatic tracking of computers.
</p>
11428 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>.
11433 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11435 <div class=
"entry">
11436 <div class=
"title">
11437 <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>
11443 <p>As part of the work we do in
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no">NUUG
</a>
11444 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
11445 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a
11446 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
11447 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this
11448 will become easier when the
<video
> tag is implemented in all
11449 browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several
11450 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H
.264 and Quicktime, and want the
11451 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
11452 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
11453 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
11454 <video
> tag, the
<object
> tag, the
<embed
> tag and
11455 the
<applet
> tag. All of these take a lot of options, and
11456 finding the best options is a major challenge.
</p>
11458 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from
<a
11459 href=
"http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com
</a>, to see how it handled
11460 a
<video
> tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
11461 I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture
11462 from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
11463 definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next,
11464 instead of streaming the
76 MiB video file, it start to download all
11465 of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait
11466 for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download
11467 is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the
11468 download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I
11469 discover that I have to add the
controls="true" attribute to be able
11470 to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding
11471 autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
11472 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
11473 <video
> tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
11474 playing when the download is done.
</p>
11476 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
11477 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
11478 from the nuug site
</a>. Will have to test it with the new Firefox
11481 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable
11482 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
11483 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I
11484 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)
</p>
11490 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>.
11495 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11497 <div class=
"entry">
11498 <div class=
"title">
11499 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick
</a>
11505 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> is
11506 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
11507 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
11508 directly with the video stream. For this, we use the
11509 <a href=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch
</a> package from
11510 the Debian video team. As this require quite one computer per video
11511 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
11512 borrow laptops. And to avoid having to install extra software on
11513 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
11514 bootable USB stick. The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
11515 source, sink and mixer applications and
11516 <a href=
"http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab
</a>. To allow this setup to
11517 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
11518 <a href=
"http://www.avahi.org/">avahi
</a> to connect the various parts
11519 together. And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
11520 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
11521 with USB sources. We have not yet tested this setup in a production
11522 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
11523 video mixer in a very short time frame. We will need it for
11524 <a href=
"http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open
2009</a>.
</p>
11526 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
11527 USB image
</a> is for a
1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
11528 larger stick as well.
</p>
11534 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>.
11539 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11541 <div class=
"entry">
11542 <div class=
"title">
11543 <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>
11549 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
11550 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
11551 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
11552 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
11553 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
11554 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
11555 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
11556 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
11558 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
11559 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
11560 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
11561 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
11562 of these cards.
</p>
11568 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>.
11573 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11575 <div class=
"entry">
11576 <div class=
"title">
11577 <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>
11583 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
11584 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
11585 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
11586 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
11587 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
11588 notes are available on
11589 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
11590 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
11591 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
11592 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
11593 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
11594 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
11595 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
11596 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
11597 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
11599 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
11600 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
11606 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>.
11611 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11613 <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>
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12)
</a></li>
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8)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (
8)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (
12)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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7)
</a></li>
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13)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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2)
</a></li>
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12)
</a></li>
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57)
</a></li>
11761 <li><a href=
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112)
</a></li>
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9)
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7)
</a></li>
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4)
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152)
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197)
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10)
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34)
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3)
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25)
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11843 <p style=
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11844 Created by
<a href=
"http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4
</a>