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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         25th November 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
  32 installation system, observing how using
  33 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
  34 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
  35 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
  36 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
  37 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
  38 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
  39 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
  40 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
  41 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
  42 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
  43 up the process make perfect sense.
  44
  45 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
  46 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
  47 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
  48 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
  49 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
  50 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
  51 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
  52 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
  53 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
  54 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
  55
  56 <blockquote><pre>
  57 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
  58 </pre></blockquote>
  59
  60 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
  61 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
  62 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
  63 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
  64 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
  65 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
  66 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
  67 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
  68 tested its impact.</p>
  69
  70
  71       </div>
  72       <div class="tags">
  73
  74
  75         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>.
  76
  77
  78       </div>
  79     </div>
  80     <div class="padding"></div>
  81
  82     <div class="entry">
  83       <div class="title">
  84         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
  85       </div>
  86       <div class="date">
  87         13th November 2016
  88       </div>
  89       <div class="body">
  90         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
  91 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
  92 multi-threaded program, finally
  93 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
  94 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
  95 months since
  96 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
  97 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
  98 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
  99 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
 100 JavaScript libraries.</p>
 101
 102 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
 103
 104 <p><blockquote>
 105 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
 106 </blockquote></p>
 107
 108 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
 109 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
 110 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
 111 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
 112 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
 113
 114 <p><blockquote>
 115 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
 116 </blockquote></p>
 117
 118 <p>See the project home page and the
 119 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
 120 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
 121 working.</p>
 122
 123       </div>
 124       <div class="tags">
 125
 126
 127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 128
 129
 130       </div>
 131     </div>
 132     <div class="padding"></div>
 133
 134     <div class="entry">
 135       <div class="title">
 136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_talk_with_your_loved_ones_in_private.html">How to talk with your loved ones in private</a>
 137       </div>
 138       <div class="date">
 139          7th November 2016
 140       </div>
 141       <div class="body">
 142         <p>A few days ago I ran a very biased and informal survey to get an
 143 idea about what options are being used to communicate with end to end
 144 encryption with friends and family.  I explicitly asked people not to
 145 list options only used in a work setting.  The background is the
 146 uneasy feeling I get when using Signal, a feeling shared by others as
 147 a blog post from Sander Venima about
 148 <a href="https://sandervenema.ch/2016/11/why-i-wont-recommend-signal-anymore/">why
 149 he do not recommend Signal anymore</a> (with
 150 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410">feedback from
 151 the Signal author available from ycombinator</a>).  I wanted an
 152 overview of the options being used, and hope to include those options
 153 in a less biased survey later on.  So far I have not taken the time to
 154 look into the individual proposed systems.  They range from text
 155 sharing web pages, via file sharing and email to instant messaging,
 156 VOIP and video conferencing.  For those considering which system to
 157 use, it is also useful to have a look at
 158 <a href="https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard">the EFF Secure
 159 messaging scorecard</a> which is slightly out of date but still
 160 provide valuable information.</p>
 161
 162 <p>So, on to the list.  There were some used by many, some used by a
 163 few, some rarely used ones and a few mentioned but without anyone
 164 claiming to use them.  Notice the grouping is in reality quite random
 165 given the biased self selected set of participants.  First the ones
 166 used by many:</p>
 167
 168 <ul>
 169
 170 <li><a href="https://whispersystems.org/">Signal</a></li>
 171 <li>Email w/<a href="http://openpgp.org/">OpenPGP</a> (Enigmail, GPGSuite,etc)</li>
 172 <li><a href="https://www.whatsapp.com/">Whatsapp</a></li>
 173 <li>IRC w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
 174 <li>XMPP w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
 175
 176 </ul>
 177
 178 <p>Then the ones used by a few.</p>
 179
 180 <ul>
 181
 182 <li><a href="https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page">Mumble</a></li>
 183 <li>iMessage (included in iOS from Apple)</li>
 184 <li><a href="https://telegram.org/">Telegram</a></li>
 185 <li><a href="https://jitsi.org/">Jitsi</a></li>
 186 <li><a href="https://keybase.io/download">Keybase file</a></li>
 187
 188 </ul>
 189
 190 <p>Then the ones used by even fewer people</p>
 191
 192 <ul>
 193
 194 <li><a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a></li>
 195 <li><a href="https://bitmessage.org/">Bitmessage</a></li>
 196 <li><a href="https://wire.com/">Wire</a></li>
 197 <li>VoIP w/<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP">ZRTP</a> or controlled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Protocol">SRTP</a> (e.g using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSipSimple">CSipSimple</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linphone">Linphone</a>)</li>
 198 <li><a href="https://matrix.org/">Matrix</a></li>
 199 <li><a href="https://kontalk.org/">Kontalk</a></li>
 200 <li><a href="https://0bin.net/">0bin</a> (encrypted pastebin)</li>
 201 <li><a href="https://appear.in">Appear.in</a></li>
 202 <li><a href="https://riot.im/">riot</a></li>
 203 <li><a href="https://www.wickr.com/">Wickr Me</a></li>
 204
 205 </ul>
 206
 207 <p>And finally the ones mentioned by not marked as used by
 208 anyone. This might be a mistake, perhaps the person adding the entry
 209 forgot to flag it as used?</p>
 210
 211 <ul>
 212
 213 <li>Email w/Certificates <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME">S/MIME</a></li>
 214 <li><a href="https://www.crypho.com/">Crypho</a></li>
 215 <li><a href="https://cryptpad.fr/">CryptPad</a></li>
 216 <li><a href="https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet">ricochet</a></li>
 217
 218 </ul>
 219
 220 <p>Given the network effect it seem obvious to me that we as a society
 221 have been divided and conquered by those interested in keeping
 222 encrypted and secure communication away from the masses.  The
 223 finishing remarks <a href="https://vimeo.com/97505679">from Aral Balkan
 224 in his talk "Free is a lie"</a> about the usability of free software
 225 really come into effect when you want to communicate in private with
 226 your friends and family.  We can not expect them to allow the
 227 usability of communication tool to block their ability to talk to
 228 their loved ones.</p>
 229
 230 <p>Note for example the option IRC w/OTR.  Most IRC clients do not
 231 have OTR support, so in most cases OTR would not be an option, even if
 232 you wanted to.  In my personal experience, about 1 in 20 I talk to
 233 have a IRC client with OTR.  For private communication to really be
 234 available, most people to talk to must have the option in their
 235 currently used client.  I can not simply ask my family to install an
 236 IRC client.  I need to guide them through a technical multi-step
 237 process of adding extensions to the client to get them going.  This is
 238 a non-starter for most.</p>
 239
 240 <p>I would like to be able to do video phone calls, audio phone calls,
 241 exchange instant messages and share files with my loved ones, without
 242 being forced to share with people I do not know.  I do not want to
 243 share the content of the conversations, and I do not want to share who
 244 I communicate with or the fact that I communicate with someone.
 245 Without all these factors in place, my private life is being more or
 246 less invaded.</p>
 247
 248       </div>
 249       <div class="tags">
 250
 251
 252         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 253
 254
 255       </div>
 256     </div>
 257     <div class="padding"></div>
 258
 259     <div class="entry">
 260       <div class="title">
 261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
 262       </div>
 263       <div class="date">
 264          4th November 2016
 265       </div>
 266       <div class="body">
 267         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
 268 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
 269 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
 270 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
 271 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
 272 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
 273 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
 274 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
 275 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
 276 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
 277 and had
 278 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
 279 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
 280 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
 281 loved ones. :)</p>
 282
 283 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
 284 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
 285 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
 286 building
 287 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
 288 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
 289 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
 290 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
 291 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
 292 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
 293 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
 294 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
 295
 296 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
 297
 298 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
 299 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
 300 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
 301 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
 302 the battery status run low:</p>
 303
 304 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
 305    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
 306 </video></p>
 307
 308 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
 309 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
 310
 311 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
 312 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
 313 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
 314 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
 315 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
 316 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
 317 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
 318 should.</p>
 319
 320       </div>
 321       <div class="tags">
 322
 323
 324         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 325
 326
 327       </div>
 328     </div>
 329     <div class="padding"></div>
 330
 331     <div class="entry">
 332       <div class="title">
 333         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
 334       </div>
 335       <div class="date">
 336         10th October 2016
 337       </div>
 338       <div class="body">
 339         <p>In July
 340 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
 341 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
 342 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
 343 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
 344
 345 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
 346 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
 347 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
 348 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
 349 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
 350 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
 351 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
 352 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
 353 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
 354 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
 355 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
 356 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
 357 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
 358 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
 359 time.</p>
 360
 361 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
 362 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
 363 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
 364 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
 365 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
 366 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
 367 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
 368
 369 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
 370 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
 371 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
 372 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
 373 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
 374 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
 375 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
 376 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
 377 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
 378 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
 379
 380 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
 381
 382 <ol>
 383
 384 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
 385 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
 386 know, so you need to install it.
 387
 388 <pre>
 389 apt install git tor chromium
 390 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
 391 </pre></li>
 392
 393 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
 394 block below.</li>
 395
 396 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
 397 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
 398
 399 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
 400 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
 401 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
 402 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
 403 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
 404
 405 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
 406 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
 407 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
 408 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
 409 a associated contact database.</li>
 410
 411 </ol>
 412
 413 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
 414 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
 415 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
 416 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
 417 example
 418 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
 419 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
 420 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
 421 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
 422 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
 423 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
 424 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
 425 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
 426 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
 427 working on Debian Stable.</p>
 428
 429 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
 430 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
 431 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
 432
 433 <pre>
 434 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
 435 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
 436 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
 437 --- a/js/background.js
 438 +++ b/js/background.js
 439 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
 440          });
 441      });
 442
 443 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
 444 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
 445      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
 446 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
 447 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
 448      var messageReceiver;
 449      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
 450          if (messageReceiver) {
 451 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
 452 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
 453 --- a/js/expire.js
 454 +++ b/js/expire.js
 455 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 456  ;(function() {
 457      'use strict';
 458 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
 459 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
 460
 461      window.extension = window.extension || {};
 462
 463 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
 464 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
 465 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
 466 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
 467 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
 468              return {
 469                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
 470                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
 471 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
 472 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
 473 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
 474              };
 475          },
 476          clearQR: function() {
 477 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
 478 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
 479 --- a/options.html
 480 +++ b/options.html
 481 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
 482          &lt;div class='nav'>
 483            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
 484            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
 485 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
 486 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
 487 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
 488 +
 489 +         &lt;/div>
 490            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
 491            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
 492            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
 493 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
 494 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
 495 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
 496 +#!/bin/sh
 497 +set -e
 498 +cd $(dirname $0)
 499 +mkdir -p userdata
 500 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
 501 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
 502 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
 503 +fi
 504 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
 505 +exec chromium \
 506 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
 507 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
 508 EOF
 509 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
 510 </pre>
 511
 512 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 513 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 514 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 515
 516       </div>
 517       <div class="tags">
 518
 519
 520         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 521
 522
 523       </div>
 524     </div>
 525     <div class="padding"></div>
 526
 527     <div class="entry">
 528       <div class="title">
 529         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
 530       </div>
 531       <div class="date">
 532          7th October 2016
 533       </div>
 534       <div class="body">
 535         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
 536 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
 537 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
 538 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
 539 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
 540 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
 541 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
 542 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
 543 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
 544 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
 545 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
 546 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
 547 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
 548
 549 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
 550 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
 551 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
 552 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
 553 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
 554 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
 555
 556 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
 557 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
 558 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
 559 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
 560 identifiers.</p>
 561
 562 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
 563 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
 564 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
 565 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
 566 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
 567 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
 568 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
 569 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
 570 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
 571 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
 572 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
 573 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
 574 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
 575 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
 576
 577 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
 578 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
 579 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
 580 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
 581 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
 582 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
 583 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
 584
 585 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
 586 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
 587 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
 588 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
 589 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
 590 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
 591 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
 592 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
 593 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
 594 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
 595 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
 596 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
 597 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
 598 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
 599 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
 600 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
 601 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
 602
 603 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
 604 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
 605 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
 606 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
 607 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
 608 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
 609 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
 610
 611 <p><pre>
 612 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
 613     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
 614 </pre></p>
 615
 616 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
 617 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
 618 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
 619 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
 620 to detect this?</p>
 621
 622 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
 623 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
 624 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
 625 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
 626 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
 627 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
 628 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
 629 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
 630 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
 631 directly if no such class exist.</p>
 632
 633 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 634 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 635 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 636
 637 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
 638 please join us on our IRC channel
 639 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
 640 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
 641 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
 642 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
 643
 644 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 645 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 646 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 647
 648       </div>
 649       <div class="tags">
 650
 651
 652         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 653
 654
 655       </div>
 656     </div>
 657     <div class="padding"></div>
 658
 659     <div class="entry">
 660       <div class="title">
 661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
 662       </div>
 663       <div class="date">
 664         30th August 2016
 665       </div>
 666       <div class="body">
 667         <p>In April we
 668 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
 669 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
 670 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
 671 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
 672 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
 673 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
 674 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
 675 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
 676 contributing using
 677 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
 678 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
 679 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
 680 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
 681 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
 682 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
 683 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
 684
 685 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
 686 electronic form.</p>
 687
 688       </div>
 689       <div class="tags">
 690
 691
 692         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 693
 694
 695       </div>
 696     </div>
 697     <div class="padding"></div>
 698
 699     <div class="entry">
 700       <div class="title">
 701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
 702       </div>
 703       <div class="date">
 704         11th August 2016
 705       </div>
 706       <div class="body">
 707         <p>This summer, I read a great article
 708 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
 709 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
 710 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
 711 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
 712 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
 713 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
 714 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
 715 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
 716 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
 717 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
 718 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
 719 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
 720
 721 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
 722 get the system into Debian.  I
 723 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
 724 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
 725 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
 726 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
 727 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
 728 profiling information included in the source package.
 729 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
 730
 731 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
 732 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
 733
 734 <p><blockquote><pre>
 735 coz run --- program-to-run
 736 </pre></blockquote></p>
 737
 738 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
 739 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
 740 most, use a web browser and either point it to
 741 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
 742 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
 743 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
 744 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
 745 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
 746 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
 747 targeted experiments.</p>
 748
 749 <p>A video published by ACM
 750 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
 751 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
 752 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
 753 titled
 754 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
 755 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
 756
 757 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
 758 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
 759 because it uses a
 760 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
 761 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
 762 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
 763 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
 764
 765 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
 766 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
 767 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
 768 C++ libraries.</p>
 769
 770       </div>
 771       <div class="tags">
 772
 773
 774         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 775
 776
 777       </div>
 778     </div>
 779     <div class="padding"></div>
 780
 781     <div class="entry">
 782       <div class="title">
 783         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sales_number_for_the_Free_Culture_translation__first_half_of_2016.html">Sales number for the Free Culture translation, first half of 2016</a>
 784       </div>
 785       <div class="date">
 786          5th August 2016
 787       </div>
 788       <div class="body">
 789         <p>As my regular readers probably remember, the last year I published
 790 a French and Norwegian translation of the classic
 791 <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book</a> by the
 792 founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig.  A bit less
 793 known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations,
 794 using docbook and po4a, I also recreated the English original.  And
 795 because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it
 796 too.  The revenue from the books are sent to the Creative Commons
 797 Corporation.  In other words, I do not earn any money from this
 798 project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available
 799 for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative
 800 Commons is needed.</p>
 801
 802 <p>Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at
 803 Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping.  Much to
 804 my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the
 805 French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been
 806 available in English since it was first published.  In total, 24 paper
 807 books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:</p>
 808
 809 <table border="0">
 810 <tr><th>Title / language</th><th>Quantity</th></tr>
 811 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td><td align="right">3</td></tr>
 812 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td><td align="right">7</td></tr>
 813 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td><td align="right">14</td></tr>
 814 </table>
 815
 816 <p>The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book
 817 stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble.  Most revenue, around $10 per
 818 book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold
 819 directly by Lulu.com.  The other channels give less revenue.  The
 820 summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10
 821 via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu.  And Lulu.com tells
 822 me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42.  No idea
 823 what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a
 824 good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not.  But it make me
 825 happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it
 826 as much as I did.</p>
 827
 828 <p>The ebook edition is available for free from
 829 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
 830
 831 <p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
 832 language, I would be happy to help make it happen.  Please get in
 833 touch.</p>
 834
 835       </div>
 836       <div class="tags">
 837
 838
 839         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>.
 840
 841
 842       </div>
 843     </div>
 844     <div class="padding"></div>
 845
 846     <div class="entry">
 847       <div class="title">
 848         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Techno_TV_broadcasting_live_across_Norway_and_the_Internet___debconf16___nuug__on__frikanalen.html">Techno TV broadcasting live across Norway and the Internet (#debconf16, #nuug) on @frikanalen</a>
 849       </div>
 850       <div class="date">
 851          1st August 2016
 852       </div>
 853       <div class="body">
 854         <p>Did you know there is a TV channel broadcasting talks from DebConf
 855 16 across an entire country?  Or that there is a TV channel
 856 broadcasting talks by or about
 857 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625529/">Linus Torvalds</a>,
 858 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599/">Tor</a>,
 859 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/624019/">OpenID</A>,
 860 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625624/">Common Lisp</a>,
 861 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625446/">Civic Tech</a>,
 862 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625090/">EFF founder John Barlow</a>,
 863 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625432/">how to make 3D
 864 printer electronics</a> and many more fascinating topics?  It works
 865 using only free software (all of it
 866 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from Github</a>), and
 867 is administrated using a web browser and a web API.</p>
 868
 869 <p>The TV channel is the Norwegian open channel
 870 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, and I am involved
 871 via <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG member association</a> in
 872 running and developing the software for the channel.  The channel is
 873 organised as a member organisation where its members can upload and
 874 broadcast what they want (think of it as Youtube for national
 875 broadcasting television).  Individuals can broadcast too.  The time
 876 slots are handled on a first come, first serve basis.  Because the
 877 channel have almost no viewers and very few active members, we can
 878 experiment with TV technology without too much flack when we make
 879 mistakes.  And thanks to the few active members, most of the slots on
 880 the schedule are free.  I see this as an opportunity to spread
 881 knowledge about technology and free software, and have a script I run
 882 regularly to fill up all the open slots the next few days with
 883 technology related video.  The end result is a channel I like to
 884 describe as Techno TV - filled with interesting talks and
 885 presentations.</p>
 886
 887 <p>It is available on channel 50 on the Norwegian national digital TV
 888 network (RiksTV).  It is also available as a multicast stream on
 889 Uninett.  And finally, it is available as
 890 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/">a WebM unicast stream</a> from
 891 Frikanalen and NUUG.  Check it out. :)</p>
 892
 893       </div>
 894       <div class="tags">
 895
 896
 897         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 898
 899
 900       </div>
 901     </div>
 902     <div class="padding"></div>
 903
 904     <div class="entry">
 905       <div class="title">
 906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
 907       </div>
 908       <div class="date">
 909          7th July 2016
 910       </div>
 911       <div class="body">
 912         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
 913 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
 914 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
 915 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
 916 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
 917 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
 918 microphone The initial idea had been to just
 919 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
 920 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
 921 until a few days ago.</p>
 922
 923 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
 924 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
 925 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
 926 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
 927 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
 928 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
 929 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
 930
 931 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
 932 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
 933 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
 934 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
 935 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
 936 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
 937 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
 938 him.</p>
 939
 940 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
 941 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
 942 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
 943 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
 944 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
 945 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
 946 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
 947 devices it would work for.</p>
 948
 949 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
 950 followed some instructions
 951 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
 952 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
 953 machine with Debian testing:</p>
 954
 955 <p><pre>
 956 adb reboot-bootloader
 957 fastboot oem rebootRUU
 958 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
 959 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
 960 fastboot reboot
 961 </pre></p>
 962
 963 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
 964 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
 965 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
 966 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
 967 too.</p>
 968
 969 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
 970 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
 971 like this:</p>
 972
 973 <p><pre>
 974 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
 975 </pre>
 976
 977 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
 978 this:</p>
 979
 980 <p><pre>
 981 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
 982 </pre></p>
 983
 984 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
 985 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
 986 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
 987 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
 988 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
 989
 990       </div>
 991       <div class="tags">
 992
 993
 994         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 995
 996
 997       </div>
 998     </div>
 999     <div class="padding"></div>
1000
1001     <div class="entry">
1002       <div class="title">
1003         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
1004       </div>
1005       <div class="date">
1006          3rd July 2016
1007       </div>
1008       <div class="body">
1009         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
1010 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
1011 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
1012 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
1013 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
1014 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
1015 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
1016 Github source, compared it to the source in
1017 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
1018 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
1019 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
1020 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
1021 the recipe how I did it.</p>
1022
1023 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
1024
1025 <pre>
1026 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
1027 </pre>
1028
1029 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
1030 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
1031
1032 <pre>
1033 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
1034 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
1035 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
1036 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
1037 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
1038          });
1039      });
1040
1041 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
1042 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
1043 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
1044 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
1045      var messageReceiver;
1046      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
1047          if (messageReceiver) {
1048 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
1049 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
1050 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
1051 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
1052  ;(function() {
1053      'use strict';
1054 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
1055 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
1056
1057      window.extension = window.extension || {};
1058
1059 EOF
1060 </pre>
1061
1062 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
1063 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
1064 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
1065 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
1066
1067 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
1068 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
1069
1070 <pre>
1071 #!/bin/sh
1072 cd $(dirname $0)
1073 mkdir -p userdata
1074 exec chromium \
1075   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
1076   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
1077 </pre>
1078
1079 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
1080 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
1081 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
1082 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
1083 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
1084
1085 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
1086 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
1087 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
1088 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
1089 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
1090 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
1091 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
1092 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
1093 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
1094 Signal from my laptop.
1095
1096 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
1097 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
1098 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
1099 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
1100 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
1101 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
1102 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
1103 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
1104 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
1105 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
1106 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
1107 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
1108
1109       </div>
1110       <div class="tags">
1111
1112
1113         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1114
1115
1116       </div>
1117     </div>
1118     <div class="padding"></div>
1119
1120     <div class="entry">
1121       <div class="title">
1122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
1123       </div>
1124       <div class="date">
1125          6th June 2016
1126       </div>
1127       <div class="body">
1128         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
1129 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
1130 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
1131 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
1132 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
1133 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
1134 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
1135 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
1136 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
1137
1138 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
1139 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
1140 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
1141 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
1142 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
1143 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
1144 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
1145
1146 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
1147 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
1148 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
1149 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
1150 toten and parole.</p>
1151
1152 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
1153 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
1154 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
1155 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
1156 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
1157 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
1158 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
1159 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
1160 formats.</p>
1161
1162       </div>
1163       <div class="tags">
1164
1165
1166         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>.
1167
1168
1169       </div>
1170     </div>
1171     <div class="padding"></div>
1172
1173     <div class="entry">
1174       <div class="title">
1175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
1176       </div>
1177       <div class="date">
1178          5th June 2016
1179       </div>
1180       <div class="body">
1181         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
1182 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
1183 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
1184 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
1185 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
1186 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
1187 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
1188 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
1189 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
1190 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
1191 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
1192 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
1193 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
1194 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
1195 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
1196 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
1197 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
1198 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
1199 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
1200 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
1201
1202 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
1203 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
1204 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
1205 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
1206 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
1207 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
1208 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
1209 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
1210 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
1211 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
1212 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
1213 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
1214 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
1215 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
1216
1217 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
1218 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
1219 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
1220 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
1221 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
1222 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
1223 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
1224 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
1225
1226 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
1227 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
1228 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
1229 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
1230 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
1231 information is collected from
1232 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
1233 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
1234 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
1235 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
1236 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
1237 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
1238 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
1239 type (preferably
1240 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
1241 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
1242 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
1243 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
1244
1245 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
1246 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
1247 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
1248
1249 <p><blockquote><pre>
1250 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
1251 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
1252   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
1253     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
1254     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
1255     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
1256   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
1257 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
1258 </pre></blockquote></p>
1259
1260 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
1261 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
1262 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
1263 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
1264
1265 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
1266 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
1267 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
1268
1269 <p><blockquote><pre>
1270 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
1271 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
1272 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
1273 %
1274 </pre></blockquote></p>
1275
1276 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
1277 MimeType= line.</p>
1278
1279 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
1280 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
1281 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
1282 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
1283 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
1284 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
1285 fixed. :)</p>
1286
1287       </div>
1288       <div class="tags">
1289
1290
1291         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1292
1293
1294       </div>
1295     </div>
1296     <div class="padding"></div>
1297
1298     <div class="entry">
1299       <div class="title">
1300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html">Tor - from its creators mouth 11 years ago</a>
1301       </div>
1302       <div class="date">
1303         28th May 2016
1304       </div>
1305       <div class="body">
1306         <p>A little more than 11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
1307 the current President of <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">the Tor
1308 project</a>, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the
1309 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group</a> (NUUG).  A
1310 video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help
1311 from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk
1312 on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG
1313 currently publishes its talks.  You can
1314 <a href="http://frikanalen.no/se">watch the live stream using a web
1315 browser</a> with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
1316 on demand page for the talk
1317 "<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599">Tor: Anonymous
1318 communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.</a>".</p>
1319
1320 <p>Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
1321 HTML video and Ogg Theora support:</p>
1322
1323 <p><video width="70%" poster="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/large_thumb/20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg" controls>
1324   <source src="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/theora/20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv" type="video/ogg"/>
1325 </video></p>
1326
1327 <p>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you
1328 want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)</p>
1329
1330       </div>
1331       <div class="tags">
1332
1333
1334         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1335
1336
1337       </div>
1338     </div>
1339     <div class="padding"></div>
1340
1341     <div class="entry">
1342       <div class="title">
1343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
1344       </div>
1345       <div class="date">
1346         25th May 2016
1347       </div>
1348       <div class="body">
1349         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
1350 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
1351 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
1352 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
1353 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
1354 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
1355 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
1356 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
1357 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
1358 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
1359 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
1360 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
1361
1362 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
1363 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
1364 is going away and is generally being replaced by
1365 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
1366 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
1367 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
1368 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
1369 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
1370 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
1371 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
1372 and see if it is recognised.</p>
1373
1374 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
1375 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
1376 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
1377
1378 <p><blockquote><pre>
1379 % isenkram-lookup
1380 bluez
1381 cheese
1382 fprintd
1383 fprintd-demo
1384 gkrellm-thinkbat
1385 hdapsd
1386 libpam-fprintd
1387 pidgin-blinklight
1388 thinkfan
1389 tleds
1390 tp-smapi-dkms
1391 tp-smapi-source
1392 tpb
1393 %p
1394 </pre></blockquote></p>
1395
1396 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
1397 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
1398 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
1399 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
1400 See
1401 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
1402 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
1403
1404       </div>
1405       <div class="tags">
1406
1407
1408         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1409
1410
1411       </div>
1412     </div>
1413     <div class="padding"></div>
1414
1415     <div class="entry">
1416       <div class="title">
1417         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
1418       </div>
1419       <div class="date">
1420         23rd May 2016
1421       </div>
1422       <div class="body">
1423         <p>Yesterday I updated the
1424 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
1425 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
1426 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
1427 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
1428 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
1429 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
1430 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
1431 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
1432 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
1433 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
1434
1435 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
1436 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
1437 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
1438 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
1439 capacity.</p>
1440
1441 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
1442
1443 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
1444 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
1445 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
1446 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
1447
1448 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
1449
1450 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
1451 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
1452 shrinking. :(</p>
1453
1454 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
1455 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
1456 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
1457 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
1458 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
1459 machine.</p>
1460
1461 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
1462 check out the
1463 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
1464 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
1465 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
1466 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1467 Patches are very welcome.</p>
1468
1469 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1470 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1471 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1472
1473       </div>
1474       <div class="tags">
1475
1476
1477         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1478
1479
1480       </div>
1481     </div>
1482     <div class="padding"></div>
1483
1484     <div class="entry">
1485       <div class="title">
1486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html">French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes & Noble</a>
1487       </div>
1488       <div class="date">
1489         21st May 2016
1490       </div>
1491       <div class="body">
1492         <p>A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
1493 2004 book Cultura Libre was published.  Today I noticed that the book
1494 is now available from book stores.  You can now buy it from
1495 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018260">Amazon</a>
1496 ($19.99),
1497 <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/1123776705">Barnes
1498 & Noble</a> ($?) and as always from
1499 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Lulu.com</a>
1500 ($19.99).  The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project.  If
1501 you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $10.59, while if you buy
1502 from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
1503 and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
1504 less).</p>
1505
1506 <p>I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
1507 sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon.  Not quite sure how
1508 that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
1509 edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
1510 the paperback edition, they are
1511 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">available
1512 from github</a>.</p>
1513
1514       </div>
1515       <div class="tags">
1516
1517
1518         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>.
1519
1520
1521       </div>
1522     </div>
1523     <div class="padding"></div>
1524
1525     <div class="entry">
1526       <div class="title">
1527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html">I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)</a>
1528       </div>
1529       <div class="date">
1530         19th May 2016
1531       </div>
1532       <div class="body">
1533         <p>I just donated to the
1534 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">NUUG defence
1535 "fond"</a> to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
1536 site popcorn-time.no tested in court.  I hope everyone that agree with
1537 me will do the same.</p>
1538
1539 <p>Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
1540 hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
1541 talking to a judge first?  I am.  What if the free software system
1542 combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
1543 and was called Popcorn Time?  Would that affect your view?  It still
1544 make me worried.</p>
1545
1546 <p>In March 2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
1547 change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
1548 police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
1549 the courts.  I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
1550 the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
1551 that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
1552 permission first.  I was even more surprised when I had a look at
1553 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no">the web
1554 site content on the Internet Archive</A>, and only found news coverage
1555 about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
1556 holders permissions.</p>
1557
1558 <p>The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
1559 example <a href="http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/2016/03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim">Hegnar Online</a> and
1560 <a href="http://itavisen.no/2016/03/08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/">ITavisen<a/>
1561 and
1562 <a href="http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-1.12842452">NRK</a>),
1563 at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
1564 on
1565 <a href="http://blogg.torvund.net/2016/03/09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/">protests
1566 from the law professor Olav Torvund</a> and
1567 <a href="http://www.klassekampen.no/article/20160311/ARTICLE/160319995">lawyer
1568 Jon Wessel-Aas</a>.  It even got some
1569 <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-160418/">coverage
1570 on TorrentFreak</a>.</p>
1571
1572 <p>I
1573 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html">
1574 wrote about the case a month ago</a>, when the
1575 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> (NUUG),
1576 where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
1577 The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
1578 given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
1579 legally challenged.  They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
1580 those that want to support the request.</p>
1581
1582 <p>If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
1583 censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
1584 applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
1585 suggest you <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">show
1586 your support by donating to NUUG</a>.</a>
1587
1588       </div>
1589       <div class="tags">
1590
1591
1592         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1593
1594
1595       </div>
1596     </div>
1597     <div class="padding"></div>
1598
1599     <div class="entry">
1600       <div class="title">
1601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
1602       </div>
1603       <div class="date">
1604         12th May 2016
1605       </div>
1606       <div class="body">
1607         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
1608 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
1609 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
1610 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
1611 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
1612 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1613 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
1614 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
1615 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
1616 great if you could help out with
1617 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
1618 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
1619
1620       </div>
1621       <div class="tags">
1622
1623
1624         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1625
1626
1627       </div>
1628     </div>
1629     <div class="padding"></div>
1630
1631     <div class="entry">
1632       <div class="title">
1633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
1634       </div>
1635       <div class="date">
1636          8th May 2016
1637       </div>
1638       <div class="body">
1639         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
1640 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
1641
1642 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
1643 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
1644 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
1645 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
1646 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
1647 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
1648 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
1649 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
1650 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
1651 players.</p>
1652
1653 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
1654 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
1655 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
1656 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
1657 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
1658 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
1659 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
1660 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
1661 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
1662 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
1663 support most file formats.</p>
1664
1665 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
1666 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
1667 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
1668 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
1669 listed first in the table.</p>
1670
1671 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
1672 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
1673 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
1674 support?</p>
1675
1676       </div>
1677       <div class="tags">
1678
1679
1680         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>.
1681
1682
1683       </div>
1684     </div>
1685     <div class="padding"></div>
1686
1687     <div class="entry">
1688       <div class="title">
1689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
1690       </div>
1691       <div class="date">
1692          4th May 2016
1693       </div>
1694       <div class="body">
1695         A friend of mine made me aware of
1696 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
1697 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
1698 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
1699
1700 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
1701 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
1702 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
1703 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
1704 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
1705 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
1706 production started.</p>
1707
1708 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
1709 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
1710 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
1711
1712       </div>
1713       <div class="tags">
1714
1715
1716         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1717
1718
1719       </div>
1720     </div>
1721     <div class="padding"></div>
1722
1723     <div class="entry">
1724       <div class="title">
1725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html">NUUG contests Norwegian police DNS seizure of popcorn-time.no</a>
1726       </div>
1727       <div class="date">
1728         18th April 2016
1729       </div>
1730       <div class="body">
1731         <p>It is days like today I am really happy to be a member of
1732 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User group</a>, a
1733 member association for those of us believing in free software, open
1734 standards and unix-like operating systems.  NUUG announced today it
1735 will
1736 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__NUUG_og_EFN_begj_rer_rettslig_pr_ving_for_DNS_domenebeslag_av_popcorn_time_no.shtml">try
1737 to bring the seizure of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no as
1738 unlawful</a>, to stand up for the principle that writing about a
1739 controversial topic is not infringing copyrights, and censuring web
1740 pages by hijacking DNS domain should be decided by the courts, not the
1741 police.  The DNS domain was seized by the Norwegian National Authority
1742 for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime
1743 a month ago.  I hope this bring more paying members to NUUG to give
1744 the association the financial muscle needed to bring this case as far
1745 as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.</p>
1746
1747       </div>
1748       <div class="tags">
1749
1750
1751         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1752
1753
1754       </div>
1755     </div>
1756     <div class="padding"></div>
1757
1758     <div class="entry">
1759       <div class="title">
1760         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_F__Stone___an_inspiration_for_us_all.html">I.F. Stone - an inspiration for us all</a>
1761       </div>
1762       <div class="date">
1763         13th April 2016
1764       </div>
1765       <div class="body">
1766         <p>I first got to know I.F. Stone when I came across an article by Jon
1767 Schwarz on The Intercept
1768 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/new-documentary-legacy-f-stone/">about
1769 his extraordinary contribution to investigative journalism in
1770 USA</a>. The article is about a new documentary in two parts
1771 (<a href="https://vimeo.com/123974841">part one is 12 minutes</a> and
1772 <a href="https://vimeo.com/123974842">part two is 30 minutes</a>), and
1773 I found both truly fascinating.  It is amazing what he was able to
1774 find by digging up public sources and government papers.  He
1775 documented lots of government abuse and cover ups, and I find
1776 <a href="http://www.ifstone.org/weekly.php">his weekly news letters</a>
1777 inspiring to read even today.</p>
1778
1779 <p><blockquote>
1780 All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
1781 <br>- I. F. Stone
1782 </blockquote></p>
1783
1784 <p>His starting point was that reporters should not assume governments
1785 and corporations are telling the truth, but verify all their claims as
1786 much as possible.  I wonder how many Norwegian reporters can be said
1787 to follow the principles of I. F. Stone.  They are definitely in short
1788 supply.  If you, like me half a year ago, have never heard of him,
1789 check him out.</p>
1790
1791       </div>
1792       <div class="tags">
1793
1794
1795         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1796
1797
1798       </div>
1799     </div>
1800     <div class="padding"></div>
1801
1802     <div class="entry">
1803       <div class="title">
1804         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_French_paperback_edition_of_the_book_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig_is_now_available.html">A French paperback edition of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig is now available</a>
1805       </div>
1806       <div class="date">
1807         12th April 2016
1808       </div>
1809       <div class="body">
1810         <p>I'm happy to report that
1811 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">the
1812 French paperback edition</a> of
1813 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
1814 project to translate</a> the <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free
1815 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig is now available for sale on
1816 Lulu.com.  Once I have formally verified my proof reading copy, which
1817 should be in the mail, the paperback edition should be available in
1818 book stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble too.</p>
1819
1820 <p>This French edition, Culture Libre, is the work of the
1821 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> developer Benoît
1822 Guillon, who created the PO file from the initial translation
1823 available from
1824 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">the Wikilivres
1825 wiki pages</a> and completed and corrected the translation to match
1826 the original docbook edition my project is using, as well as
1827 coordinated the proof reading of the final result.  I believe the end
1828 result look great, but I am biased and do not read French.  In
1829 addition to the paperback edition, the book is available in PDF, EPUB
1830 and Mobi format from the github project page linked to above.</p>
1831
1832 <p>When enabling book store distribution on Lulu.com, I had to nearly
1833 triple the price to allow the book stores some profit.  I also had to
1834 accept that I will get some revenue when a book is sold via Lulu.com.
1835 But because of the non-commercial clause in the book license
1836 (CC-BY-NC), this might be a problem.  To bypass the problem I
1837 discussed how to handle the revenue with the author, and we agreed
1838 that the revenue for these editions go to the
1839 <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons non-profit
1840 Corporation</a> who handle donations to the Creative Commons project.
1841 So far they have earned around USD 70 on sales of the
1842 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>
1843 and
1844 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
1845 Bokmål</a> editions, according to Lulu.com.  They will get the revenue
1846 for the French edition too.  Their revenue is higher if you buy the
1847 book directly from Lulu.com instead of via a book store, so I
1848 recommend you buy directly from Lulu.com.</p>
1849
1850 <p>Perhaps you would like to get the book published in your language?
1851 The translation is done using a web based translator service, so the
1852 technical bar to enter is fairly low.  Get in touch if you would like
1853 to make this happen.</p>
1854
1855       </div>
1856       <div class="tags">
1857
1858
1859         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>.
1860
1861
1862       </div>
1863     </div>
1864     <div class="padding"></div>
1865
1866     <div class="entry">
1867       <div class="title">
1868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
1869       </div>
1870       <div class="date">
1871         10th April 2016
1872       </div>
1873       <div class="body">
1874         <p>During this weekends
1875 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
1876 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
1877 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
1878 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
1879 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
1880 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
1881 contributing using
1882 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1883 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
1884 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1885 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
1886 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1887 contributors</a>.</p>
1888
1889 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
1890 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
1891 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
1892 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
1893 available for many more languages.</p>
1894
1895       </div>
1896       <div class="tags">
1897
1898
1899         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1900
1901
1902       </div>
1903     </div>
1904     <div class="padding"></div>
1905
1906     <div class="entry">
1907       <div class="title">
1908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
1909       </div>
1910       <div class="date">
1911          7th April 2016
1912       </div>
1913       <div class="body">
1914         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
1915 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
1916 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
1917 But I might be wrong.</p>
1918
1919 <p>According to
1920 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
1921 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
1922 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
1923 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
1924 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
1925 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
1926 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
1927 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
1928 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
1929 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
1930
1931 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
1932 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
1933 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
1934 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
1935 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
1936 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
1937 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
1938 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1939 team status page</a>, and
1940 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
1941 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
1942
1943 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
1944 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
1945 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
1946 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
1947 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
1948 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
1949 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
1950 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
1951 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
1952 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
1953 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
1954 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
1955
1956       </div>
1957       <div class="tags">
1958
1959
1960         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1961
1962
1963       </div>
1964     </div>
1965     <div class="padding"></div>
1966
1967     <div class="entry">
1968       <div class="title">
1969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/syslog_trusted_timestamp___chain_of_trusted_timestamps_for_your_syslog.html">syslog-trusted-timestamp - chain of trusted timestamps for your syslog</a>
1970       </div>
1971       <div class="date">
1972          2nd April 2016
1973       </div>
1974       <div class="body">
1975         <p>Two years ago, I had
1976 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">a
1977 look at trusted timestamping options available</a>, and among
1978 other things noted a still open
1979 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/742553">bug in the tsget script</a>
1980 included in openssl that made it harder than necessary to use openssl
1981 as a trusted timestamping client.  A few days ago I was told
1982 <a href="https:/www.difi.no/">the Norwegian government office DIFI</a> is
1983 close to releasing their own trusted timestamp service, and in the
1984 process I was happy to learn about a replacement for the tsget script
1985 using only curl:</p>
1986
1987 <p><pre>
1988 openssl ts -query -data "/etc/shells" -cert -sha256 -no_nonce \
1989   | curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/timestamp-query" \
1990          --data-binary "@-" http://zeitstempel.dfn.de > etc-shells.tsr
1991 openssl ts -reply -text -in etc-shells.tsr
1992 </pre></p>
1993
1994 <p>This produces a binary timestamp file (etc-shells.tsr) which can be
1995 used to verify that the content of the file /etc/shell with the
1996 calculated sha256 hash existed at the point in time when the request
1997 was made.  The last command extract the content of the etc-shells.tsr
1998 in human readable form.  The idea behind such timestamp is to be able
1999 to prove using cryptography that the content of a file have not
2000 changed since the file was stamped.</p>
2001
2002 <p>To verify that the file on disk match the public key signature in
2003 the timestamp file, run the following commands.  It make sure you have
2004 the required certificate for the trusted timestamp service available
2005 and use it to compare the file content with the timestamp.  In
2006 production, one should of course use a better method to verify the
2007 service certificate.</p>
2008
2009 <p><pre>
2010 wget -O ca-cert.txt https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt
2011 openssl ts -verify -data /etc/shells -in etc-shells.tsr -CAfile ca-cert.txt -text
2012 </pre></p>
2013
2014 <p>Wikipedia have a lot more information about
2015 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
2016 Timestamping</a> and
2017 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping">linked
2018 timestamping</a>, and there are several trusted timestamping services
2019 around, both as commercial services and as free and public services.
2020 Among the latter is
2021 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">the
2022 zeitstempel.dfn.de service</a> mentioned above and
2023 <a href="https://freetsa.org/">freetsa.org service</a> linked to from the
2024 wikipedia web site.  I believe the DIFI service should show up on
2025 https://tsa.difi.no, but it is not available to the public at the
2026 moment.  I hope this will change when it is into production.  The
2027 <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC 3161</a> trusted
2028 timestamping protocol standard is even implemented in LibreOffice,
2029 Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, making it possible to verify when
2030 a document was created.</p>
2031
2032 <p>I would find it useful to be able to use such trusted timestamp
2033 service to make it possible to verify that my stored syslog files have
2034 not been tampered with.  This is not a new idea.  I found one example
2035 implemented on the Endian network appliances where
2036 <a href="http://help.endian.com/entries/21518508-Enabling-Timestamping-on-log-files-">the
2037 configuration of such feature was described in 2012</a>.</p>
2038
2039 <p>But I could not find any free implementation of such feature when I
2040 searched, so I decided to try to
2041 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/syslog-trusted-timestamp">build
2042 a prototype named syslog-trusted-timestamp</a>.  My idea is to
2043 generate a timestamp of the old log files after they are rotated, and
2044 store the timestamp in the new log file just after rotation.  This
2045 will form a chain that would make it possible to see if any old log
2046 files are tampered with.  But syslog is bad at handling kilobytes of
2047 binary data, so I decided to base64 encode the timestamp and add an ID
2048 and line sequence numbers to the base64 data to make it possible to
2049 reassemble the timestamp file again.  To use it, simply run it like
2050 this:
2051
2052 <p><pre>
2053 syslog-trusted-timestamp /path/to/list-of-log-files
2054 </pre></p>
2055
2056 <p>This will send a timestamp from one or more timestamp services (not
2057 yet decided nor implemented) for each listed file to the syslog using
2058 logger(1).  To verify the timestamp, the same program is used with the
2059 --verify option:</p>
2060
2061 <p><pre>
2062 syslog-trusted-timestamp --verify /path/to/log-file /path/to/log-with-timestamp
2063 </pre></p>
2064
2065 <p>The verification step is not yet well designed.  The current
2066 implementation depend on the file path being unique and unchanging,
2067 and this is not a solid assumption.  It also uses process number as
2068 timestamp ID, and this is bound to create ID collisions.  I hope to
2069 have time to come up with a better way to handle timestamp IDs and
2070 verification later.</p>
2071
2072 <p>Please check out
2073 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/syslog-trusted-timestamp">the
2074 prototype for syslog-trusted-timestamp on github</a> and send
2075 suggestions and improvement, or let me know if there already exist a
2076 similar system for timestamping logs already to allow me to join
2077 forces with others with the same interest.</p>
2078
2079 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2080 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2081 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2082
2083       </div>
2084       <div class="tags">
2085
2086
2087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2088
2089
2090       </div>
2091     </div>
2092     <div class="padding"></div>
2093
2094     <div class="entry">
2095       <div class="title">
2096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
2097       </div>
2098       <div class="date">
2099         23rd March 2016
2100       </div>
2101       <div class="body">
2102         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
2103 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
2104 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
2105 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
2106 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
2107 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
2108 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
2109 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
2110
2111 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
2112 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
2113 and lifetime prediction by running:
2114
2115 <p><pre>
2116 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
2117 </pre></p>
2118
2119 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
2120
2121 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
2122 entry yet):</p>
2123
2124 <p><pre>
2125 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
2126 </pre></p>
2127
2128 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
2129 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
2130 few years of data.</p>
2131
2132 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
2133 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
2134 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
2135 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
2136 know.  The issue is reported as
2137 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
2138 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
2139 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
2140 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
2141 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
2142
2143 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
2144 check out the
2145 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
2146 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
2147 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
2148 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
2149 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
2150
2151       </div>
2152       <div class="tags">
2153
2154
2155         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2156
2157
2158       </div>
2159     </div>
2160     <div class="padding"></div>
2161
2162     <div class="entry">
2163       <div class="title">
2164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html">UsingQR - "Electronic" paper invoices using JSON and QR codes</a>
2165       </div>
2166       <div class="date">
2167         19th March 2016
2168       </div>
2169       <div class="body">
2170         <p>Back in 2013 I proposed
2171 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">a
2172 way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
2173 adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice</a>.  I
2174 suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
2175 for name and address, but any format would work.  I did not do
2176 anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
2177 something like it.  It would make it possible to efficiently send
2178 machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.</p>
2179
2180 <p>This was the background when I came across a proposal and
2181 specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
2182 <a href="http://www.visma.com/">Visma</a> in Sweden called
2183 <a href="http://usingqr.com/">UsingQR</a>.  Their PDF invoices contain
2184 a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
2185 This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
2186 specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
2187 get a more bogus entry).  I've reformatted the JSON to make it easier
2188 to read.  Normally this is all on one long line:</p>
2189
2190 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-19-qr-invoice.png" align="right"><pre>
2191 {
2192  "vh":500.00,
2193  "vm":0,
2194  "vl":0,
2195  "uqr":1,
2196  "tp":1,
2197  "nme":"Din Leverandør",
2198  "cc":"NO",
2199  "cid":"997912345 MVA",
2200  "iref":"12300001",
2201  "idt":"20151022",
2202  "ddt":"20151105",
2203  "due":2500.0000,
2204  "cur":"NOK",
2205  "pt":"BBAN",
2206  "acc":"17202612345",
2207  "bc":"BIENNOK1",
2208  "adr":"0313 OSLO"
2209 }
2210 </pre></p>
2211
2212 </p>The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
2213 <a href="http://usingqr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UsingQR_specification1.pdf">format
2214 specification</a> (revision 2 from june 2014).  The format seem to
2215 have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
2216 of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
2217 Norway.</p>
2218
2219 <p>Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
2220 the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
2221 specification.  Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
2222 November to clarify.  Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
2223 visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
2224 protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
2225 usage limitations for the format.  I urged her to make sure this was
2226 explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
2227 unfortunately this has not happened yet.  So I guess if there is
2228 submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
2229 infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
2230 risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
2231 the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so.  At least
2232 with patents, there is always
2233 <a href="http://www.paperspecs.com/paper-news/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/">a
2234 chance of getting sued...</a></p>
2235
2236 <p>I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
2237 independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
2238 they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
2239 with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this.  Their plan was
2240 to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
2241 evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular.  I hope
2242 they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
2243 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> is the correct place to
2244 maintain such specification.</p>
2245
2246 <p><strong>Update 2016-03-20</strong>: Via Twitter I became aware of
2247 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319492">some comments
2248 about this blog post</a> that had several useful links and references to
2249 similar systems.  In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association
2250 standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment
2251 information.  More information is available from the Wikipedia page on
2252 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor">Short
2253 Payment Descriptor</a>.  And in Germany, there is a system named
2254 <a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/">BezahlCode</a>,
2255 (<a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/wp-content/uploads/BezahlCode_TechDok.pdf">specification
2256 v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF</a>), which uses QR codes with
2257 URL-like formatting using "bank:" as the URI schema/protocol to
2258 provide the payment information.  There is also the
2259 <a href="http://www.ferd-net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231">ZUGFeRD</a>
2260 file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am
2261 not sure if it is done already.  Last, in Bolivia there are reports
2262 that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR
2263 format on invoices.  I have not been able to track down a
2264 specification for this format, because of my limited language skill
2265 sets.</p>
2266
2267       </div>
2268       <div class="tags">
2269
2270
2271         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>.
2272
2273
2274       </div>
2275     </div>
2276     <div class="padding"></div>
2277
2278     <div class="entry">
2279       <div class="title">
2280         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
2281       </div>
2282       <div class="date">
2283         15th March 2016
2284       </div>
2285       <div class="body">
2286         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
2287 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
2288 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
2289 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
2290 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
2291 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
2292 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
2293 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
2294 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
2295 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
2296 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
2297
2298 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
2299 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
2300 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
2301 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
2302 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
2303 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
2304 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
2305 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
2306 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
2307 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
2308 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
2309
2310 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
2311
2312 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
2313 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
2314 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
2315 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
2316 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
2317 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
2318
2319 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
2320 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
2321 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
2322 and graphing.</p>
2323
2324 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
2325 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
2326 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
2327 on
2328 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
2329 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
2330
2331       </div>
2332       <div class="tags">
2333
2334
2335         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2336
2337
2338       </div>
2339     </div>
2340     <div class="padding"></div>
2341
2342     <div class="entry">
2343       <div class="title">
2344         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
2345       </div>
2346       <div class="date">
2347         19th February 2016
2348       </div>
2349       <div class="body">
2350         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
2351 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
2352 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
2353 the code in the package in question, preferably in
2354 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
2355 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
2356
2357 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
2358 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
2359 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
2360 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
2361 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
2362 out what was wrong with
2363 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
2364 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
2365 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
2366 semi-automatically.</p>
2367
2368 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
2369 file based on the code in the source package,
2370 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
2371 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
2372 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
2373 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
2374 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
2375 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
2376 option in
2377 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
2378 blog posts from 2014</a>.
2379
2380 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
2381
2382 <p><pre>
2383 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
2384 </pre></p>
2385
2386 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
2387 this might not be the best option.</p>
2388
2389 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
2390 this approach in
2391 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
2392 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
2393 dpkg-copyright' option:
2394
2395 <p><pre>
2396 cme update dpkg-copyright
2397 </pre></p>
2398
2399 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
2400 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
2401
2402 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
2403 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
2404 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
2405 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
2406 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
2407 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
2408 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
2409 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
2410 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
2411 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
2412
2413 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
2414 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
2415 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
2416 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
2417
2418 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
2419 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
2420 planet.debian.org.</p>
2421
2422 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2423 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2424 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2425
2426 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
2427 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
2428
2429 <p><pre>
2430 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
2431   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
2432 </pre></p>
2433
2434 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
2435 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
2436 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
2437 with my packages in the future.</p>
2438
2439 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
2440 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
2441 command line.</p>
2442
2443       </div>
2444       <div class="tags">
2445
2446
2447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2448
2449
2450       </div>
2451     </div>
2452     <div class="padding"></div>
2453
2454     <div class="entry">
2455       <div class="title">
2456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
2457       </div>
2458       <div class="date">
2459          4th February 2016
2460       </div>
2461       <div class="body">
2462         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
2463 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
2464 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
2465 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
2466 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
2467 about. :)</p>
2468
2469 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
2470 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
2471 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
2472 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
2473 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
2474 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
2475
2476 <blockquote><pre>
2477 % apt install appstream
2478 [...]
2479 % apt update
2480 [...]
2481 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
2482   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
2483 firmware-qlogic
2484 %
2485 </pre></blockquote>
2486
2487 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
2488 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
2489 a way appstream can use.</p>
2490
2491 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
2492 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
2493 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
2494 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
2495 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
2496 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
2497
2498 <blockquote><pre>
2499 % apt install appstream
2500 [...]
2501 % apt update
2502 [...]
2503 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
2504   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
2505 bkchem
2506 phototonic
2507 inkscape
2508 shutter
2509 tetzle
2510 geeqie
2511 xia
2512 pinta
2513 gthumb
2514 karbon
2515 comix
2516 mirage
2517 viewnior
2518 postr
2519 ristretto
2520 kolourpaint4
2521 eog
2522 eom
2523 gimagereader
2524 midori
2525 %
2526 </pre></blockquote>
2527
2528 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
2529 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
2530
2531       </div>
2532       <div class="tags">
2533
2534
2535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2536
2537
2538       </div>
2539     </div>
2540     <div class="padding"></div>
2541
2542     <div class="entry">
2543       <div class="title">
2544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
2545       </div>
2546       <div class="date">
2547         24th January 2016
2548       </div>
2549       <div class="body">
2550         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
2551 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
2552 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
2553 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
2554 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
2555 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
2556 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
2557 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
2558 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
2559 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
2560 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
2561 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
2562 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
2563 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
2564 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
2565 entities.</p>
2566
2567 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
2568
2569 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
2570 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
2571 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
2572 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
2573 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
2574 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
2575 tool to do so is called
2576 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
2577 discovered it when I read
2578 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
2579 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
2580 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
2581 The python program was in Debian, but
2582 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
2583 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
2584 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
2585 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
2586 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
2587 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
2588 are now included
2589 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
2590
2591 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
2592 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
2593 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
2594 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
2595 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
2596 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
2597 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
2598 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
2599 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
2600 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
2601 about yourself with the services.</p>
2602
2603 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
2604 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
2605 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
2606 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
2607 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
2608 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
2609 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
2610 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
2611 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
2612 things.  A similar technique have been
2613 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
2614 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
2615 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
2616 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
2617 public.</p>
2618
2619 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
2620 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
2621 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
2622 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
2623
2624 <p>(I have uploaded
2625 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
2626 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
2627 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
2628
2629       </div>
2630       <div class="tags">
2631
2632
2633         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2634
2635
2636       </div>
2637     </div>
2638     <div class="padding"></div>
2639
2640     <div class="entry">
2641       <div class="title">
2642         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
2643       </div>
2644       <div class="date">
2645         15th January 2016
2646       </div>
2647       <div class="body">
2648         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
2649 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
2650 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
2651 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
2652 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
2653 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
2654 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
2655 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
2656 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
2657 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
2658 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
2659 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
2660 was not the first to propose this, as the
2661 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
2662 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
2663 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
2664 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
2665
2666 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
2667 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
2668 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
2669 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
2670 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
2671
2672 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
2673 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
2674 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
2675 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
2676 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
2677 done in /etc/.</p>
2678
2679 <blockquote><pre>
2680 apt install apt-transport-tor
2681 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
2682 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
2683 </pre></blockquote>
2684
2685 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
2686 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
2687 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
2688 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
2689
2690 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
2691 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
2692 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
2693 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
2694 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
2695 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
2696
2697 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
2698 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
2699 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
2700 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
2701 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
2702
2703 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
2704 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
2705 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
2706 system.</p>
2707
2708       </div>
2709       <div class="tags">
2710
2711
2712         Tags: <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>.
2713
2714
2715       </div>
2716     </div>
2717     <div class="padding"></div>
2718
2719     <div class="entry">
2720       <div class="title">
2721         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
2722       </div>
2723       <div class="date">
2724         23rd December 2015
2725       </div>
2726       <div class="body">
2727         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
2728 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
2729 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
2730 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
2731 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
2732 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
2733
2734 <p>A few days I came across
2735 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
2736 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
2737 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
2738 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
2739 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
2740 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
2741 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
2742 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
2743 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
2744 discovered the developer
2745 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
2746 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
2747 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
2748 archive.</p>
2749
2750 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
2751 it into Debian, where it currently
2752 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
2753 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
2754
2755 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
2756 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
2757 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
2758 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
2759 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
2760 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
2761 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
2762 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
2763 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
2764 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
2765 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
2766 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
2767
2768 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
2769 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
2770 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
2771 package show up in unstable.</p>
2772
2773       </div>
2774       <div class="tags">
2775
2776
2777         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2778
2779
2780       </div>
2781     </div>
2782     <div class="padding"></div>
2783
2784     <div class="entry">
2785       <div class="title">
2786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
2787       </div>
2788       <div class="date">
2789         20th December 2015
2790       </div>
2791       <div class="body">
2792         <p>Around three years ago, I created
2793 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
2794 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
2795 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
2796 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
2797 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
2798 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
2799 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
2800 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
2801 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
2802 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
2803 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
2804 with.</p>
2805
2806 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
2807 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
2808 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
2809 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
2810 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
2811 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
2812 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
2813 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
2814 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
2815 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
2816 Debian version of appstream.</p>
2817
2818 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
2819 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
2820 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
2821 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
2822 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
2823 how do add the required
2824 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
2825 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
2826 this content:</p>
2827
2828 <blockquote><pre>
2829 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
2830 &lt;component&gt;
2831   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
2832   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
2833   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
2834   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
2835   &lt;description&gt;
2836     &lt;p&gt;
2837       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
2838       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
2839       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
2840       launcher.
2841     &lt;/p&gt;
2842   &lt;/description&gt;
2843   &lt;provides&gt;
2844     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
2845   &lt;/provides&gt;
2846 &lt;/component&gt;
2847 </pre></blockquote>
2848
2849 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
2850 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
2851 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
2852 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
2853 0202.</p>
2854
2855 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
2856 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
2857 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
2858 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
2859 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
2860 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
2861 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
2862 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
2863
2864 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
2865 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
2866 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
2867 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
2868 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
2869
2870 <blockquote><pre>
2871 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
2872 </pre></blockquote>
2873
2874 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
2875 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
2876 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
2877 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
2878 question.</p>
2879
2880 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
2881 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
2882
2883 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
2884 try running this command on the command line:</p>
2885
2886 <blockquote><pre>
2887 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
2888 </pre></blockquote>
2889
2890 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2891 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2892 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2893
2894       </div>
2895       <div class="tags">
2896
2897
2898         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2899
2900
2901       </div>
2902     </div>
2903     <div class="padding"></div>
2904
2905     <div class="entry">
2906       <div class="title">
2907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
2908       </div>
2909       <div class="date">
2910         30th November 2015
2911       </div>
2912       <div class="body">
2913         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
2914 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
2915 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
2916 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
2917 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
2918
2919 <blockquote>
2920
2921 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
2922
2923 <blockquote>
2924 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
2925
2926 The first step is to choose a
2927 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
2928 code.<br/>
2929
2930 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
2931 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
2932
2933 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
2934 work<br/>
2935
2936 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
2937 </blockquote>
2938
2939 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
2940 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
2941 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
2942 0x57</a></small></p>
2943
2944 <p>As the Debian Website
2945 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
2946 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
2947 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
2948 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
2949 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
2950 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
2951 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
2952 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
2953 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
2954 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
2955 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
2956 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
2957 Freedom">FaiF</a>
2958 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
2959 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
2960 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
2961 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
2962 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
2963 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
2964 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
2965 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
2966 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
2967 In March the SFC supported a
2968 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
2969 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
2970 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
2971 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
2972 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
2973 conferences
2974 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
2975 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
2976 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
2977 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
2978 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
2979 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
2980 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
2981 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
2982 Software.</p>
2983
2984 <p>If you support Free Software,
2985 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
2986 what the SFC do, agree with their
2987 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
2988 principles</a>, are happy about their
2989 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
2990 work on a project that is an SFC
2991 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
2992 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
2993 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
2994 Allan Webber</a>,
2995 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
2996 Smith</a>,
2997 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
2998 Bacon</a>, myself and
2999 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
3000 becoming a
3001 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
3002 next week your donation will be
3003 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
3004 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
3005 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
3006 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
3007 social media accounts.</p>
3008
3009 </blockquote>
3010
3011 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
3012 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
3013 supporter too?</p>
3014
3015       </div>
3016       <div class="tags">
3017
3018
3019         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3020
3021
3022       </div>
3023     </div>
3024     <div class="padding"></div>
3025
3026     <div class="entry">
3027       <div class="title">
3028         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
3029       </div>
3030       <div class="date">
3031         17th November 2015
3032       </div>
3033       <div class="body">
3034         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
3035 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
3036 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
3037 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
3038 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
3039 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
3040 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
3041 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
3042 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
3043 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
3044
3045 <pre>
3046 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
3047       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
3048 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
3049 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
3050 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3051 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3052 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3053 </pre>
3054
3055 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
3056 my old key.</p>
3057
3058 <p>If you signed my old key
3059 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
3060 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
3061 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
3062 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
3063
3064       </div>
3065       <div class="tags">
3066
3067
3068         Tags: <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>.
3069
3070
3071       </div>
3072     </div>
3073     <div class="padding"></div>
3074
3075     <div class="entry">
3076       <div class="title">
3077         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html">Is Pentagon deciding the Norwegian negotiating position on Internet governance?</a>
3078       </div>
3079       <div class="date">
3080          3rd November 2015
3081       </div>
3082       <div class="body">
3083         <p>In Norway, all government offices are required by law to keep a
3084 list of every document or letter arriving and leaving their offices.
3085 Internal notes should also be documented.  The document list (called a mail
3086 journal - "postjournal" in Norwegian) is public information and thanks
3087 to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) the mail
3088 journal is available for everyone.  Most offices even publish the mail
3089 journal on their web pages, as PDFs or tables in web pages.  The state-level offices even have a shared web based search service (called
3090 <a href="https://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
3091 OEP</a>) to make it possible to search the entries in the list.  Not
3092 all journal entries show up on OEP, and the search service is hard to
3093 use, but OEP does make it easier to find at least some interesting
3094 journal entries .</p>
3095
3096 <p>In 2012 I came across a document in the mail journal for the
3097 Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications on OEP that
3098 piqued my interest.  The title of the document was
3099 "<a href="https://www.oep.no/search/resultSingle.html?journalPostId=4192362">Internet
3100 Governance and how it affects national security</a>" (Norwegian:
3101 "Internet Governance og påvirkning på nasjonal sikkerhet").  The
3102 document date was 2012-05-22, and it was said to be sent from the
3103 "Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations".  I asked for a
3104 copy, but my request was rejected with a reference to a legal clause said to authorize them to reject it
3105 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20,
3106 letter c</a>) and an explanation that the document was exempt because
3107 of foreign policy interests as it contained information related to the
3108 Norwegian negotiating position, negotiating strategies or similar.  I
3109 was told the information in the document related to the ongoing
3110 negotiation in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).  The
3111 explanation made sense to me in early January 2013, as a ITU
3112 conference in Dubay discussing Internet Governance
3113 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29">World
3114 Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12</a>) had just
3115 ended,
3116 <a href="http://www.digi.no/kommentarer/2012/12/18/tvil-om-usas-rolle-pa-teletoppmote">reportedly
3117 in chaos</a> when USA walked out of the negotiations and 25 countries
3118 including Norway refused to sign the new treaty.  It seemed
3119 reasonable to believe talks were still going on a few weeks later.
3120 Norway was represented at the ITU meeting by two authorities, the
3121 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/">Norwegian Communications Authority</a>
3122 and the <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dep/sd/">Ministry of
3123 Transport and Communications</a>.  This might be the reason the letter
3124 was sent to the ministry.  As I was unable to find the document in the
3125 mail journal of any Norwegian UN mission, I asked the ministry who had
3126 sent the document to the ministry, and was told that it was the Deputy
3127 Permanent Representative with the Permanent Mission of Norway in
3128 Geneva.</p>
3129
3130 <p>Three years later, I was still curious about the content of that
3131 document, and again asked for a copy, believing the negotiation was
3132 over now.  This time
3133 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/kopi_av_dokumenter_i_sak_2012914">I
3134 asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
3135 receiver</a> and
3136 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/brev_om_internet_governance_og_p">asked
3137 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender</a> for a
3138 copy, to see if they both agreed that it should be withheld from the
3139 public.  The ministry upheld its rejection quoting the same law
3140 reference as before, while the permanent mission rejected it quoting a
3141 different clause
3142 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20
3143 letter b</a>), claiming that they were required to keep the
3144 content of the document from the public because it contained
3145 information given to Norway with the expressed or implied expectation
3146 that the information should not be made public.  I asked the permanent
3147 mission for an explanation, and was told that the document contained
3148 an account from a meeting held in the Pentagon for a limited group of NATO
3149 nations where the organiser of the meeting did not intend the content
3150 of the meeting to be publicly known.  They explained that giving me a
3151 copy might cause Norway to not get access to similar information in
3152 the future and thus hurt the future foreign interests of Norway.  They
3153 also explained that the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was not
3154 the author of the document, they only got a copy of it, and because of
3155 this had not listed it in their mail journal.</p>
3156
3157 <p>Armed with this
3158 knowledge I asked the Ministry to reconsider and asked who was the
3159 author of the document, now realising that it was not same as the
3160 "sender" according to Ministry of Transport and Communications.  The
3161 ministry upheld its rejection but told me the name of the author of
3162 the document.  According to
3163 <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/unga69_rapport1/id2001204/">a
3164 government report</a> the author was with the Permanent Mission of
3165 Norway in New York a bit more than a year later (2014-09-22), so I
3166 guessed that might be the office responsible for writing and sending
3167 the report initially and
3168 <a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/mote_2012_i_pentagon_om_itu">asked
3169 them for a copy</a> but I was obviously wrong as I was told that the
3170 document was unknown to them and that the author did not work there
3171 when the document was written.  Next, I asked the Permanent Mission of
3172 Norway in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider and at least
3173 tell me who sent the document to Deputy Permanent Representative with
3174 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva.  The Foreign Ministry also
3175 upheld its rejection, but told me that the person sending the document
3176 to Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was the defence attaché with
3177 the Norwegian Embassy in Washington.  I do not know if this is the
3178 same person as the author of the document.</p>
3179
3180 <p>If I understand the situation correctly, someone capable of
3181 inviting selected NATO nations to a meeting in Pentagon organised a
3182 meeting where someone representing the Norwegian defence attaché in
3183 Washington attended, and the account from this meeting is interpreted
3184 by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to expose Norways
3185 negotiating position, negotiating strategies and similar regarding the
3186 ITU negotiations on Internet Governance.  It is truly amazing what can
3187 be derived from mere meta-data.</p>
3188
3189 <p>I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
3190 And what exactly was said and done at the meeting?  Anyone know?</p>
3191
3192       </div>
3193       <div class="tags">
3194
3195
3196         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
3197
3198
3199       </div>
3200     </div>
3201     <div class="padding"></div>
3202
3203     <div class="entry">
3204       <div class="title">
3205         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_book___Fri_kultur__by__lessig__a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of__Free_Culture__from_2004.html">New book, "Fri kultur" by @lessig, a Norwegian Bokmål translation of "Free Culture" from 2004</a>
3206       </div>
3207       <div class="date">
3208         31st October 2015
3209       </div>
3210       <div class="body">
3211         <p>People keep asking me where to get the various forms of the book I
3212 published last week, the Norwegian Bokmål edition of Lawrence Lessigs
3213 book <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>.  It was
3214 published on paper via lulu.com, and is also available in PDF, ePub
3215 and MOBI format.  I currently sell the paper edition for self cost
3216 from lulu.com, but might extend the distribution to book stores like
3217 Amazon and Barnes & Noble later.  This will double the price and force
3218 me to make a profit from selling the book.  Anyway, here are links to
3219 get the book in different formats:</p>
3220
3221 <ul>
3222
3223   <li><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22406445.html">Buy
3224     paper edition from lulu.com</a></li>
3225
3226   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf">Download
3227     PDF, size 7.9 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
3228
3229   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub">Download
3230     ePub, size 11 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
3231
3232   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi">Download
3233     MOBI, size 3.8 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
3234
3235 </ul>
3236
3237 <p>Note that the MOBI version have problems with the table of content,
3238 at least with the viewers I have been able to test.  And the ePub file
3239 have several problems according to
3240 <a href="https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck">epubcheck</a>, but seem
3241 to display fine in the viewers I have tested.  All the files needed to
3242 create the book in various forms are available from
3243 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">the
3244 github project page</a>.</p>
3245
3246 <p>The project got press coverage from the Norwegian IT news site
3247 digi.no.  Check out the article
3248 "<a href="http://www.digi.no/juss_og_samfunn/2015/10/29/vil-apne-politikernes-oyne-for-creative-commons">Vil
3249 åpne politikernes øyne for Creative Commons</a>".</li>
3250
3251 <p>I've <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">blogged
3252 about the project</a> as it moved along.  The blogs document the translation
3253 progress and insights I had along the way.</p>
3254
3255       </div>
3256       <div class="tags">
3257
3258
3259         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3260
3261
3262       </div>
3263     </div>
3264     <div class="padding"></div>
3265
3266     <div class="entry">
3267       <div class="title">
3268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Free_Culture__by__lessig___The_background_story_for_Creative_Commons___new_edition_available.html">"Free Culture" by @lessig - The background story for Creative Commons - new edition available</a>
3269       </div>
3270       <div class="date">
3271         23rd October 2015
3272       </div>
3273       <div class="body">
3274         <p><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">Click
3275 here to buy the book</a>.</p>
3276
3277 <p>In 2004, as the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons
3278 movement</a> gained momentum, its creator Lawrence Lessig wrote the
3279 book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)">Free
3280 Culture</a> to explain the problems with increasing copyright
3281 regulation and suggest some solutions.  I read the book back then and
3282 was very moved by it.  Reading the book inspired me and changed the
3283 way I looked on copyright law, and I would love it if more people
3284 would read it too.</p>
3285
3286 <p>Because of this, I decided in the summer of 2012 to translate it to
3287 Norwegian Bokmål and publish it for those of my friends and family
3288 that prefer to read books in Norwegian.  I translated the book using
3289 docbook and a gettext PO file, and a byproduct of this process is a
3290 new edition of the English original.  I've been in touch with the
3291 author during by work, and he said it was fine with him if I also
3292 published an English version.  So I decided to do so.  Today, I made
3293 this edition
3294 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">available
3295 for sale on Lulu.com</a>, for those interested in a paper book.  This
3296 is the cover:
3297
3298 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-10-23-free-culture-english-published-cover.png"/></a></p>
3299
3300 <p>The Norwegian Bokmål version will be available for purchase in a
3301 few days.  I also plan to publish a French version in a few weeks or
3302 months, depending on the amount of people with knowledge of French to
3303 join the translation project.  So far there is only one active
3304 person, but the French book is almost completely translated but
3305 need some proof reading.</p>
3306
3307 <p>The book is also available in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats from
3308 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
3309 github project page</a>.  Note the ePub and MOBI versions have some
3310 formatting problems I believe is due to bugs in the docbook tool
3311 dbtoepub (Debian BTS issues
3312 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795842">#795842</a>
3313 and
3314 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796871">#796871</a>),
3315 but I have not taken the time to investigate.  I recommend the PDF and
3316 ePub version for now, as they seem to show up fine in the viewers I
3317 have available.</p>
3318
3319 <p>After the translation to Norwegian Bokmål was complete, I was able
3320 to secure some sponsoring from
3321 <a href="http://www.nuugfoundation.no/">the NUUG Foundation</a> to
3322 print the book.  This is the reason their logo is located on the back
3323 cover. I am very grateful for their contribution, and will use it to
3324 give a copy of the Norwegian edition to members of the Norwegian
3325 Parliament and other decision makers here in Norway.</p>
3326
3327       </div>
3328       <div class="tags">
3329
3330
3331         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>.
3332
3333
3334       </div>
3335     </div>
3336     <div class="padding"></div>
3337
3338     <div class="entry">
3339       <div class="title">
3340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html">Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago</a>
3341       </div>
3342       <div class="date">
3343         19th October 2015
3344       </div>
3345       <div class="body">
3346         <p>Last year, <a href="https://lessig2016.us/">US president candidate
3347 in the Democratic Party</a> Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden.  The
3348 one hour interview was
3349 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE">published by
3350 Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube</a>, and the meeting took
3351 place 2014-10-20.</p>
3352
3353 <p>The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful
3354 information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about
3355 being raised.  Please check it out.</p>
3356
3357 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o_Sr96TFQQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
3358
3359 <p>I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try
3360 to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any
3361 luck.  It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the
3362 Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament,
3363 <a href="https://tale.holderdeord.no/speeches/s131106/68">claiming
3364 Snowden is no Whistle-Blower</a> because he should have taken up his
3365 concerns internally and using official channels.  It make me sad
3366 that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.</p>
3367
3368       </div>
3369       <div class="tags">
3370
3371
3372         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3373
3374
3375       </div>
3376     </div>
3377     <div class="padding"></div>
3378
3379     <div class="entry">
3380       <div class="title">
3381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html">The Story of Aaron Swartz - Let us all weep!</a>
3382       </div>
3383       <div class="date">
3384          8th October 2015
3385       </div>
3386       <div class="body">
3387         <p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
3388 Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
3389 and depressing at the same time.  The work of Aaron Swartz has
3390 inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
3391 was able to initiate or complete.  I wish I am able to do as much good
3392 in my life as he did in his.  Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
3393 inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
3394 improving the society and this world.  And it is depressing in
3395 documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
3396 corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
3397 downloading too many scientific articles.  Aaron is dead.  Let us all
3398 weep.</p>
3399
3400 <p>The movie is also available on
3401 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>.  I
3402 wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
3403 my parents.</p>
3404
3405       </div>
3406       <div class="tags">
3407
3408
3409         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>.
3410
3411
3412       </div>
3413     </div>
3414     <div class="padding"></div>
3415
3416     <div class="entry">
3417       <div class="title">
3418         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
3419       </div>
3420       <div class="date">
3421          1st October 2015
3422       </div>
3423       <div class="body">
3424         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
3425 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
3426 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
3427 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
3428 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
3429 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
3430 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
3431 French translation available from the
3432 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
3433 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
3434 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
3435 to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition.  We meet
3436 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
3437 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
3438 edition, check out
3439 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
3440 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
3441 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
3442 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
3443
3444       </div>
3445       <div class="tags">
3446
3447
3448         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>.
3449
3450
3451       </div>
3452     </div>
3453     <div class="padding"></div>
3454
3455     <div class="entry">
3456       <div class="title">
3457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
3458       </div>
3459       <div class="date">
3460         24th September 2015
3461       </div>
3462       <div class="body">
3463         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
3464 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
3465 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
3466 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
3467 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
3468 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
3469 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
3470
3471 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
3472
3473 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
3474 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
3475 by someone else.  I found
3476 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
3477 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
3478 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
3479 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
3480 from him.  Via
3481 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
3482 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
3483 discovered
3484 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
3485 available in Debian.</p>
3486
3487 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
3488 battery stats ever since. Now my
3489 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
3490 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
3491 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
3492 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
3493
3494 <pre>
3495 #!/bin/sh
3496 # Inspired by
3497 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
3498 # See also
3499 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
3500 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
3501
3502 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
3503     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
3504
3505 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
3506     (
3507         printf "timestamp,"
3508         for f in $files; do
3509             printf "%s," $f
3510         done
3511         echo
3512     ) > "$logfile"
3513 fi
3514
3515 log_battery() {
3516     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
3517     # when several log processes run in parallel.
3518     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
3519         for f in $files; do \
3520             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
3521         done)
3522     echo "$msg"
3523 }
3524
3525 cd /sys/class/power_supply
3526
3527 for bat in BAT*; do
3528     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
3529 done
3530 </pre>
3531
3532 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
3533 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
3534 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
3535 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
3536 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
3537 The code for the Debian package
3538 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
3539 available on github</a>.</p>
3540
3541 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
3542
3543 <pre>
3544 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
3545 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
3546 [...]
3547 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
3548 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
3549 </pre>
3550
3551 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
3552 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
3553 battery.</p>
3554
3555 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
3556 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
3557 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
3558 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
3559 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
3560 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
3561 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
3562 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
3563 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
3564 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
3565 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
3566 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
3567 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
3568 Linux too.</p>
3569
3570 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
3571 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
3572 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
3573 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
3574 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
3575 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
3576 load).</p>
3577
3578 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
3579 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
3580 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
3581 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
3582 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
3583 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
3584 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
3585 those.</p>
3586
3587 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
3588 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
3589 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
3590 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
3591 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
3592 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
3593 specific.</p>
3594
3595       </div>
3596       <div class="tags">
3597
3598
3599         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3600
3601
3602       </div>
3603     </div>
3604     <div class="padding"></div>
3605
3606     <div class="entry">
3607       <div class="title">
3608         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
3609       </div>
3610       <div class="date">
3611          3rd September 2015
3612       </div>
3613       <div class="body">
3614         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
3615 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
3616 the
3617 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
3618 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
3619 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
3620 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
3621
3622 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
3623 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
3624 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
3625 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
3626 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
3627 version.  Not only did he create a
3628 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
3629 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
3630 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
3631 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
3632 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
3633 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
3634 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
3635 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
3636 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
3637 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
3638
3639 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
3640 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
3641 current english version look like this:</p>
3642
3643 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
3644
3645 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
3646 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
3647 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
3648 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
3649 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
3650
3651 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
3652 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
3653 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
3654 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
3655 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
3656 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
3657
3658       </div>
3659       <div class="tags">
3660
3661
3662         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>.
3663
3664
3665       </div>
3666     </div>
3667     <div class="padding"></div>
3668
3669     <div class="entry">
3670       <div class="title">
3671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
3672       </div>
3673       <div class="date">
3674         19th August 2015
3675       </div>
3676       <div class="body">
3677         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
3678 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
3679 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
3680 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
3681 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
3682 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
3683 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
3684 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
3685 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
3686 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
3687 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
3688 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
3689 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
3690 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
3691 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
3692 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
3693 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
3694
3695 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
3696 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
3697 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
3698 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
3699 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
3700 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
3701
3702       </div>
3703       <div class="tags">
3704
3705
3706         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>.
3707
3708
3709       </div>
3710     </div>
3711     <div class="padding"></div>
3712
3713     <div class="entry">
3714       <div class="title">
3715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
3716       </div>
3717       <div class="date">
3718          9th August 2015
3719       </div>
3720       <div class="body">
3721         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
3722 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
3723 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
3724 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
3725 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
3726 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
3727 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
3728 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
3729 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
3730
3731 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
3732 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
3733 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
3734 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
3735 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
3736
3737 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
3738 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
3739 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
3740 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
3741 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
3742 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
3743
3744 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
3745 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
3746 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
3747 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
3748 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
3749 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
3750 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
3751 bring the prize down further.</p>
3752
3753 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
3754 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
3755 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
3756 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
3757 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
3758 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
3759 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
3760 to the task.</p>
3761
3762 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
3763 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
3764 status can as usual be found on
3765 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
3766 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
3767 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
3768 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
3769 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
3770 formatting.</p>
3771
3772 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
3773 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
3774 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
3775 result in a few months.</p>
3776
3777       </div>
3778       <div class="tags">
3779
3780
3781         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>.
3782
3783
3784       </div>
3785     </div>
3786     <div class="padding"></div>
3787
3788     <div class="entry">
3789       <div class="title">
3790         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
3791       </div>
3792       <div class="date">
3793         16th July 2015
3794       </div>
3795       <div class="body">
3796         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
3797 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
3798 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
3799 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
3800 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
3801 chapter.  Based on the
3802 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
3803 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
3804 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
3805 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
3806 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
3807 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
3808 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
3809 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
3810
3811 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
3812 and add this text there:</p>
3813
3814 <pre>
3815 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
3816 </pre>
3817
3818 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
3819 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
3820 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
3821
3822 <pre>
3823 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3824 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
3825   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
3826     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
3827 \usepackage{endnotes}
3828 \let\footnote=\endnote
3829 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
3830 \begin{document}
3831     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
3832   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
3833 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3834 </pre>
3835
3836 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
3837 this:</p>
3838
3839 <pre>
3840 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
3841 </pre>
3842
3843 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
3844 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
3845 book project</a> is located.</p>
3846
3847       </div>
3848       <div class="tags">
3849
3850
3851         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>.
3852
3853
3854       </div>
3855     </div>
3856     <div class="padding"></div>
3857
3858     <div class="entry">
3859       <div class="title">
3860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
3861       </div>
3862       <div class="date">
3863          7th July 2015
3864       </div>
3865       <div class="body">
3866         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
3867 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
3868 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
3869 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
3870 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
3871 does not.</p>
3872
3873 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
3874 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
3875 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
3876 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
3877
3878 <p><blockquote>
3879
3880 <p>According to
3881 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
3882 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
3883 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
3884 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
3885 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
3886 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
3887
3888 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
3889 PDF named
3890 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
3891 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
3892 fees:</p>
3893
3894 <ul>
3895  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
3896   <ul>
3897    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
3898      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
3899      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
3900      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
3901
3902    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
3903      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
3904   </ul></li>
3905
3906  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
3907   <ul>
3908    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
3909      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
3910      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
3911
3912    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
3913      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
3914   </ul></li>
3915 </ul>
3916
3917 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
3918 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
3919 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
3920 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
3921 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
3922 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
3923
3924 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
3925 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
3926 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
3927 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
3928 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
3929 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
3930 access to personalized services?</p>
3931
3932 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
3933 Internet.</p>
3934 </blockquote></p>
3935
3936 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
3937 with the MPEG LA:</p>
3938
3939 <p><blockquote>
3940 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
3941 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
3942
3943 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
3944 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
3945 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
3946 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
3947 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
3948 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
3949 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
3950
3951 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
3952 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
3953 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
3954 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
3955 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
3956 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
3957 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
3958 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
3959 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
3960 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
3961 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
3962 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
3963
3964 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
3965 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
3966 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
3967 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
3968 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
3969 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
3970 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
3971
3972 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
3973 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
3974 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
3975 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
3976
3977 <p>For your reference, I have attached
3978 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
3979 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
3980 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
3981 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
3982 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
3983 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
3984 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
3985 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
3986 be used for execution.</p>
3987
3988 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
3989 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
3990 free to contact me directly.</p>
3991 </blockquote></p>
3992
3993 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
3994 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
3995 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
3996 But I still had a few questions:</p>
3997
3998 <p><blockquote>
3999 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
4000 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
4001 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
4002 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
4003 typically look similar to this:
4004
4005 <p><blockquote>
4006   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
4007   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
4008   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
4009   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
4010   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
4011   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
4012   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
4013   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
4014 </blockquote></p>
4015
4016 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
4017 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
4018 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
4019 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
4020 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
4021 </blockquote></p>
4022
4023 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
4024 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
4025
4026 <p><blockquote>
4027
4028 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
4029 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
4030 reads:</p>
4031
4032 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
4033 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
4034 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
4035 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
4036 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
4037 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
4038 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
4039 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
4040
4041 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
4042 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
4043 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
4044 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
4045 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
4046 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
4047 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
4048 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
4049
4050 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
4051 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
4052 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
4053 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
4054 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
4055 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
4056 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
4057 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
4058 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
4059
4060 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
4061 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
4062 Norway.</p>
4063
4064 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
4065 assistance, just let me know.</p>
4066 </blockquote></p>
4067
4068 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
4069 asked for more information:</p>
4070
4071 <p><blockquote>
4072
4073 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
4074 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
4075 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
4076 list available from &lt;URL:
4077 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
4078 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
4079 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
4080 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
4081 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
4082
4083 </blockquote></p>
4084
4085 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
4086 in that list:</p>
4087
4088 <p><blockquote>
4089
4090 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
4091 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
4092 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
4093 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
4094 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
4095 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
4096 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
4097 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
4098 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
4099
4100 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
4101 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
4102 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
4103 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
4104 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
4105 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
4106 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
4107 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
4108 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
4109 Portfolio Patents.</p>
4110 </blockquote></p>
4111
4112 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
4113 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
4114 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
4115 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
4116 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
4117 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
4118 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
4119 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
4120 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
4121
4122       </div>
4123       <div class="tags">
4124
4125
4126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4127
4128
4129       </div>
4130     </div>
4131     <div class="padding"></div>
4132
4133     <div class="entry">
4134       <div class="title">
4135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
4136       </div>
4137       <div class="date">
4138          5th July 2015
4139       </div>
4140       <div class="body">
4141         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
4142 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
4143 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
4144 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
4145 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
4146 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
4147 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
4148 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
4149 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
4150 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
4151 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
4152
4153 <p>One tip I got was to use the
4154 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
4155 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
4156 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
4157 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
4158 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
4159 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
4160
4161 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
4162 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
4163 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
4164 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
4165 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
4166 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
4167 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
4168 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
4169 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
4170 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
4171 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
4172 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
4173 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
4174 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
4175 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
4176
4177 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
4178 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
4179 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
4180 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
4181
4182 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
4183 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
4184
4185 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
4186 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
4187 different
4188 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
4189 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
4190
4191       </div>
4192       <div class="tags">
4193
4194
4195         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4196
4197
4198       </div>
4199     </div>
4200     <div class="padding"></div>
4201
4202     <div class="entry">
4203       <div class="title">
4204         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
4205       </div>
4206       <div class="date">
4207          3rd July 2015
4208       </div>
4209       <div class="body">
4210         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
4211 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
4212 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
4213 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
4214 flickering.</p>
4215
4216 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
4217 still as
4218 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
4219 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
4220 good help from
4221 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
4222 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
4223 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
4224 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
4225 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
4226 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
4227 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
4228 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
4229 deteriorated since X41.</p>
4230
4231 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
4232 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
4233 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
4234 have suggestions.</p>
4235
4236 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
4237 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
4238 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
4239
4240       </div>
4241       <div class="tags">
4242
4243
4244         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4245
4246
4247       </div>
4248     </div>
4249     <div class="padding"></div>
4250
4251     <div class="entry">
4252       <div class="title">
4253         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
4254       </div>
4255       <div class="date">
4256          2nd July 2015
4257       </div>
4258       <div class="body">
4259         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
4260 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
4261 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
4262 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
4263 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
4264 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
4265 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
4266 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
4267 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
4268 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
4269 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
4270 Youtube too</a>.</p>
4271
4272 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
4273 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
4274 pages</a> to view them.</p>
4275
4276 <ul>
4277
4278   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
4279       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
4280
4281   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
4282
4283   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
4284       (Olav Helland)</li>
4285
4286   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
4287       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
4288
4289   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
4290
4291   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
4292
4293   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
4294       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
4295
4296   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
4297
4298   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
4299
4300   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
4301
4302   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
4303
4304   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
4305       Sevens)</li>
4306
4307   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
4308       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
4309
4310   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
4311       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
4312
4313   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
4314       Dyvik)</li>
4315
4316   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
4317
4318 </ul>
4319
4320 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
4321 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
4322 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
4323 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
4324 which sent me on a detour to
4325 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
4326 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
4327 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
4328
4329       </div>
4330       <div class="tags">
4331
4332
4333         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>.
4334
4335
4336       </div>
4337     </div>
4338     <div class="padding"></div>
4339
4340     <div class="entry">
4341       <div class="title">
4342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
4343       </div>
4344       <div class="date">
4345         15th June 2015
4346       </div>
4347       <div class="body">
4348         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
4349 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
4350 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
4351 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
4352 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
4353 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
4354 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
4355 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
4356 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
4357
4358 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
4359 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
4360 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
4361 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
4362
4363 <pre>
4364 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
4365
4366 real    0m2.841s
4367 user    0m0.184s
4368 sys     0m0.036s
4369 %
4370 </pre>
4371
4372 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
4373 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
4374 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
4375 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
4376 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
4377
4378 <pre>
4379 digraph ownership {
4380 rankdir = LR;
4381 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
4382 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
4383 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
4384 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
4385 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
4386 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
4387 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
4388 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
4389 }
4390 </pre>
4391
4392 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
4393 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
4394 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
4395
4396 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
4397
4398 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
4399 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
4400 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
4401 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
4402 of the ownership links.</p>
4403
4404 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
4405 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
4406
4407 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
4408 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
4409 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
4410 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
4411 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
4412 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
4413 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
4414
4415       </div>
4416       <div class="tags">
4417
4418
4419         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
4420
4421
4422       </div>
4423     </div>
4424     <div class="padding"></div>
4425
4426     <div class="entry">
4427       <div class="title">
4428         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
4429       </div>
4430       <div class="date">
4431         11th June 2015
4432       </div>
4433       <div class="body">
4434         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
4435 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
4436 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
4437 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
4438 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
4439 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
4440 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
4441 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
4442 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
4443 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
4444 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
4445 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
4446 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
4447
4448 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
4449 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
4450 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
4451 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
4452 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
4453 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
4454 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
4455 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
4456 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
4457 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
4458
4459 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
4460 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
4461 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
4462 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
4463 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
4464 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
4465 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
4466 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
4467 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
4468
4469 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
4470 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
4471 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
4472 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
4473 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
4474 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
4475 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
4476 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
4477 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
4478 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
4479 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
4480
4481       </div>
4482       <div class="tags">
4483
4484
4485         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>.
4486
4487
4488       </div>
4489     </div>
4490     <div class="padding"></div>
4491
4492     <div class="entry">
4493       <div class="title">
4494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
4495       </div>
4496       <div class="date">
4497         10th May 2015
4498       </div>
4499       <div class="body">
4500         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
4501 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
4502 criminal or not, are
4503 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
4504 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
4505 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
4506 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
4507 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
4508 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
4509 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
4510 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
4511 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
4512 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
4513 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
4514 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
4515 the police.</p>
4516
4517 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
4518 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
4519 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
4520 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
4521 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
4522 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
4523 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
4524 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
4525 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
4526 is good to know that
4527 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
4528 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
4529 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
4530 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
4531 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
4532 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
4533 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
4534 business getting access to that information.</p>
4535
4536 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
4537 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
4538 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
4539 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
4540 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
4541 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
4542 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
4543
4544 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
4545 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
4546 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
4547 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
4548
4549 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
4550 really could make such decision, I wrote
4551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
4552 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
4553 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
4554
4555       </div>
4556       <div class="tags">
4557
4558
4559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4560
4561
4562       </div>
4563     </div>
4564     <div class="padding"></div>
4565
4566     <div class="entry">
4567       <div class="title">
4568         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
4569       </div>
4570       <div class="date">
4571          1st May 2015
4572       </div>
4573       <div class="body">
4574         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
4575 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
4576 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
4577 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
4578 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
4579 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
4580 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
4581
4582 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
4583 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
4584 the 2012 numbers are from
4585 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
4586 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
4587 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
4588 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
4589 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
4590
4591 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
4592 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
4593 enough.  See for example a
4594 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
4595 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
4596 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
4597 to get the storage requirements.</p>
4598
4599 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
4600 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
4601 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
4602 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
4603 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
4604
4605 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
4606 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
4607 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
4608 and large organisations:</p>
4609
4610 <table border="1">
4611 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
4612 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
4613 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
4614 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
4615 </table>
4616
4617 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
4618 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
4619 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
4620 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
4621 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
4622 collecting the data?</p>
4623
4624       </div>
4625       <div class="tags">
4626
4627
4628         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4629
4630
4631       </div>
4632     </div>
4633     <div class="padding"></div>
4634
4635     <div class="entry">
4636       <div class="title">
4637         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
4638       </div>
4639       <div class="date">
4640         26th April 2015
4641       </div>
4642       <div class="body">
4643         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
4644 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
4645 announcement today</a>:</p>
4646
4647 <pre>
4648 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
4649 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
4650 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
4651 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
4652
4653 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
4654 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
4655 later today ;)
4656
4657 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
4658 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
4659 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
4660 be possible and encouraged!
4661
4662 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
4663 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
4664
4665 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
4666 operating system for schools, universities and other
4667 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
4668 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
4669 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
4670 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
4671 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
4672 days.
4673
4674 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
4675 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
4676 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
4677 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
4678
4679 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
4680 installation instructions are available, including detailed
4681 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
4682 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
4683 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
4684 least 5 characters!
4685
4686 == Where to download ==
4687
4688 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
4689 can be downloaded at the following locations:
4690
4691     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
4692     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
4693
4694 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
4695
4696 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
4697 available, with more software included (saving additional download
4698 time):
4699
4700     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
4701     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
4702
4703 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
4704
4705 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
4706 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
4707 options.
4708
4709 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
4710
4711 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
4712 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
4713
4714 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
4715 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
4716 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
4717 online version of the translated manual.
4718
4719 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
4720 release notes and the installation manual:
4721 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
4722 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
4723
4724
4725 == Errata / known problems ==
4726
4727     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
4728     DHCP (#780461).
4729
4730     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
4731
4732 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
4733 hostname immediately.
4734
4735 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
4736 more current and complete list.
4737
4738 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
4739
4740 === Software updates ===
4741
4742 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
4743
4744  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
4745    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
4746    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
4747
4748  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
4749    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
4750    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
4751    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
4752      the others see the manual.
4753  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
4754  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
4755  * GOsa 2.7.4
4756  * LTSP 5.5.4
4757  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
4758  * new boot framework: systemd
4759  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
4760  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
4761  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
4762  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
4763  * golearn 0.9
4764  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
4765  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
4766  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
4767  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
4768    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
4769
4770 === Installation changes ===
4771
4772     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
4773     for the hardware present.
4774
4775 === Fixed bugs ===
4776
4777 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
4778 from a user perspective:
4779
4780  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
4781    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
4782    information is corrected (710362)
4783
4784  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
4785
4786 === Sugar desktop removed ===
4787
4788 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
4789 available in Debian Edu jessie.
4790
4791
4792 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
4793
4794 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
4795 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4796 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
4797 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4798 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4799 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4800 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
4801 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
4802 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
4803 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
4804 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
4805 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
4806 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
4807 environment.
4808
4809 == About Debian ==
4810
4811 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
4812 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
4813 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
4814 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
4815 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
4816 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
4817 operating system.
4818
4819 == Thanks ==
4820
4821 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
4822 You rock.
4823 </pre>
4824
4825       </div>
4826       <div class="tags">
4827
4828
4829         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4830
4831
4832       </div>
4833     </div>
4834     <div class="padding"></div>
4835
4836     <div class="entry">
4837       <div class="title">
4838         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
4839       </div>
4840       <div class="date">
4841         15th April 2015
4842       </div>
4843       <div class="body">
4844         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
4845 computer system for schools I've involved in,
4846 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
4847 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
4848 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
4849 Agarwal.</p>
4850
4851 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4852
4853 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
4854 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
4855 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
4856 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
4857 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
4858 few software start-ups as well.</p>
4859
4860 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4861 project?</strong></p>
4862
4863 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
4864 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
4865 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
4866 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
4867 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
4868 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
4869 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
4870
4871 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4872 Edu?</strong></p>
4873
4874 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
4875 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
4876 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
4877 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
4878 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
4879 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
4880 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
4881 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
4882
4883 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
4884 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
4885 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
4886 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
4887 for the developer per-se.</p>
4888
4889 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4890 Edu?</strong></p>
4891
4892 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
4893 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
4894 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
4895
4896 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
4897 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
4898 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
4899 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
4900 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
4901 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
4902 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
4903
4904 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
4905 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
4906 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
4907
4908 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
4909 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
4910 interactive manner. While sites such as the
4911 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
4912 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
4913 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
4914 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
4915 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
4916 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
4917 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
4918 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
4919 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
4920 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
4921 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
4922
4923 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
4924 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
4925 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
4926 also be used.</p>
4927
4928 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
4929 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
4930 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
4931 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
4932 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
4933 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
4934 the user's input.</p>
4935
4936 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
4937 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
4938 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
4939 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
4940 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
4941 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
4942 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
4943 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
4944
4945 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
4946 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
4947 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
4948 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
4949 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
4950 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
4951 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
4952 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
4953
4954 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4955
4956 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
4957 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
4958 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
4959 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
4960 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
4961
4962 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4963 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4964
4965 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
4966 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
4967 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
4968 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
4969 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
4970 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
4971
4972 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
4973 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
4974 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
4975 well.</p>
4976
4977 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
4978 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
4979 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
4980 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
4981
4982 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
4983 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
4984 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
4985 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
4986 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
4987 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
4988 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
4989 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
4990 releases.</p>
4991
4992 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
4993 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
4994 is aimed at.
4995
4996 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
4997 around 2 years, and
4998 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
4999 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
5000 there was :</p>
5001
5002 <ol>
5003
5004   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
5005    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
5006    portion/syllabus given.</li>
5007
5008   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
5009    is in the syllabus.</li>
5010
5011   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
5012    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
5013    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
5014    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
5015    as recognizable as say a
5016    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
5017    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
5018    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
5019    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
5020    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
5021    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
5022
5023 </ol>
5024
5025       </div>
5026       <div class="tags">
5027
5028
5029         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5030
5031
5032       </div>
5033     </div>
5034     <div class="padding"></div>
5035
5036     <div class="entry">
5037       <div class="title">
5038         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
5039       </div>
5040       <div class="date">
5041          7th April 2015
5042       </div>
5043       <div class="body">
5044         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
5045 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
5046 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
5047
5048 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
5049 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
5050 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
5051 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
5052 part of my involvement with the
5053 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
5054 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
5055 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
5056 Hackathon with our friends
5057 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
5058 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
5059 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
5060 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
5061
5062 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
5063 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
5064
5065       </div>
5066       <div class="tags">
5067
5068
5069         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
5070
5071
5072       </div>
5073     </div>
5074     <div class="padding"></div>
5075
5076     <div class="entry">
5077       <div class="title">
5078         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
5079       </div>
5080       <div class="date">
5081          4th April 2015
5082       </div>
5083       <div class="body">
5084         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
5085 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
5086 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
5087 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
5088 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
5089 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
5090 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
5091 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
5092 project pages.  You can also check out the
5093 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
5094 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
5095 and HTML version available in the
5096 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
5097 directory</a>.</p>
5098
5099 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
5100 you find any.</p>
5101
5102       </div>
5103       <div class="tags">
5104
5105
5106         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>.
5107
5108
5109       </div>
5110     </div>
5111     <div class="padding"></div>
5112
5113     <div class="entry">
5114       <div class="title">
5115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
5116       </div>
5117       <div class="date">
5118          9th March 2015
5119       </div>
5120       <div class="body">
5121         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
5122 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
5123 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
5124 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
5125 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
5126 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
5127 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
5128 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
5129 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
5130 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
5131 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
5132 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
5133 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
5134 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
5135
5136 <p>The list of NUUG videos
5137 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
5138 include things like a
5139 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
5140 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
5141 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
5142 re-implementation</a>, the
5143 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
5144 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
5145 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
5146 video</A> and many others.</p>
5147
5148 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
5149 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
5150 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
5151 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
5152 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
5153 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
5154 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
5155 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
5156 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
5157 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
5158
5159 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
5160 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
5161 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
5162 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
5163 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
5164 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
5165 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
5166 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
5167 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
5168 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
5169
5170       </div>
5171       <div class="tags">
5172
5173
5174         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5175
5176
5177       </div>
5178     </div>
5179     <div class="padding"></div>
5180
5181     <div class="entry">
5182       <div class="title">
5183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
5184       </div>
5185       <div class="date">
5186         28th February 2015
5187       </div>
5188       <div class="body">
5189         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
5190 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
5191 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
5192 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
5193 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
5194 made for
5195 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
5196 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
5197 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
5198 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
5199 a friend have
5200 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
5201 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
5202 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
5203 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
5204 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
5205 it happen ourselves.
5206 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
5207 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
5208 is.</p>
5209
5210 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
5211 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
5212
5213       </div>
5214       <div class="tags">
5215
5216
5217         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5218
5219
5220       </div>
5221     </div>
5222     <div class="padding"></div>
5223
5224     <div class="entry">
5225       <div class="title">
5226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
5227       </div>
5228       <div class="date">
5229         25th February 2015
5230       </div>
5231       <div class="body">
5232         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
5233 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
5234 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
5235 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
5236 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
5237 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
5238 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
5239 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
5240 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
5241 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
5242 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
5243 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
5244 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
5245 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
5246 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
5247 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
5248 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
5249
5250 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
5251 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
5252 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
5253 with VLC.</p>
5254
5255 <ul>
5256   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
5257   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
5258 </ul>
5259
5260 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
5261 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
5262 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
5263 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
5264 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
5265 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
5266 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
5267
5268 <blockquote><pre>
5269 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
5270  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
5271  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
5272 </pre></blockquote>
5273
5274 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
5275 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
5276 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
5277 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
5278
5279       </div>
5280       <div class="tags">
5281
5282
5283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5284
5285
5286       </div>
5287     </div>
5288     <div class="padding"></div>
5289
5290     <div class="entry">
5291       <div class="title">
5292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
5293       </div>
5294       <div class="date">
5295         10th February 2015
5296       </div>
5297       <div class="body">
5298         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
5299 that
5300 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
5301 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
5302 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
5303 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
5304 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
5305 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
5306 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
5307 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
5308 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
5309 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
5310 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
5311 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
5312 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
5313 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
5314 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
5315
5316 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
5317 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
5318 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
5319 controversy about these scanners.</p>
5320
5321 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
5322 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
5323 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
5324
5325       </div>
5326       <div class="tags">
5327
5328
5329         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
5330
5331
5332       </div>
5333     </div>
5334     <div class="padding"></div>
5335
5336     <div class="entry">
5337       <div class="title">
5338         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
5339       </div>
5340       <div class="date">
5341          8th February 2015
5342       </div>
5343       <div class="body">
5344         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
5345 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
5346 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
5347 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
5348 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
5349 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
5350 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
5351 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
5352 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
5353 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
5354 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
5355 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
5356
5357 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
5358 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
5359 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
5360 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
5361
5362 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
5363 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
5364 distribute the TV content.  The
5365 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
5366 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
5367 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
5368 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
5369 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
5370 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
5371 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
5372 following activity, we now have the schedule
5373 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
5374 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
5375 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
5376 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
5377
5378 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
5379 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
5380 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
5381 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
5382 streams are working as they should.</p>
5383
5384       </div>
5385       <div class="tags">
5386
5387
5388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5389
5390
5391       </div>
5392     </div>
5393     <div class="padding"></div>
5394
5395     <div class="entry">
5396       <div class="title">
5397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
5398       </div>
5399       <div class="date">
5400         12th January 2015
5401       </div>
5402       <div class="body">
5403         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
5404 Foundation</a> announced a new video
5405 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
5406 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
5407 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
5408 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
5409 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
5410 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
5411
5412 <p>But today I was told that
5413 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
5414 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
5415 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
5416 available in
5417 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
5418 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
5419 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
5420
5421 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
5422 Libreplanet
5423 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
5424 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
5425
5426       </div>
5427       <div class="tags">
5428
5429
5430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5431
5432
5433       </div>
5434     </div>
5435     <div class="padding"></div>
5436
5437     <div class="entry">
5438       <div class="title">
5439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
5440       </div>
5441       <div class="date">
5442         30th December 2014
5443       </div>
5444       <div class="body">
5445         <p>I am very happy that we in the
5446 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
5447 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
5448 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
5449 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
5450 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
5451 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
5452 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
5453 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
5454 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
5455 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
5456
5457 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
5458 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
5459 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
5460 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
5461 reports in public.</p>
5462
5463       </div>
5464       <div class="tags">
5465
5466
5467         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>.
5468
5469
5470       </div>
5471     </div>
5472     <div class="padding"></div>
5473
5474     <div class="entry">
5475       <div class="title">
5476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
5477       </div>
5478       <div class="date">
5479         19th December 2014
5480       </div>
5481       <div class="body">
5482         <p>So, Sony caved in
5483 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
5484 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
5485 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
5486 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
5487 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
5488 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
5489 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
5490 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
5491 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
5492 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
5493 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
5494 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
5495 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
5496
5497 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
5498 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
5499 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
5500 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
5501
5502 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
5503 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
5504 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
5505 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
5506 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
5507 income. :)</p>
5508
5509       </div>
5510       <div class="tags">
5511
5512
5513         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5514
5515
5516       </div>
5517     </div>
5518     <div class="padding"></div>
5519
5520     <div class="entry">
5521       <div class="title">
5522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
5523       </div>
5524       <div class="date">
5525         22nd November 2014
5526       </div>
5527       <div class="body">
5528         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
5529 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
5530 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
5531 courtesy of
5532 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
5533 Schubert</a> and
5534 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
5535 McVittie</a>.
5536
5537 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
5538 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
5539 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
5540 you upgrade:</p>
5541
5542 <p><blockquote><pre>
5543 Package: systemd-sysv
5544 Pin: release o=Debian
5545 Pin-Priority: -1
5546 </pre></blockquote><p>
5547
5548 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
5549 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
5550 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
5551 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
5552 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
5553
5554 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
5555 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
5556 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
5557 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
5558 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
5559 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
5560
5561 <p><blockquote><pre>
5562 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
5563 </pre></blockquote><p>
5564
5565 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
5566
5567 <p><blockquote><pre>
5568 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
5569 </pre></blockquote><p>
5570
5571 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
5572 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
5573
5574 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
5575 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
5576 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
5577 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
5578 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
5579 Jessie is released.</p>
5580
5581 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
5582 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
5583 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
5584 line.</p>
5585
5586       </div>
5587       <div class="tags">
5588
5589
5590         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>.
5591
5592
5593       </div>
5594     </div>
5595     <div class="padding"></div>
5596
5597     <div class="entry">
5598       <div class="title">
5599         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
5600       </div>
5601       <div class="date">
5602         10th November 2014
5603       </div>
5604       <div class="body">
5605         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
5606 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
5607 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
5608
5609 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
5610 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
5611 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
5612 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
5613 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
5614 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
5615 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
5616 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
5617 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
5618 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
5619 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
5620 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
5621 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
5622 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
5623 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
5624
5625 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
5626 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
5627 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
5628 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
5629 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
5630 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
5631 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
5632 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
5633 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
5634 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
5635 were fairly easy, and
5636 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
5637 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
5638 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
5639 useful approach.</p>
5640
5641 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
5642 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
5643 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
5644 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
5645 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
5646 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
5647 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
5648 this:</p>
5649
5650 <p><blockquote><pre>
5651 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
5652   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
5653 </pre></blockquote></p>
5654
5655 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
5656 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
5657
5658 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
5659 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
5660 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
5661 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
5662 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
5663 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
5664 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
5665 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
5666 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
5667 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
5668 system.</p>
5669
5670 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
5671 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
5672 SMTorP. :)</p>
5673
5674       </div>
5675       <div class="tags">
5676
5677
5678         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5679
5680
5681       </div>
5682     </div>
5683     <div class="padding"></div>
5684
5685     <div class="entry">
5686       <div class="title">
5687         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
5688       </div>
5689       <div class="date">
5690         27th October 2014
5691       </div>
5692       <div class="body">
5693         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
5694 sent out
5695 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
5696 announcement</a>:</p>
5697
5698 <pre>
5699 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
5700 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
5701
5702 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
5703 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
5704 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
5705 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
5706 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
5707 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
5708 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
5709
5710 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
5711 installation instructions are available, including detailed
5712 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
5713 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
5714 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
5715 of at least 5 characters!
5716
5717  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
5718
5719 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
5720 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
5721 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
5722 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
5723 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
5724
5725 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
5726 mostly in Germany and Norway.
5727
5728 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
5729 ===============================
5730
5731 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
5732 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5733 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
5734 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5735 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5736 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5737 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
5738 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
5739 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
5740 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
5741 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
5742 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
5743 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
5744 environment.
5745
5746  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
5747  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
5748
5749 Full release notes and manual
5750 =============================
5751
5752 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
5753 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
5754 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
5755 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
5756 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
5757
5758  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
5759  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
5760
5761 Where to get it
5762 ---------------
5763
5764 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
5765
5766  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
5767  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
5768  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
5769
5770 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
5771
5772 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
5773 ===============================================================================
5774
5775
5776 Installation changes
5777 --------------------
5778
5779  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
5780
5781 Software updates
5782 ----------------
5783
5784 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
5785
5786  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
5787  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
5788    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
5789    choose one of the others see manual.)
5790  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
5791  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
5792  * GOsa 2.7.4
5793  * LTSP 5.5.4
5794  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
5795  * new boot framework: systemd
5796  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
5797  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
5798  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
5799  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
5800  * golearn 0.9
5801  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
5802  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
5803  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
5804    installation.
5805  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
5806    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
5807
5808  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
5809  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
5810
5811 Fixed bugs
5812 ----------
5813
5814  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
5815    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
5816    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
5817  * and many others.
5818
5819 Documentation and translation updates
5820 -------------------------------------
5821
5822  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
5823    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
5824    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
5825
5826 Other changes
5827 -------------
5828
5829  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
5830    server takes more time.
5831  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
5832    doesn't work.
5833
5834 Regressions / known problems
5835 ----------------------------
5836
5837  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
5838    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
5839    and Debian bug #762103).
5840  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
5841    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
5842  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
5843    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
5844    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
5845
5846 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
5847
5848  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
5849
5850 How to report bugs
5851 ------------------
5852
5853 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
5854
5855 About Debian
5856 ============
5857
5858 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
5859 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
5860 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
5861 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
5862 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
5863 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
5864 operating system.
5865
5866 Contact Information
5867 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
5868 mail to press@debian.org.
5869
5870  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
5871 </pre>
5872
5873       </div>
5874       <div class="tags">
5875
5876
5877         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5878
5879
5880       </div>
5881     </div>
5882     <div class="padding"></div>
5883
5884     <div class="entry">
5885       <div class="title">
5886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
5887       </div>
5888       <div class="date">
5889         23rd October 2014
5890       </div>
5891       <div class="body">
5892         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
5893 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
5894 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
5895 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
5896 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
5897 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
5898 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
5899 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
5900 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
5901 live.</p>
5902
5903 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
5904 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
5905 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
5906 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
5907 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
5908 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
5909 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
5910 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
5911
5912       </div>
5913       <div class="tags">
5914
5915
5916         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>.
5917
5918
5919       </div>
5920     </div>
5921     <div class="padding"></div>
5922
5923     <div class="entry">
5924       <div class="title">
5925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
5926       </div>
5927       <div class="date">
5928         22nd October 2014
5929       </div>
5930       <div class="body">
5931         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
5932 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
5933 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
5934 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
5935 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
5936 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
5937 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
5938 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
5939 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
5940 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
5941 lists I recently took over:</p>
5942
5943 <p><blockquote><pre>
5944 % time listadmin xiph
5945 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
5946 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
5947
5948 real    0m1.709s
5949 user    0m0.232s
5950 sys     0m0.012s
5951 %
5952 </pre></blockquote></p>
5953
5954 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
5955 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
5956 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
5957 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
5958 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
5959 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
5960 program.</p>
5961
5962 <p>If you install
5963 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
5964 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
5965 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
5966
5967 <p><blockquote><pre>
5968 username username@example.org
5969 spamlevel 23
5970 default discard
5971 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
5972
5973 password secret
5974 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
5975 mailman-list@lists.example.com
5976
5977 password hidden
5978 other-list@otherserver.example.org
5979 </pre></blockquote></p>
5980
5981 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
5982 learn the details.</p>
5983
5984 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
5985 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
5986 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
5987 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
5988
5989 <p><blockquote><pre>
5990 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
5991 </pre></blockquote></p>
5992
5993 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
5994 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
5995 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
5996 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
5997 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
5998 email.</p>
5999
6000 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
6001 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
6002 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
6003 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
6004 software.</p>
6005
6006 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6007 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6008 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6009
6010 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
6011 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
6012 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
6013 sure why.</p>
6014
6015       </div>
6016       <div class="tags">
6017
6018
6019         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
6020
6021
6022       </div>
6023     </div>
6024     <div class="padding"></div>
6025
6026     <div class="entry">
6027       <div class="title">
6028         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
6029       </div>
6030       <div class="date">
6031         17th October 2014
6032       </div>
6033       <div class="body">
6034         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
6035 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
6036 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
6037 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
6038 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
6039 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
6040 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
6041
6042 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
6043 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
6044 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
6045 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
6046 of this story.)</p>
6047
6048 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
6049 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
6050 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
6051 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
6052 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
6053 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
6054 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
6055 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
6056 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
6057 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
6058
6059 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
6060 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
6061 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
6062 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
6063
6064 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
6065 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
6066
6067 <p><blockquote><pre>
6068 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
6069 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
6070 </pre></blockquote></p>
6071
6072 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
6073 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
6074 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
6075 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
6076 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
6077 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
6078 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
6079 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
6080
6081 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
6082 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
6083
6084 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
6085 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
6086 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
6087 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
6088 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
6089
6090 <p><blockquote><pre>
6091 Task: isenkram-packages
6092 Section: hardware
6093 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
6094  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
6095  proposed.
6096 Test-new-install: show show
6097 Relevance: 8
6098 Packages: for-current-hardware
6099
6100 Task: isenkram-firmware
6101 Section: hardware
6102 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
6103  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
6104  packages are proposed.
6105 Test-new-install: mark show
6106 Relevance: 8
6107 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
6108 </pre></blockquote></p>
6109
6110 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
6111 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
6112 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
6113 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
6114 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
6115
6116 <p><blockquote><pre>
6117 #!/bin/sh
6118 #
6119 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
6120 export PATH
6121 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
6122 </pre></blockquote></p>
6123
6124 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
6125 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
6126
6127 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
6128 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
6129 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
6130 install.</p>
6131
6132 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
6133 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
6134 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
6135
6136       </div>
6137       <div class="tags">
6138
6139
6140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
6141
6142
6143       </div>
6144     </div>
6145     <div class="padding"></div>
6146
6147     <div class="entry">
6148       <div class="title">
6149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
6150       </div>
6151       <div class="date">
6152          4th October 2014
6153       </div>
6154       <div class="body">
6155         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
6156 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
6157 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
6158 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
6159
6160 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
6161
6162 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
6163 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
6164 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
6165
6166       </div>
6167       <div class="tags">
6168
6169
6170         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6171
6172
6173       </div>
6174     </div>
6175     <div class="padding"></div>
6176
6177     <div class="entry">
6178       <div class="title">
6179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
6180       </div>
6181       <div class="date">
6182          4th October 2014
6183       </div>
6184       <div class="body">
6185         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
6186 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
6187 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
6188 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
6189 Dibb.</p>
6190
6191 <p>I just wrapped up
6192 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
6193 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
6194 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
6195 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
6196 0.17.</p>
6197
6198 <ul>
6199
6200  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
6201  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
6202    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
6203  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
6204  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
6205  <li>Fix include orders</li>
6206  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
6207  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
6208  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
6209    the palette size is the same.</li>
6210  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
6211  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
6212  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
6213  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
6214    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
6215
6216 </ul>
6217
6218 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
6219 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
6220 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
6221
6222       </div>
6223       <div class="tags">
6224
6225
6226         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
6227
6228
6229       </div>
6230     </div>
6231     <div class="padding"></div>
6232
6233     <div class="entry">
6234       <div class="title">
6235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
6236       </div>
6237       <div class="date">
6238         26th September 2014
6239       </div>
6240       <div class="body">
6241         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6242 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
6243 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
6244 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
6245 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
6246 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
6247 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
6248 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
6249 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
6250 future.  The
6251 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
6252 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
6253 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
6254 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
6255 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
6256
6257 <p>First, download the test ISO via
6258 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
6259 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
6260 or rsync (use
6261 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
6262 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
6263 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
6264 install with some tweaking.</p>
6265
6266 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
6267 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
6268
6269 <p><blockquote><pre>
6270 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
6271 </pre></blockquote></p>
6272
6273 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
6274 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
6275 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
6276 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
6277
6278 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
6279 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
6280 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
6281 your need.</p>
6282
6283 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
6284 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
6285 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
6286 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
6287 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
6288 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
6289 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
6290 days.</p>
6291
6292 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
6293 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
6294 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
6295 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
6296 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
6297 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
6298 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
6299 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
6300 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
6301
6302 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
6303 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
6304 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
6305
6306       </div>
6307       <div class="tags">
6308
6309
6310         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>.
6311
6312
6313       </div>
6314     </div>
6315     <div class="padding"></div>
6316
6317     <div class="entry">
6318       <div class="title">
6319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
6320       </div>
6321       <div class="date">
6322         25th September 2014
6323       </div>
6324       <div class="body">
6325         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
6326 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
6327 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
6328 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
6329 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
6330 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
6331 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
6332 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
6333 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
6334 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
6335 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
6336 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
6337 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
6338
6339 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
6340 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
6341 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
6342 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
6343 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
6344 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
6345 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
6346 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
6347 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
6348 list</a>. :)</p>
6349
6350       </div>
6351       <div class="tags">
6352
6353
6354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
6355
6356
6357       </div>
6358     </div>
6359     <div class="padding"></div>
6360
6361     <div class="entry">
6362       <div class="title">
6363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
6364       </div>
6365       <div class="date">
6366         16th September 2014
6367       </div>
6368       <div class="body">
6369         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
6370 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
6371 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
6372 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
6373 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
6374 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
6375 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
6376 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
6377 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
6378 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
6379 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
6380 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
6381 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
6382 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
6383
6384 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
6385 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
6386 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
6387 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
6388 depend on the small and clever package
6389 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
6390 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
6391 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
6392 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
6393 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
6394 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
6395 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
6396 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
6397 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
6398 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
6399 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
6400
6401 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
6402 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
6403 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
6404 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
6405 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
6406 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
6407 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
6408 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
6409 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
6410 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
6411 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
6412 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
6413 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
6414 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
6415 dialog.</p>
6416
6417 <p><table>
6418
6419 <tr>
6420 <th>Machine/setup</th>
6421 <th>Original tasksel</th>
6422 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
6423 <th>Reduction</th>
6424 </tr>
6425
6426 <tr>
6427 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
6428 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
6429 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
6430 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
6431 </tr>
6432
6433 <tr>
6434 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
6435 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
6436 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
6437 <td>23 min 40%</td>
6438 </tr>
6439
6440 <tr>
6441 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
6442 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
6443 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
6444 <td>11 min 50%</td>
6445 </tr>
6446
6447 <tr>
6448 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
6449 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
6450 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
6451 <td>2 min 33%</td>
6452 </tr>
6453
6454 <tr>
6455 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
6456 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
6457 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
6458 <td>4 min 21%</td>
6459 </tr>
6460
6461 </table></p>
6462
6463 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
6464 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
6465 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
6466 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
6467 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
6468 installed.</p>
6469
6470 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
6471 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
6472 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
6473 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
6474 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
6475 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
6476 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
6477 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
6478 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
6479 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
6480 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
6481 for the entire installation.</p>
6482
6483 <p>I've implemented this in the
6484 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
6485 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
6486 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
6487 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
6488 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
6489
6490 <p><blockquote><pre>
6491 #!/bin/sh
6492 set -e
6493 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
6494 info() {
6495     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
6496 }
6497 error() {
6498     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
6499 }
6500 override_install() {
6501     apt-install eatmydata || true
6502     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
6503         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
6504             file=/usr/bin/$bin
6505             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
6506             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
6507                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
6508                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
6509                     > /target$file.edu
6510                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
6511                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
6512                     --rename --quiet --add $file
6513                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
6514             else
6515                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
6516             fi
6517         done
6518     else
6519         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
6520     fi
6521 }
6522
6523 override_install
6524 </pre></blockquote></p>
6525
6526 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
6527 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
6528
6529 <p><blockquote><pre>
6530 #! /bin/sh -e
6531 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
6532 error() {
6533     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
6534 }
6535 remove_install_override() {
6536     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
6537         file=/usr/bin/$bin
6538         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
6539             rm /target$file
6540             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
6541                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
6542             rm /target$file.edu
6543         else
6544             error "Missing divert for $file."
6545         fi
6546     done
6547     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
6548 }
6549
6550 remove_install_override
6551 </pre></blockquote></p>
6552
6553 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
6554 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
6555 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
6556
6557 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
6558 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
6559 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
6560 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
6561 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
6562 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
6563 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
6564 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
6565 everyone.</p>
6566
6567 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
6568 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
6569 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
6570 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
6571
6572 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
6573 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
6574 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
6575 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
6576 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
6577
6578 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
6579 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
6580 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
6581 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
6582 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
6583
6584       </div>
6585       <div class="tags">
6586
6587
6588         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>.
6589
6590
6591       </div>
6592     </div>
6593     <div class="padding"></div>
6594
6595     <div class="entry">
6596       <div class="title">
6597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
6598       </div>
6599       <div class="date">
6600         10th September 2014
6601       </div>
6602       <div class="body">
6603         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
6604 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
6605 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
6606 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
6607 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
6608 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
6609 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
6610 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
6611 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
6612 those problems are gone now.</p>
6613
6614 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
6615 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
6616 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
6617 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
6618 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
6619
6620 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
6621 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
6622 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
6623
6624 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
6625 line:</p>
6626
6627 <p><blockquote><pre>
6628 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
6629 </pre></blockquote></p>
6630
6631 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
6632 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
6633 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
6634 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
6635
6636 <p><blockquote><pre>
6637 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
6638 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
6639 %
6640 </pre></blockquote></p>
6641
6642 <p>Now if only
6643 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
6644 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
6645 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
6646 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
6647 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
6648 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
6649 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
6650 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
6651 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
6652
6653       </div>
6654       <div class="tags">
6655
6656
6657         Tags: <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>.
6658
6659
6660       </div>
6661     </div>
6662     <div class="padding"></div>
6663
6664     <div class="entry">
6665       <div class="title">
6666         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
6667       </div>
6668       <div class="date">
6669         25th August 2014
6670       </div>
6671       <div class="body">
6672         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
6673 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
6674 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
6675 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
6676 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
6677 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
6678 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
6679 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
6680 am not sure.
6681 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
6682 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
6683 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
6684 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
6685 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
6686 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
6687 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
6688 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
6689 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
6690 licenses are.</p>
6691
6692 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
6693 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
6694 end user</a>
6695 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
6696 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
6697
6698 <p><blockquote>
6699 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
6700 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
6701
6702 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
6703 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
6704 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
6705 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
6706 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
6707 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
6708 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
6709 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
6710 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
6711 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
6712 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
6713 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
6714 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
6715 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
6716 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
6717 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
6718 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
6719 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
6720
6721 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
6722 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
6723
6724 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
6725 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
6726 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
6727 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
6728 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
6729 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
6730 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
6731 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
6732 </blockquote></p>
6733
6734 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
6735 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
6736
6737 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
6738 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
6739
6740 <p><blockquote>
6741
6742 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
6743 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
6744 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
6745 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
6746 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
6747 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
6748 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
6749 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
6750 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
6751 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
6752 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
6753 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
6754
6755 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
6756 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
6757 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
6758 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
6759 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
6760 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
6761 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
6762 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
6763 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
6764 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
6765 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
6766 additional details.</p>
6767
6768 </blockquote></p>
6769
6770 <p>Some free software like
6771 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
6772 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
6773 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
6774 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
6775
6776       </div>
6777       <div class="tags">
6778
6779
6780         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6781
6782
6783       </div>
6784     </div>
6785     <div class="padding"></div>
6786
6787     <div class="entry">
6788       <div class="title">
6789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
6790       </div>
6791       <div class="date">
6792         31st July 2014
6793       </div>
6794       <div class="body">
6795         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
6796 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6797 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
6798 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
6799 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
6800 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
6801
6802 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6803
6804 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
6805 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
6806 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
6807 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
6808 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
6809 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
6810 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
6811 works with Windows . :-(</p>
6812
6813 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
6814 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
6815 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
6816 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
6817 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
6818 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
6819
6820 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6821 project?</strong></p>
6822
6823 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
6824 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
6825 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
6826 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
6827 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
6828 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
6829 with this job.</p>
6830
6831 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6832 Edu?</strong></p>
6833
6834 <p>The independence.</p>
6835
6836 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
6837 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
6838 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
6839
6840 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
6841 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
6842 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
6843 working reliable. </p>
6844
6845 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
6846 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
6847 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
6848 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
6849 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
6850 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
6851 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
6852 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
6853
6854 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6855 Edu?</strong></p>
6856
6857 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
6858 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
6859 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
6860
6861 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6862
6863 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
6864 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
6865
6866 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6867 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6868
6869 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
6870 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
6871 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
6872 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
6873 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
6874 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
6875 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
6876
6877       </div>
6878       <div class="tags">
6879
6880
6881         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
6882
6883
6884       </div>
6885     </div>
6886     <div class="padding"></div>
6887
6888     <div class="entry">
6889       <div class="title">
6890         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
6891       </div>
6892       <div class="date">
6893         23rd July 2014
6894       </div>
6895       <div class="body">
6896         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
6897 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
6898 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
6899 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
6900 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
6901 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
6902 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
6903 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
6904 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
6905 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
6906 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
6907 the translation show this very well:</p>
6908
6909 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
6910
6911 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
6912 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
6913 project pages and the
6914 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
6915 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6916 and HTML version available in the
6917 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
6918 directory</a>.</p>
6919
6920 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
6921 you find any.</p>
6922
6923       </div>
6924       <div class="tags">
6925
6926
6927         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>.
6928
6929
6930       </div>
6931     </div>
6932     <div class="padding"></div>
6933
6934     <div class="entry">
6935       <div class="title">
6936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
6937       </div>
6938       <div class="date">
6939         17th June 2014
6940       </div>
6941       <div class="body">
6942         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6943 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
6944 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
6945 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
6946 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
6947
6948 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
6949 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
6950 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
6951 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
6952 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
6953 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
6954 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
6955 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
6956 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
6957 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
6958 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
6959 goals.</p>
6960
6961 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
6962 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
6963 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
6964 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
6965 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
6966 chapters together into one large web page (aka
6967 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
6968 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
6969 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
6970 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
6971 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
6972 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
6973 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
6974 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
6975 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
6976 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
6977 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
6978 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
6979 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
6980 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
6981 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
6982 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
6983 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
6984 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
6985
6986 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
6987 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
6988 track the English original.  For this we use the
6989 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
6990 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
6991 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
6992 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
6993 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
6994 files), which the translations update with the native language
6995 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
6996 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
6997 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
6998 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
6999 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
7000 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
7001 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
7002 of the documentation.</p>
7003
7004 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
7005 recommend using
7006 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
7007 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
7008 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
7009 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
7010 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
7011 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
7012 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
7013 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
7014
7015 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
7016 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
7017 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
7018 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
7019 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
7020 translated images by storing translated versions in
7021 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
7022 package maintainers know more.</p>
7023
7024 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
7025 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
7026 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
7027 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
7028 PDF version</a> or the
7029 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
7030 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
7031 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
7032
7033 <p>To learn more, check out
7034 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
7035 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
7036 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
7037 manual on the wiki</a> and
7038 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
7039 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
7040
7041       </div>
7042       <div class="tags">
7043
7044
7045         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7046
7047
7048       </div>
7049     </div>
7050     <div class="padding"></div>
7051
7052     <div class="entry">
7053       <div class="title">
7054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
7055       </div>
7056       <div class="date">
7057         29th May 2014
7058       </div>
7059       <div class="body">
7060         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
7061 in my car, connected to
7062 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
7063 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
7064 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
7065 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
7066 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
7067 such car computer.</p>
7068
7069 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
7070
7071 <ul>
7072
7073  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
7074
7075  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
7076    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
7077    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
7078    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
7079    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
7080
7081  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
7082    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
7083    route.</li>
7084
7085  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
7086
7087  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
7088    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
7089    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
7090    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
7091    connection do not work.</li>
7092
7093  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
7094    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
7095
7096  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
7097    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
7098
7099  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
7100    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
7101
7102 </ul>
7103
7104 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
7105 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
7106
7107       </div>
7108       <div class="tags">
7109
7110
7111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7112
7113
7114       </div>
7115     </div>
7116     <div class="padding"></div>
7117
7118     <div class="entry">
7119       <div class="title">
7120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
7121       </div>
7122       <div class="date">
7123         29th April 2014
7124       </div>
7125       <div class="body">
7126         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
7127 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
7128 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
7129 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
7130 newer AVM2 format - see
7131 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
7132 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
7133 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
7134 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
7135 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
7136 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
7137 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
7138 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
7139 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
7140 sites do not work yet.</p>
7141
7142 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
7143 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
7144 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
7145 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
7146 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
7147 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
7148 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
7149 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
7150 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
7151 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
7152 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
7153
7154 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
7155 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
7156 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
7157 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
7158 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
7159 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
7160 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
7161
7162 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
7163 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
7164 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
7165 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
7166 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
7167
7168       </div>
7169       <div class="tags">
7170
7171
7172         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>.
7173
7174
7175       </div>
7176     </div>
7177     <div class="padding"></div>
7178
7179     <div class="entry">
7180       <div class="title">
7181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
7182       </div>
7183       <div class="date">
7184         23rd April 2014
7185       </div>
7186       <div class="body">
7187         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
7188 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
7189 So I implemented one, using
7190 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
7191 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
7192 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
7193 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
7194 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
7195 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
7196
7197 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
7198 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
7199 packages to install.  The first part is in
7200 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
7201 this:</p>
7202
7203 <p><blockquote><pre>
7204 Task: isenkram
7205 Section: hardware
7206 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7207  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
7208  proposed.
7209 Test-new-install: mark show
7210 Relevance: 8
7211 Packages: for-current-hardware
7212 </pre></blockquote></p>
7213
7214 <p>The second part is in
7215 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
7216 this:</p>
7217
7218 <p><blockquote><pre>
7219 #!/bin/sh
7220 #
7221 (
7222     isenkram-lookup
7223     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
7224 ) | sort -u
7225 </pre></blockquote></p>
7226
7227 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
7228 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
7229 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
7230 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
7231 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
7232 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
7233
7234 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
7235 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
7236 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
7237 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
7238 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
7239 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
7240 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
7241 the python-apt code (bug
7242 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
7243 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
7244 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
7245 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
7246 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
7247 unstable today.</p>
7248
7249 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
7250 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
7251 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
7252 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
7253 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
7254 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
7255 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
7256 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
7257 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
7258
7259 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
7260 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
7261 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
7262 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
7263 package.  See also
7264 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
7265 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
7266 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
7267 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
7268
7269       </div>
7270       <div class="tags">
7271
7272
7273         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7274
7275
7276       </div>
7277     </div>
7278     <div class="padding"></div>
7279
7280     <div class="entry">
7281       <div class="title">
7282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
7283       </div>
7284       <div class="date">
7285         15th April 2014
7286       </div>
7287       <div class="body">
7288         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
7289 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
7290 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
7291 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
7292 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
7293 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
7294
7295 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
7296 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
7297 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
7298 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
7299 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
7300 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
7301 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
7302
7303 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
7304 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
7305 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
7306 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
7307 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
7308 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
7309 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
7310 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
7311 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
7312 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
7313 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
7314 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
7315
7316 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
7317 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
7318 become root:</p>
7319
7320 <p><pre>
7321 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
7322   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
7323   u-boot-tools
7324 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
7325   freedom-maker
7326 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
7327 </pre></p>
7328
7329 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
7330 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
7331 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
7332 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
7333 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
7334 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
7335 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
7336 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
7337
7338 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
7339 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
7340 the preseed values:</p>
7341
7342 <p><pre>
7343 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
7344 </pre></p>
7345
7346 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
7347 it still work.</p>
7348
7349 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
7350 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
7351 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
7352 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
7353 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
7354 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
7355 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
7356
7357 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
7358 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
7359 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
7360 irc.debian.org)</a> and
7361 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
7362 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
7363
7364       </div>
7365       <div class="tags">
7366
7367
7368         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7369
7370
7371       </div>
7372     </div>
7373     <div class="padding"></div>
7374
7375     <div class="entry">
7376       <div class="title">
7377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
7378       </div>
7379       <div class="date">
7380          9th April 2014
7381       </div>
7382       <div class="body">
7383         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
7384 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
7385 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
7386 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
7387 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
7388 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
7389 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
7390 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
7391 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
7392 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
7393 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
7394 have looked at a system called
7395 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
7396 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
7397
7398 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
7399 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
7400 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
7401 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
7402 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
7403 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
7404 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
7405 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
7406 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
7407 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
7408 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
7409 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
7410 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
7411
7412 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
7413 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
7414 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
7415 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
7416 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
7417 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
7418 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
7419 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
7420 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
7421 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
7422 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
7423 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
7424 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
7425 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
7426 account.</p>
7427
7428 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
7429 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
7430 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
7431 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
7432 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
7433 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
7434 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
7435
7436 <p><blockquote><pre>
7437 [s3c]
7438 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
7439 backend-login: API-login
7440 backend-password: API-password
7441 fs-passphrase: local-password
7442 </pre></blockquote></p>
7443
7444 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
7445 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
7446 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
7447 details and password to create it:</p>
7448
7449 <p><blockquote><pre>
7450 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
7451 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
7452   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
7453 Enter backend login:
7454 Enter backend password:
7455 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
7456 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
7457 Enter encryption password:
7458 Confirm encryption password:
7459 Generating random encryption key...
7460 Creating metadata tables...
7461 Dumping metadata...
7462 ..objects..
7463 ..blocks..
7464 ..inodes..
7465 ..inode_blocks..
7466 ..symlink_targets..
7467 ..names..
7468 ..contents..
7469 ..ext_attributes..
7470 Compressing and uploading metadata...
7471 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
7472 # </pre></blockquote></p>
7473
7474 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
7475
7476 <p><blockquote><pre>
7477 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
7478   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
7479 Using 4 upload threads.
7480 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
7481 Reading metadata...
7482 ..objects..
7483 ..blocks..
7484 ..inodes..
7485 ..inode_blocks..
7486 ..symlink_targets..
7487 ..names..
7488 ..contents..
7489 ..ext_attributes..
7490 Mounting filesystem...
7491 # df -h /s3ql
7492 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
7493 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
7494 #
7495 </pre></blockquote></p>
7496
7497 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
7498 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
7499 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
7500 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
7501 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
7502 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
7503
7504 <p><blockquote><pre>
7505 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
7506 #
7507 </pre></blockquote></p>
7508
7509 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
7510 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
7511 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
7512 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
7513 file system:</p>
7514
7515 <p><blockquote><pre>
7516 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
7517 Using cached metadata.
7518 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
7519 Checking DB integrity...
7520 Creating temporary extra indices...
7521 Checking lost+found...
7522 Checking cached objects...
7523 Checking names (refcounts)...
7524 Checking contents (names)...
7525 Checking contents (inodes)...
7526 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
7527 Checking objects (reference counts)...
7528 Checking objects (backend)...
7529 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
7530 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
7531 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
7532 Checking objects (sizes)...
7533 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
7534 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
7535 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
7536 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
7537 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
7538 Checking inodes (sizes)...
7539 Checking extended attributes (names)...
7540 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
7541 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
7542 Checking directory reachability...
7543 Checking unix conventions...
7544 Checking referential integrity...
7545 Dropping temporary indices...
7546 Backing up old metadata...
7547 Dumping metadata...
7548 ..objects..
7549 ..blocks..
7550 ..inodes..
7551 ..inode_blocks..
7552 ..symlink_targets..
7553 ..names..
7554 ..contents..
7555 ..ext_attributes..
7556 Compressing and uploading metadata...
7557 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
7558 #
7559 </pre></blockquote></p>
7560
7561 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
7562 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
7563 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
7564 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
7565 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
7566 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
7567 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
7568 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
7569 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
7570 working set.</p>
7571
7572 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
7573 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
7574 busy:</p>
7575
7576 <p><blockquote><pre>
7577 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
7578   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
7579 Using 8 upload threads.
7580 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
7581 #
7582 </pre></blockquote></p>
7583
7584 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
7585 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
7586 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
7587 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
7588 s3qlctrl:
7589
7590 <p><blockquote><pre>
7591 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
7592 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
7593 #
7594 </pre></blockquote></p>
7595
7596 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
7597 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
7598 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
7599 a report:</p>
7600
7601 <p><blockquote><pre>
7602 # s3qlstat /s3ql
7603 Directory entries:    9141
7604 Inodes:               9143
7605 Data blocks:          8851
7606 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
7607 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
7608 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
7609 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
7610 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
7611 #
7612 </pre></blockquote></p>
7613
7614 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
7615 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
7616 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
7617 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
7618 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
7619 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
7620 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
7621 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
7622 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
7623 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
7624 best.</p>
7625
7626 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
7627 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
7628 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
7629 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
7630 poster is titled
7631 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
7632 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
7633 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
7634 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
7635 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
7636
7637 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
7638 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
7639 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
7640 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
7641 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
7642 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
7643 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
7644 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
7645
7646 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
7647 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
7648 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
7649 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
7650 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
7651 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
7652 only read from it.</p>
7653
7654 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7655 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7656 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7657
7658       </div>
7659       <div class="tags">
7660
7661
7662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7663
7664
7665       </div>
7666     </div>
7667     <div class="padding"></div>
7668
7669     <div class="entry">
7670       <div class="title">
7671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
7672       </div>
7673       <div class="date">
7674          1st April 2014
7675       </div>
7676       <div class="body">
7677         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
7678 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
7679 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
7680 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
7681 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
7682 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
7683 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
7684 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
7685 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
7686 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
7687 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
7688 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
7689 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
7690
7691 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
7692 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
7693 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
7694 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
7695 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
7696 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
7697 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
7698 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
7699 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
7700 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
7701 Linux.</p>
7702
7703 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
7704 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
7705 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
7706 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
7707 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
7708 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
7709 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
7710 Windows before metro).</p>
7711
7712 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
7713 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
7714 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
7715 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
7716 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
7717 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
7718 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
7719 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
7720 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
7721 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
7722 old Windows binaries, check it out by
7723 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
7724 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
7725 image.</p>
7726
7727       </div>
7728       <div class="tags">
7729
7730
7731         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
7732
7733
7734       </div>
7735     </div>
7736     <div class="padding"></div>
7737
7738     <div class="entry">
7739       <div class="title">
7740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
7741       </div>
7742       <div class="date">
7743         30th March 2014
7744       </div>
7745       <div class="body">
7746         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
7747 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
7748 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
7749 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
7750 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
7751
7752 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7753
7754 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
7755 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
7756 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
7757 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
7758 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
7759
7760 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
7761 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
7762 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
7763
7764 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
7765 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
7766 hunger.</p>
7767
7768 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7769 project?</strong></p>
7770
7771 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
7772 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
7773 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
7774 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
7775 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
7776 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
7777 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
7778 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
7779 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
7780 running.  I just loved it.</p>
7781
7782 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7783 Edu?</strong></p>
7784
7785 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
7786 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
7787 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
7788 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
7789 be made of steel.</p>
7790
7791 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7792 Edu?</strong></p>
7793
7794 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
7795
7796 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
7797 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
7798 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
7799 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
7800 or dropped.</p>
7801
7802 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
7803 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
7804 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
7805 discourage many people too.</p>
7806
7807 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7808
7809 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
7810 Virtualbox.</p>
7811
7812
7813 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7814 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7815
7816 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
7817 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
7818 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
7819 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
7820 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
7821 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
7822 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
7823 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
7824 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
7825
7826       </div>
7827       <div class="tags">
7828
7829
7830         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7831
7832
7833       </div>
7834     </div>
7835     <div class="padding"></div>
7836
7837     <div class="entry">
7838       <div class="title">
7839         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
7840       </div>
7841       <div class="date">
7842         25th March 2014
7843       </div>
7844       <div class="body">
7845         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
7846 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
7847 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
7848 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
7849 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
7850 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
7851 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
7852 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
7853 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
7854
7855 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
7856 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
7857 looked a given way.  Such
7858 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
7859 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
7860 called a
7861 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
7862 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
7863 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
7864 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
7865 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
7866 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
7867 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
7868 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
7869 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
7870 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
7871 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
7872 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
7873 There are several commercial services around providing such
7874 timestamping.  A quick search for
7875 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
7876 service</a>" pointed me to at least
7877 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
7878 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
7879 Vadis</a>,
7880 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
7881 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
7882 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
7883 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
7884
7885 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
7886 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
7887 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
7888 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
7889 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
7890 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
7891 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
7892 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
7893 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
7894 Greifswald.</p>
7895
7896 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
7897 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
7898 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
7899 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
7900 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
7901
7902 <p><blockquote><pre>
7903 #!/bin/sh
7904 set -e
7905 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
7906 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
7907 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
7908 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
7909 cafile=chain.txt
7910 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
7911     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
7912 fi
7913 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
7914     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
7915 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
7916 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
7917 base64 < "$resfile"
7918 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
7919 </pre></blockquote></p>
7920
7921 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
7922 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
7923 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
7924 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
7925 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
7926 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
7927 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
7928 changed.</p>
7929
7930 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
7931 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
7932 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
7933 to set up?</p>
7934
7935       </div>
7936       <div class="tags">
7937
7938
7939         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7940
7941
7942       </div>
7943     </div>
7944     <div class="padding"></div>
7945
7946     <div class="entry">
7947       <div class="title">
7948         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
7949       </div>
7950       <div class="date">
7951         21st March 2014
7952       </div>
7953       <div class="body">
7954         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
7955 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
7956 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
7957 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
7958 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
7959 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
7960 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
7961
7962 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
7963 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
7964 tried using
7965 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
7966 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
7967 and program
7968 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
7969 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
7970 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
7971 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
7972 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
7973 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
7974 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
7975 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
7976 this method.</p>
7977
7978 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
7979 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
7980 problem is
7981 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
7982 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
7983 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
7984 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
7985 DVD structures, as the python library
7986 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
7987 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
7988 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
7989 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
7990 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
7991 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
7992
7993 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
7994 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
7995
7996       </div>
7997       <div class="tags">
7998
7999
8000         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8001
8002
8003       </div>
8004     </div>
8005     <div class="padding"></div>
8006
8007     <div class="entry">
8008       <div class="title">
8009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
8010       </div>
8011       <div class="date">
8012         14th March 2014
8013       </div>
8014       <div class="body">
8015         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
8016 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
8017 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
8018 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
8019 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
8020 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
8021 release (0.2).</p>
8022
8023 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
8024 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
8025 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
8026 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
8027 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
8028 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
8029 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
8030 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
8031 and build using
8032 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
8033 with a user with sudo access to become root:
8034
8035 <pre>
8036 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
8037   freedom-maker
8038 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
8039   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
8040   u-boot-tools
8041 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
8042 </pre>
8043
8044 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
8045 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
8046 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
8047 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
8048 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
8049 kpartx call.</p>
8050
8051 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
8052 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
8053 the preseed values:</p>
8054
8055 <pre>
8056 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
8057 </pre>
8058
8059 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
8060 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
8061 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
8062 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
8063 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
8064 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
8065
8066 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
8067 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
8068 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
8069 irc.debian.org)</a> and
8070 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
8071 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
8072
8073       </div>
8074       <div class="tags">
8075
8076
8077         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8078
8079
8080       </div>
8081     </div>
8082     <div class="padding"></div>
8083
8084     <div class="entry">
8085       <div class="title">
8086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
8087       </div>
8088       <div class="date">
8089         12th March 2014
8090       </div>
8091       <div class="body">
8092         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
8093 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
8094 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
8095 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
8096 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
8097 document this better when one of the customers of
8098 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
8099 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
8100 get this working are the following:</p>
8101
8102 <p><ol>
8103
8104 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
8105 example host here.</li>
8106
8107 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
8108 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
8109
8110 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
8111 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
8112
8113 </ol></p>
8114
8115 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
8116 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
8117 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
8118 started).</p>
8119
8120 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
8121 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
8122
8123 <p><blockquote><pre>
8124 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
8125 Export list for nas-server:
8126 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
8127 root@tjener:~#
8128 </pre></blockquote></p>
8129
8130 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
8131 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
8132 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
8133 NFS access.</p>
8134
8135 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
8136 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
8137 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
8138
8139 <p><blockquote><pre>
8140 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8141 </pre></blockquote></p>
8142
8143 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
8144 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
8145 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
8146 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
8147
8148 <p><blockquote><pre>
8149 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8150 objectClass: automount
8151 cn: nas-server
8152 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8153
8154 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8155 objectClass: top
8156 objectClass: automountMap
8157 ou: auto.nas-server
8158
8159 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8160 objectClass: automount
8161 cn: /
8162 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
8163 </pre></blockquote></p>
8164
8165 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
8166 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
8167 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
8168
8169 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
8170 the storage server directly by just visiting the
8171 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
8172 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
8173
8174       </div>
8175       <div class="tags">
8176
8177
8178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8179
8180
8181       </div>
8182     </div>
8183     <div class="padding"></div>
8184
8185     <div class="entry">
8186       <div class="title">
8187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
8188       </div>
8189       <div class="date">
8190         22nd February 2014
8191       </div>
8192       <div class="body">
8193         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
8194 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
8195 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
8196 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
8197 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
8198 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
8199 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
8200 proper home since then.</p>
8201
8202 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
8203 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
8204 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
8205 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
8206 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
8207
8208 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
8209 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
8210 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
8211 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
8212 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
8213 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
8214 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
8215 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
8216 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
8217
8218       </div>
8219       <div class="tags">
8220
8221
8222         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8223
8224
8225       </div>
8226     </div>
8227     <div class="padding"></div>
8228
8229     <div class="entry">
8230       <div class="title">
8231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="date">
8234          3rd February 2014
8235       </div>
8236       <div class="body">
8237         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
8238 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
8239 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
8240 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
8241 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
8242 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
8243 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
8244 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
8245 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
8246
8247 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
8248 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
8249 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
8250 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
8251 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
8252 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
8253
8254 <p><blockquote><pre>
8255 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
8256 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
8257 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
8258 dhclient /dev/eth0
8259 </pre></blockquote></p>
8260
8261 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
8262 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
8263 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
8264
8265 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
8266 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
8267 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
8268 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
8269 side.</p>
8270
8271 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
8272 stuff:</p>
8273
8274 <p><blockquote><pre>
8275 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
8276 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
8277 EOF
8278 apt-get update
8279 apt-get dist-upgrade
8280 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
8281     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
8282 update-alternatives --config runsystem
8283 </pre></blockquote></p>
8284
8285 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
8286 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
8287 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
8288 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
8289 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
8290 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
8291 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
8292 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
8293 ssh instead.
8294
8295 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
8296 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
8297 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
8298 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
8299 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
8300 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
8301
8302 <p><blockquote><pre>
8303 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
8304 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
8305 EOF
8306 </pre></blockquote></p>
8307
8308 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
8309 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
8310 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
8311 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
8312
8313 <p><blockquote><pre>
8314 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
8315 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
8316 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
8317 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
8318 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
8319 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
8320 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
8321 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
8322 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
8323 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
8324 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
8325 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
8326 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
8327 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
8328 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
8329 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
8330 #
8331 </pre></blockquote></p>
8332
8333 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
8334 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
8335 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
8336 command line stuff.<p>
8337
8338       </div>
8339       <div class="tags">
8340
8341
8342         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>.
8343
8344
8345       </div>
8346     </div>
8347     <div class="padding"></div>
8348
8349     <div class="entry">
8350       <div class="title">
8351         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
8352       </div>
8353       <div class="date">
8354         29th January 2014
8355       </div>
8356       <div class="body">
8357         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
8358 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
8359 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
8360 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
8361 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
8362 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
8363 investigated in
8364 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
8365 from December 2013, in the article
8366 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
8367 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
8368 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
8369 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
8370 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
8371 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
8372 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
8373 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
8374
8375 <p><blockquote>
8376 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
8377 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
8378 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
8379 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
8380 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
8381 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
8382 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
8383 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
8384 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
8385 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
8386 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
8387 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
8388
8389 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
8390 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
8391 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
8392 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
8393 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
8394 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
8395 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
8396 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
8397 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
8398 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
8399 </blockquote><p>
8400
8401 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
8402 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
8403 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
8404 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
8405 summarized like this:</p>
8406
8407 <p><blockquote>
8408 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
8409 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
8410 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
8411 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
8412 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
8413 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
8414 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
8415 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
8416 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
8417 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
8418 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
8419 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
8420 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
8421 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
8422 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
8423 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
8424 </blockquote></p>
8425
8426 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
8427 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
8428 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
8429 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
8430
8431 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8432 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8433 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8434
8435       </div>
8436       <div class="tags">
8437
8438
8439         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
8440
8441
8442       </div>
8443     </div>
8444     <div class="padding"></div>
8445
8446     <div class="entry">
8447       <div class="title">
8448         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
8449       </div>
8450       <div class="date">
8451         14th January 2014
8452       </div>
8453       <div class="body">
8454         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
8455 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
8456 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
8457 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
8458 the source.  The company behind it provide
8459 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
8460 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
8461 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
8462 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
8463 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
8464 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
8465 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
8466 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
8467 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
8468 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
8469 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
8470 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
8471 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
8472 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
8473 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
8474 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
8475 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
8476 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
8477 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
8478
8479 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
8480
8481 <ul>
8482
8483   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
8484   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
8485   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
8486
8487 </ul>
8488
8489 <p>You can
8490 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
8491 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
8492 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
8493 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
8494 include a test suite check.</p>
8495
8496       </div>
8497       <div class="tags">
8498
8499
8500         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8501
8502
8503       </div>
8504     </div>
8505     <div class="padding"></div>
8506
8507     <div class="entry">
8508       <div class="title">
8509         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
8510       </div>
8511       <div class="date">
8512         25th December 2013
8513       </div>
8514       <div class="body">
8515         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8516 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
8517 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
8518 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
8519 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
8520 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
8521 George</a>.</p>
8522
8523 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
8524
8525 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8526
8527 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
8528 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
8529 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
8530 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
8531 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
8532 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
8533
8534 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
8535 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
8536 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
8537 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
8538 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
8539 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
8540 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
8541 to help building another school's informational education concept from
8542 scratch.</p>
8543
8544 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
8545 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
8546 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
8547
8548 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
8549 and cycling.</p>
8550
8551 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8552 project?</strong></p>
8553
8554 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
8555 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
8556 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
8557 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
8558 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
8559 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
8560
8561 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
8562 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
8563 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
8564 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
8565 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
8566 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
8567 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
8568 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
8569 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
8570
8571 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
8572 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
8573 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
8574 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
8575
8576 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8577 Edu?</strong></p>
8578
8579 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
8580 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
8581 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
8582 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
8583 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
8584 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
8585 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
8586 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
8587 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
8588 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
8589 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
8590 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
8591 that it rocks!</p>
8592
8593 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
8594 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
8595 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
8596 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
8597 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
8598 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
8599 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
8600
8601 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8602 Edu?</strong></p>
8603
8604 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
8605 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
8606 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
8607 can list a few points about that:</p>
8608
8609 <ul>
8610
8611  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
8612  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
8613  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
8614
8615 </ul>
8616
8617 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
8618
8619 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8620
8621 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
8622 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
8623 year.</p>
8624
8625 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
8626 run text tools. I use
8627 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
8628 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
8629 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
8630 based full-featured student management software with the two),
8631 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
8632 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
8633 coloured world called the WWW, I use
8634 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
8635 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
8636 e-mail.</p>
8637
8638 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
8639 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
8640 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
8641 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
8642 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
8643 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
8644 Facebook now ;).</p>
8645
8646 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8647 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8648
8649 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
8650 side is what I have experienced.</p>
8651
8652 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
8653 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
8654 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
8655 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
8656 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
8657 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
8658 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
8659 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
8660 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
8661 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
8662 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
8663 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
8664 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
8665 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
8666 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
8667 plain criminal.</p>
8668
8669 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
8670 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
8671 founded an association named
8672 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
8673 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
8674 area of free and open source software, for example the
8675 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
8676 Teckids and are the youth programme of
8677 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
8678 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
8679 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
8680 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
8681 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
8682 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
8683
8684 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
8685 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
8686 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
8687 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
8688 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
8689 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
8690 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
8691 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
8692 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
8693 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
8694 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
8695 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
8696
8697 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
8698 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
8699 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
8700 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
8701
8702 <!--
8703
8704 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
8705
8706 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
8707 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
8708
8709  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
8710    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
8711    of the decision makers above;
8712  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
8713    knowledge about free software
8714
8715 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
8716
8717 -->
8718
8719       </div>
8720       <div class="tags">
8721
8722
8723         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8724
8725
8726       </div>
8727     </div>
8728     <div class="padding"></div>
8729
8730     <div class="entry">
8731       <div class="title">
8732         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
8733       </div>
8734       <div class="date">
8735          6th December 2013
8736       </div>
8737       <div class="body">
8738         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
8739 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8740 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
8741 had a new school administrator show up on
8742 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
8743 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
8744 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
8745 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
8746 Germany a few years ago.</p>
8747
8748 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8749
8750 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
8751 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
8752 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
8753 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
8754
8755 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
8756 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
8757 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
8758 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
8759 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
8760 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
8761 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
8762 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
8763 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
8764
8765 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8766 project?</strong></p>
8767
8768 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
8769 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
8770 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
8771 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
8772
8773 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8774 Edu?</strong></p>
8775
8776 <ul>
8777   <li>Quick installation,</li>
8778   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
8779   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
8780   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
8781     single company,</li>
8782   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
8783     experience and problem solutions.</li>
8784 </ul>
8785
8786 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8787 Edu?</strong></p>
8788
8789 <ul>
8790   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
8791   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
8792   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
8793   working again reliably.
8794
8795   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
8796   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
8797   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
8798   as their base.
8799
8800   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
8801   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
8802   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
8803   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
8804   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
8805   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
8806
8807   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
8808   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
8809   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
8810   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
8811   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
8812   schemes.</li>
8813
8814   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
8815   compared to Debian.</li>
8816
8817 </ul>
8818
8819 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
8820 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
8821 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
8822 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
8823
8824 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8825
8826 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
8827 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
8828 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
8829 programming languages for teaching.</p>
8830
8831 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8832 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8833
8834 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
8835
8836 <ul>
8837
8838   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
8839     teaching and learning.</li>
8840
8841   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
8842     home, and at their working place without running into license or
8843     conversion problems.</li>
8844
8845   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
8846     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
8847     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
8848     science, not products.</li>
8849
8850   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
8851     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
8852
8853 </ul>
8854
8855       </div>
8856       <div class="tags">
8857
8858
8859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8860
8861
8862       </div>
8863     </div>
8864     <div class="padding"></div>
8865
8866     <div class="entry">
8867       <div class="title">
8868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
8869       </div>
8870       <div class="date">
8871         30th November 2013
8872       </div>
8873       <div class="body">
8874         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
8875 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
8876 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
8877 experiment with interesting network technology, the
8878 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
8879 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
8880 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
8881 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
8882 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
8883 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
8884 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
8885 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
8886 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
8887 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
8888 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
8889 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
8890 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
8891 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
8892 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
8893 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
8894
8895       </div>
8896       <div class="tags">
8897
8898
8899         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8900
8901
8902       </div>
8903     </div>
8904     <div class="padding"></div>
8905
8906     <div class="entry">
8907       <div class="title">
8908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
8909       </div>
8910       <div class="date">
8911         24th November 2013
8912       </div>
8913       <div class="body">
8914         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
8915 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
8916 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
8917 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
8918 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
8919 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
8920 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
8921 is working on.  I checked the
8922 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
8923 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
8924 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
8925 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
8926 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
8927 These are the release notes:</p>
8928
8929 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
8930
8931 <ul>
8932
8933   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
8934    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
8935    up.</li>
8936
8937   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
8938
8939   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
8940    Matthias Klose.</li>
8941
8942   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
8943    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
8944
8945   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
8946    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
8947    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
8948
8949 </ul>
8950
8951 <p>You can
8952 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
8953 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
8954 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
8955 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
8956 include a testsuite check.</p>
8957
8958       </div>
8959       <div class="tags">
8960
8961
8962         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8963
8964
8965       </div>
8966     </div>
8967     <div class="padding"></div>
8968
8969     <div class="entry">
8970       <div class="title">
8971         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
8972       </div>
8973       <div class="date">
8974         21st November 2013
8975       </div>
8976       <div class="body">
8977         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
8978 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
8979 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
8980 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
8981 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
8982 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
8983 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
8984 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
8985 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
8986 TED talk
8987 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
8988 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
8989 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
8990
8991 <blockquote>
8992
8993 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
8994 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
8995 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
8996 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
8997 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
8998 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
8999 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
9000 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
9001 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
9002 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
9003 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
9004
9005 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
9006 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
9007 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
9008
9009 </blockquote>
9010
9011 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
9012 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
9013 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
9014 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
9015 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
9016 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
9017 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
9018 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
9019 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
9020
9021       </div>
9022       <div class="tags">
9023
9024
9025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9026
9027
9028       </div>
9029     </div>
9030     <div class="padding"></div>
9031
9032     <div class="entry">
9033       <div class="title">
9034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
9035       </div>
9036       <div class="date">
9037         13th November 2013
9038       </div>
9039       <div class="body">
9040         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
9041 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
9042 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
9043 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
9044 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
9045 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
9046 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
9047 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
9048 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
9049 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
9050 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
9051 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
9052 right away. :)</p>
9053
9054       </div>
9055       <div class="tags">
9056
9057
9058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9059
9060
9061       </div>
9062     </div>
9063     <div class="padding"></div>
9064
9065     <div class="entry">
9066       <div class="title">
9067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
9068       </div>
9069       <div class="date">
9070         10th November 2013
9071       </div>
9072       <div class="body">
9073         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
9074 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
9075 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
9076 MR3040 as a mesh node using
9077 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
9078
9079 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
9080 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
9081 and downloaded
9082 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
9083 recommended firmware image</a>
9084 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
9085 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
9086 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
9087 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
9088 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
9089
9090 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
9091 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
9092 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
9093 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
9094 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
9095 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
9096 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
9097 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
9098 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
9099 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
9100 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
9101 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
9102 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
9103
9104 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
9105 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
9106 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
9107 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
9108 them:</p>
9109
9110 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
9111
9112 <pre>
9113
9114 config interface 'loopback'
9115         option ifname 'lo'
9116         option proto 'static'
9117         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
9118         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
9119
9120 config globals 'globals'
9121         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
9122
9123 config interface 'lan'
9124         option ifname 'eth0'
9125         option type 'bridge'
9126         option proto 'dhcp'
9127         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
9128         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
9129         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
9130         option ip6assign '60'
9131
9132 config interface 'mesh'
9133         option ifname 'adhoc0'
9134         option mtu '1528'
9135         option proto 'batadv'
9136         option mesh 'bat0'
9137 </pre>
9138
9139 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
9140 <pre>
9141
9142 config wifi-device 'radio0'
9143         option type 'mac80211'
9144         option channel '11'
9145         option hwmode '11ng'
9146         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
9147         option htmode 'HT20'
9148         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
9149         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
9150         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
9151         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
9152         option disabled '0'
9153
9154 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
9155         option device 'radio0'
9156         option ifname 'adhoc0'
9157         option network 'mesh'
9158         option encryption 'none'
9159         option mode 'adhoc'
9160         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
9161         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
9162 </pre>
9163 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
9164 <pre>
9165
9166 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
9167         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
9168         option 'aggregated_ogms'
9169         option 'ap_isolation'
9170         option 'bonding'
9171         option 'fragmentation'
9172         option 'gw_bandwidth'
9173         option 'gw_mode'
9174         option 'gw_sel_class'
9175         option 'log_level'
9176         option 'orig_interval'
9177         option 'vis_mode'
9178         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
9179         option 'distributed_arp_table'
9180         option 'network_coding'
9181         option 'hop_penalty'
9182
9183 # yet another batX instance
9184 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
9185 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
9186 </pre>
9187
9188 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
9189 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
9190 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
9191
9192       </div>
9193       <div class="tags">
9194
9195
9196         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9197
9198
9199       </div>
9200     </div>
9201     <div class="padding"></div>
9202
9203     <div class="entry">
9204       <div class="title">
9205         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
9206       </div>
9207       <div class="date">
9208          2nd November 2013
9209       </div>
9210       <div class="body">
9211         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
9212 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
9213 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
9214 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
9215 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
9216
9217 <p><pre>
9218 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
9219 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
9220 # Provides:          rsyslog
9221 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
9222 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
9223 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
9224 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
9225 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
9226 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
9227 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
9228 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
9229 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
9230 ### END INIT INFO
9231 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
9232 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
9233 </pre></p>
9234
9235 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
9236 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
9237 info/comments.</p>
9238
9239 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
9240 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
9241
9242 <p><pre>
9243 #!/bin/sh
9244
9245 # Define LSB log_* functions.
9246 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
9247 # and status_of_proc is working.
9248 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
9249
9250 #
9251 # Function that starts the daemon/service
9252
9253 #
9254 do_start()
9255 {
9256         # Return
9257         #   0 if daemon has been started
9258         #   1 if daemon was already running
9259         #   2 if daemon could not be started
9260         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
9261                 || return 1
9262         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
9263                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
9264                 || return 2
9265         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
9266         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
9267         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
9268 }
9269
9270 #
9271 # Function that stops the daemon/service
9272 #
9273 do_stop()
9274 {
9275         # Return
9276         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
9277         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
9278         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
9279         #   other if a failure occurred
9280         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
9281         RETVAL="$?"
9282         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
9283         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
9284         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
9285         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
9286         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
9287         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
9288         # sleep for some time.
9289         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
9290         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
9291         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
9292         rm -f $PIDFILE
9293         return "$RETVAL"
9294 }
9295
9296 #
9297 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
9298 #
9299 do_reload() {
9300         #
9301         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
9302         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
9303         # then implement that here.
9304         #
9305         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
9306         return 0
9307 }
9308
9309 SCRIPTNAME=$1
9310 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
9311 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
9312 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
9313     script="$1"
9314     shift
9315     . $script
9316 else
9317     exit 0
9318 fi
9319
9320 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
9321 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
9322
9323 # Exit if the package is not installed
9324 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
9325
9326 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
9327 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
9328
9329 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
9330 . /lib/init/vars.sh
9331
9332 case "$1" in
9333   start)
9334         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
9335         do_start
9336         case "$?" in
9337                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
9338                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
9339         esac
9340         ;;
9341   stop)
9342         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
9343         do_stop
9344         case "$?" in
9345                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
9346                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
9347         esac
9348         ;;
9349   status)
9350         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
9351         ;;
9352   #reload|force-reload)
9353         #
9354         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
9355         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
9356         #
9357         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
9358         #do_reload
9359         #log_end_msg $?
9360         #;;
9361   restart|force-reload)
9362         #
9363         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
9364         # 'force-reload' alias
9365         #
9366         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
9367         do_stop
9368         case "$?" in
9369           0|1)
9370                 do_start
9371                 case "$?" in
9372                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
9373                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
9374                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
9375                 esac
9376                 ;;
9377           *)
9378                 # Failed to stop
9379                 log_end_msg 1
9380                 ;;
9381         esac
9382         ;;
9383   *)
9384         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
9385         exit 3
9386         ;;
9387 esac
9388
9389 :
9390 </pre></p>
9391
9392 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
9393 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
9394 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
9395 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
9396
9397 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
9398 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
9399 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
9400 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
9401 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
9402
9403       </div>
9404       <div class="tags">
9405
9406
9407         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>.
9408
9409
9410       </div>
9411     </div>
9412     <div class="padding"></div>
9413
9414     <div class="entry">
9415       <div class="title">
9416         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
9417       </div>
9418       <div class="date">
9419          1st November 2013
9420       </div>
9421       <div class="body">
9422         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
9423 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
9424 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
9425 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
9426 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
9427 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
9428 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
9429 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
9430 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
9431 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
9432 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
9433 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
9434
9435 <p>The source is now available from
9436 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
9437
9438       </div>
9439       <div class="tags">
9440
9441
9442         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9443
9444
9445       </div>
9446     </div>
9447     <div class="padding"></div>
9448
9449     <div class="entry">
9450       <div class="title">
9451         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
9452       </div>
9453       <div class="date">
9454         27th October 2013
9455       </div>
9456       <div class="body">
9457         <p>The
9458 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
9459 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
9460 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
9461 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
9462 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
9463 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
9464 of a plan to simplify the build system for
9465 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
9466 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
9467 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
9468 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
9469 Raspberry Pi.</p>
9470
9471 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
9472 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
9473 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
9474 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
9475 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
9476 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
9477 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
9478 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
9479 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
9480 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
9481 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
9482 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
9483 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
9484 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
9485 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
9486 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
9487 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
9488 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
9489 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
9490 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
9491 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
9492 available from
9493 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
9494 upstream project page</a>.</p>
9495
9496 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
9497 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
9498 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
9499 list:</p>
9500
9501 <p><pre>
9502 #!/bin/sh
9503 set -e # Exit on first error
9504 rootdir="$1"
9505 cd "$rootdir"
9506 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
9507 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
9508 EOF
9509 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
9510 # install a kernel somewhere too.
9511 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
9512     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
9513 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
9514 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
9515 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
9516 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
9517 </pre></p>
9518
9519 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
9520 to build the image:</p>
9521
9522 <pre>
9523 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
9524     --variant minbase \
9525     --arch armel \
9526     --distribution jessie \
9527     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
9528     --image test.img \
9529     --size 600M \
9530     --bootsize 64M \
9531     --boottype vfat \
9532     --log-level debug \
9533     --verbose \
9534     --no-kernel \
9535     --no-extlinux \
9536     --root-password raspberry \
9537     --hostname raspberrypi \
9538     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
9539     --customize `pwd`/customize \
9540     --package netbase \
9541     --package git-core \
9542     --package binutils \
9543     --package ca-certificates \
9544     --package wget \
9545     --package kmod
9546 </pre></p>
9547
9548 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
9549 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
9550 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
9551 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
9552 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
9553 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
9554 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
9555
9556 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
9557 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
9558 build dependency list.</p>
9559
9560 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
9561 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
9562 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
9563 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
9564
9565       </div>
9566       <div class="tags">
9567
9568
9569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
9570
9571
9572       </div>
9573     </div>
9574     <div class="padding"></div>
9575
9576     <div class="entry">
9577       <div class="title">
9578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
9579       </div>
9580       <div class="date">
9581         21st October 2013
9582       </div>
9583       <div class="body">
9584         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
9585 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
9586 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
9587 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
9588 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
9589 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
9590 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
9591 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
9592
9593 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
9594 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
9595 instead, I started playing with a
9596 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
9597 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
9598 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
9599 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
9600 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
9601 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
9602 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
9603 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
9604 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
9605 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
9606 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
9607 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
9608 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
9609 every client on the local network.</p>
9610
9611 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
9612 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
9613 and a script
9614 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
9615 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
9616 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
9617 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
9618 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
9619 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
9620 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
9621 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
9622 support.</p>
9623
9624 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
9625 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
9626
9627 <p><pre>
9628 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
9629     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
9630 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
9631 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
9632 %
9633 </pre></p>
9634
9635 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
9636 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
9637 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
9638 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
9639 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
9640 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
9641
9642 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
9643 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
9644 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
9645
9646 <p><table>
9647
9648 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
9649 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
9650 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
9651 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
9652 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
9653 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
9654
9655 </table></p>
9656
9657 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
9658 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
9659 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
9660 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
9661 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
9662 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
9663 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
9664
9665       </div>
9666       <div class="tags">
9667
9668
9669         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9670
9671
9672       </div>
9673     </div>
9674     <div class="padding"></div>
9675
9676     <div class="entry">
9677       <div class="title">
9678         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
9679       </div>
9680       <div class="date">
9681         19th October 2013
9682       </div>
9683       <div class="body">
9684         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
9685 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
9686 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
9687 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
9688 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
9689 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
9690 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
9691 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
9692
9693       </div>
9694       <div class="tags">
9695
9696
9697         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>.
9698
9699
9700       </div>
9701     </div>
9702     <div class="padding"></div>
9703
9704     <div class="entry">
9705       <div class="title">
9706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
9707       </div>
9708       <div class="date">
9709         15th October 2013
9710       </div>
9711       <div class="body">
9712         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
9713 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
9714 these. :)</p>
9715
9716 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
9717 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
9718 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
9719 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
9720 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
9721 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
9722 hope you will to. :)</p>
9723
9724 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
9725 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
9726 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
9727 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
9728 donated.  Are you next?</p>
9729
9730 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
9731 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
9732 statement under the heading
9733 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
9734 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
9735 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
9736 too.</p>
9737
9738       </div>
9739       <div class="tags">
9740
9741
9742         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9743
9744
9745       </div>
9746     </div>
9747     <div class="padding"></div>
9748
9749     <div class="entry">
9750       <div class="title">
9751         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
9752       </div>
9753       <div class="date">
9754         11th October 2013
9755       </div>
9756       <div class="body">
9757         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
9758 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
9759 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
9760 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
9761 successful examples like
9762 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
9763 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
9764 (see
9765 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
9766 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
9767 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
9768 can be seen from their
9769 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
9770 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
9771 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
9772 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
9773 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
9774
9775 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
9776 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
9777 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
9778 my recent involvement in
9779 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
9780 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
9781 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
9782 when possible, given that most communication between people are
9783 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
9784 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
9785 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
9786 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
9787 important over the years.</p>
9788
9789 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
9790 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
9791 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
9792 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
9793 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
9794 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
9795 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
9796 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
9797 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
9798 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
9799 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
9800 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
9801 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
9802 speakers about this talk (from
9803 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
9804
9805 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
9806
9807 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
9808 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
9809 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
9810 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
9811 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
9812 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
9813 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
9814 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
9815 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
9816 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
9817 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
9818 that project (from
9819 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
9820
9821 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
9822
9823 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
9824 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
9825 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
9826 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
9827 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
9828 based community mesh networks.</p>
9829
9830 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
9831 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
9832 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
9833 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
9834 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
9835 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
9836 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
9837 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
9838 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
9839
9840 <p><table>
9841 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
9842 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
9843 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
9844 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
9845 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
9846 </table></p>
9847
9848 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
9849 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
9850 VillageTelco about
9851 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
9852 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
9853 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
9854 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
9855 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
9856 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
9857
9858 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
9859 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
9860 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
9861 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
9862
9863 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
9864 us on IRC, either channel
9865 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
9866 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
9867 irc.freenode.net.</p>
9868
9869 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
9870 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
9871 and Innovation called
9872 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
9873 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
9874 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
9875 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
9876 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
9877 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
9878 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
9879 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
9880
9881 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
9882 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
9883 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
9884 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
9885 mesh system.</p>
9886
9887       </div>
9888       <div class="tags">
9889
9890
9891         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9892
9893
9894       </div>
9895     </div>
9896     <div class="padding"></div>
9897
9898     <div class="entry">
9899       <div class="title">
9900         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
9901       </div>
9902       <div class="date">
9903          8th October 2013
9904       </div>
9905       <div class="body">
9906         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
9907 Salvador had published a
9908 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
9909 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
9910 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
9911 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
9912 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
9913 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
9914 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
9915 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
9916 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
9917 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
9918 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
9919 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
9920 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
9921 computers without hard drives by installing one central
9922 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
9923
9924 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
9925
9926 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
9927
9928 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
9929 me know. :)</p>
9930
9931       </div>
9932       <div class="tags">
9933
9934
9935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9936
9937
9938       </div>
9939     </div>
9940     <div class="padding"></div>
9941
9942     <div class="entry">
9943       <div class="title">
9944         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
9945       </div>
9946       <div class="date">
9947         29th September 2013
9948       </div>
9949       <div class="body">
9950         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
9951 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
9952 complete announcement text can be found at
9953 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
9954 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
9955
9956 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
9957 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
9958 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
9959 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
9960
9961       </div>
9962       <div class="tags">
9963
9964
9965         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9966
9967
9968       </div>
9969     </div>
9970     <div class="padding"></div>
9971
9972     <div class="entry">
9973       <div class="title">
9974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
9975       </div>
9976       <div class="date">
9977         27th September 2013
9978       </div>
9979       <div class="body">
9980         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
9981 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
9982 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
9983 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
9984
9985 <ul>
9986
9987 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
9988 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
9989
9990 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
9991 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
9992
9993 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
9994 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
9995 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
9996 (Youtube)</li>
9997
9998 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
9999 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
10000
10001 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
10002 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
10003
10004 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
10005 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
10006 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
10007
10008 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
10009 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
10010 (Youtube)</li>
10011
10012 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
10013 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
10014
10015 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
10016 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
10017
10018 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
10019 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
10020 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
10021
10022 </ul>
10023
10024 <p>A larger list is available from
10025 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
10026 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
10027
10028 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
10029 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
10030 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
10031 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
10032 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
10033 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
10034 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
10035 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
10036 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
10037 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
10038 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
10039
10040       </div>
10041       <div class="tags">
10042
10043
10044         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10045
10046
10047       </div>
10048     </div>
10049     <div class="padding"></div>
10050
10051     <div class="entry">
10052       <div class="title">
10053         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
10054       </div>
10055       <div class="date">
10056         16th September 2013
10057       </div>
10058       <div class="body">
10059         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
10060 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
10061
10062 <blockquote>
10063 <p>Hi,</p>
10064
10065 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
10066 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10067 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
10068
10069 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
10070 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
10071 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
10072 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
10073
10074 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
10075 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
10076
10077 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
10078 compared to beta1:</p>
10079
10080 <ul>
10081
10082 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
10083 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
10084 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
10085 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
10086 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
10087 main server.</li>
10088 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
10089 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
10090 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
10091 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
10092 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
10093
10094 </ul>
10095
10096 <p>Where to get it:</p>
10097
10098 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
10099
10100 <ul>
10101 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
10102 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
10103 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
10104 </ul>
10105
10106 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
10107
10108 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
10109 <ul>
10110 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
10111 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
10112 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
10113 </ul>
10114
10115 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
10116
10117 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
10118 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
10119 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
10120 as the other isos.</p>
10121
10122 <p>How to report bugs</p>
10123
10124 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
10125 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
10126
10127
10128 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
10129
10130 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
10131 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
10132 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
10133 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
10134 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
10135 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
10136 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
10137 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
10138 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
10139 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
10140 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
10141 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
10142 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
10143
10144 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
10145 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
10146 Squeeze release.</p>
10147
10148 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
10149
10150 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
10151 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
10152 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
10153 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
10154 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
10155 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
10156 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
10157 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
10158 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
10159 directory.</p>
10160
10161
10162 <p>cheers,
10163 <br>        Holger</p>
10164 </blockquote>
10165
10166       </div>
10167       <div class="tags">
10168
10169
10170         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10171
10172
10173       </div>
10174     </div>
10175     <div class="padding"></div>
10176
10177     <div class="entry">
10178       <div class="title">
10179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
10180       </div>
10181       <div class="date">
10182         10th September 2013
10183       </div>
10184       <div class="body">
10185         <p>I was introduced to the
10186 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
10187 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
10188 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
10189 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
10190 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
10191 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
10192 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
10193 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
10194
10195 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
10196 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
10197 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
10198 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
10199 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
10200
10201 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
10202 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
10203 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
10204 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
10205 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
10206 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
10207 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
10208 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
10209 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
10210 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
10211 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
10212 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
10213 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
10214 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
10215 missing in Debian).</p>
10216
10217 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
10218 scripts
10219 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
10220 and a administrative web interface
10221 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
10222 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
10223 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
10224 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
10225 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
10226 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
10227 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
10228 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
10229 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
10230 this is really working yet, see
10231 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
10232 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
10233 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
10234 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
10235 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
10236 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
10237 with lots of half baked features.</p>
10238
10239 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
10240 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
10241 at.</p>
10242
10243 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
10244
10245 <ol>
10246
10247 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
10248 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
10249 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
10250 to the Debian installer:<p>
10251 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
10252
10253 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
10254 install on.</li>
10255
10256 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
10257 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
10258
10259 </ol>
10260
10261 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
10262
10263 <ol>
10264
10265 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
10266 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
10267 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
10268 <pre>
10269 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
10270 </pre></li>
10271 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
10272 <pre>
10273 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
10274    apt-key add -
10275 apt-get update
10276 apt-get install freedombox-setup
10277 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
10278 </pre></li>
10279 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
10280
10281 </ol>
10282
10283 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
10284 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
10285 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
10286 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
10287 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
10288
10289 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
10290 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
10291 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
10292 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
10293
10294 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
10295 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
10296 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
10297 irc.debian.org and the
10298 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
10299 mailing list</a>.</p>
10300
10301 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
10302 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
10303 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
10304 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
10305 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
10306 default password is 'secret'.</p>
10307
10308       </div>
10309       <div class="tags">
10310
10311
10312         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10313
10314
10315       </div>
10316     </div>
10317     <div class="padding"></div>
10318
10319     <div class="entry">
10320       <div class="title">
10321         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
10322       </div>
10323       <div class="date">
10324         22nd August 2013
10325       </div>
10326       <div class="body">
10327         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
10328 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
10329 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
10330
10331 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
10332
10333 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10334 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
10335
10336 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
10337
10338 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
10339 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
10340 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
10341 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
10342 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
10343 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
10344 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
10345 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
10346 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
10347 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
10348 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
10349 desktop contains
10350 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
10351 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
10352 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
10353 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
10354
10355 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
10356 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
10357 release.</p>
10358
10359 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
10360 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
10361 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
10362 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
10363 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
10364 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
10365 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
10366 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
10367 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
10368 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
10369 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
10370
10371 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
10372
10373 <ul>
10374
10375 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
10376     work also without a attached tty.</li>
10377 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
10378     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
10379     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
10380     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
10381     required).</li>
10382
10383 </ul>
10384
10385 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
10386
10387 <ul>
10388
10389 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
10390 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
10391 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
10392 stick ISO image.</li>
10393 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
10394 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
10395 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
10396     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
10397     cope with this.</li>
10398 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
10399 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
10400     empty password hashes.</li>
10401 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
10402     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
10403     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
10404
10405 </ul>
10406
10407 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
10408
10409 <ul>
10410
10411 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
10412     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
10413 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
10414     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
10415
10416 </ul>
10417
10418 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
10419
10420 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
10421
10422 <ul>
10423
10424 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
10425
10426 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
10427
10428 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
10429
10430 </ul>
10431
10432 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
10433 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
10434
10435 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
10436
10437 <ul>
10438
10439 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
10440 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
10441 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
10442
10443 </ul>
10444
10445 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
10446 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
10447
10448
10449 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
10450
10451 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
10452
10453       </div>
10454       <div class="tags">
10455
10456
10457         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10458
10459
10460       </div>
10461     </div>
10462     <div class="padding"></div>
10463
10464     <div class="entry">
10465       <div class="title">
10466         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
10467       </div>
10468       <div class="date">
10469         18th August 2013
10470       </div>
10471       <div class="body">
10472         <p>Earlier, I reported about
10473 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
10474 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
10475 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
10476 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
10477 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
10478 currently on the disk.</p>
10479
10480 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
10481 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
10482 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
10483 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
10484 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
10485 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
10486 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
10487 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
10488 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
10489 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
10490 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
10491 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
10492 the broken disks.</p>
10493
10494       </div>
10495       <div class="tags">
10496
10497
10498         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10499
10500
10501       </div>
10502     </div>
10503     <div class="padding"></div>
10504
10505     <div class="entry">
10506       <div class="title">
10507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
10508       </div>
10509       <div class="date">
10510          2nd August 2013
10511       </div>
10512       <div class="body">
10513         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
10514 have worked on a Norwegian
10515 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
10516 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
10517 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
10518 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
10519 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
10520 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
10521 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
10522 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
10523 progress of the translation:</p>
10524
10525 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
10526
10527 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
10528 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
10529 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
10530 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
10531 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
10532 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
10533 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
10534 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
10535 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
10536 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
10537 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
10538
10539 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
10540 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
10541 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
10542 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
10543 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
10544 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
10545 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
10546 project files currently available from
10547 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10548
10549 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10550 the updated
10551 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10552 and
10553 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10554 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10555 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10556 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10557
10558       </div>
10559       <div class="tags">
10560
10561
10562         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>.
10563
10564
10565       </div>
10566     </div>
10567     <div class="padding"></div>
10568
10569     <div class="entry">
10570       <div class="title">
10571         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
10572       </div>
10573       <div class="date">
10574         27th July 2013
10575       </div>
10576       <div class="body">
10577         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
10578 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
10579
10580 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
10581 2013-07-27</strong></p>
10582
10583 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10584 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
10585
10586 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
10587
10588 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
10589 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
10590 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
10591 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
10592 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
10593 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
10594 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
10595 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
10596 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
10597 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
10598 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
10599 desktop contains
10600 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
10601 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
10602 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
10603 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
10604
10605 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
10606 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
10607 Squeeze release.</p>
10608
10609 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
10610 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
10611 release.</p>
10612
10613 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
10614
10615 <ul>
10616
10617 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
10618    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
10619 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
10620    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
10621    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
10622    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
10623    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
10624 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
10625 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
10626 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
10627    crash bugs.</li>
10628
10629 </ul>
10630
10631 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
10632
10633 <ul>
10634
10635 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
10636    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
10637 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
10638    netinst CD.</li>
10639 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
10640    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
10641 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
10642    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
10643    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
10644 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
10645    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
10646    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
10647 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
10648    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
10649    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
10650 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
10651    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
10652 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
10653
10654 </ul>
10655
10656 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
10657
10658 <ul>
10659
10660 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
10661 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
10662     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
10663 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
10664
10665 </ul>
10666
10667 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
10668
10669 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
10670
10671 <ul>
10672
10673 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
10674
10675 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
10676
10677 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
10678
10679 </ul>
10680
10681 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
10682 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
10683
10684 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
10685
10686 <ul>
10687
10688 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
10689 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
10690 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
10691
10692 </ul>
10693
10694 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
10695 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
10696
10697
10698 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
10699
10700 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
10701
10702       </div>
10703       <div class="tags">
10704
10705
10706         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10707
10708
10709       </div>
10710     </div>
10711     <div class="padding"></div>
10712
10713     <div class="entry">
10714       <div class="title">
10715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
10716       </div>
10717       <div class="date">
10718         17th July 2013
10719       </div>
10720       <div class="body">
10721         <p>Today I switched to
10722 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
10723 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
10724 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
10725 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
10726 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
10727 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
10728 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
10729 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
10730 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
10731 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
10732 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
10733 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
10734 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
10735 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
10736 station from now on.</p>
10737
10738 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
10739 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
10740 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
10741 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
10742 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
10743 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
10744 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
10745 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
10746 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
10747 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
10748 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
10749 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
10750
10751 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
10752 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
10753 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
10754 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
10755 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
10756 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
10757 parameters are tuned:</p>
10758
10759 <ul>
10760
10761 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
10762     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
10763
10764 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
10765     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
10766     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
10767
10768 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
10769     systems.</li>
10770
10771 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
10772     /etc/fstab.</li>
10773
10774 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
10775
10776 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
10777     cron.daily).</li>
10778
10779 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
10780     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
10781
10782 </ul>
10783
10784 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
10785 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
10786 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
10787 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
10788 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
10789 from getting the data on the disk (see
10790 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
10791 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
10792 right thing to do.</p>
10793
10794 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
10795 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
10796 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
10797
10798 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
10799 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
10800 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
10801 instead of during my work.</p>
10802
10803 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
10804 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
10805
10806 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
10807 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
10808 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
10809
10810 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
10811 there.</p>
10812
10813 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
10814 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
10815 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
10816 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
10817 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
10818 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
10819 back.</p>
10820
10821       </div>
10822       <div class="tags">
10823
10824
10825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10826
10827
10828       </div>
10829     </div>
10830     <div class="padding"></div>
10831
10832     <div class="entry">
10833       <div class="title">
10834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
10835       </div>
10836       <div class="date">
10837         10th July 2013
10838       </div>
10839       <div class="body">
10840         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
10841 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
10842 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
10843 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
10844 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
10845 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
10846 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
10847 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
10848
10849 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
10850 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
10851 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
10852 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
10853 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
10854 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
10855 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
10856 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
10857 lock up when I download a new
10858 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
10859 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
10860 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
10861
10862 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
10863 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
10864 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
10865 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
10866 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
10867 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
10868
10869 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
10870 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
10871 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
10872 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
10873 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
10874 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
10875
10876 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
10877 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
10878 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
10879 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
10880 exist).</p>
10881
10882       </div>
10883       <div class="tags">
10884
10885
10886         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10887
10888
10889       </div>
10890     </div>
10891     <div class="padding"></div>
10892
10893     <div class="entry">
10894       <div class="title">
10895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
10896       </div>
10897       <div class="date">
10898          9th July 2013
10899       </div>
10900       <div class="body">
10901         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
10902 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
10903 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
10904 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
10905 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10906 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
10907 Bitraf</a>.</p>
10908
10909 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
10910 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
10911 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
10912 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
10913 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
10914
10915       </div>
10916       <div class="tags">
10917
10918
10919         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>.
10920
10921
10922       </div>
10923     </div>
10924     <div class="padding"></div>
10925
10926     <div class="entry">
10927       <div class="title">
10928         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
10929       </div>
10930       <div class="date">
10931          5th July 2013
10932       </div>
10933       <div class="body">
10934         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
10935 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
10936 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
10937 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
10938 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
10939 ended up picking a
10940 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
10941 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
10942 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
10943 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
10944 on that below.</p>
10945
10946 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
10947 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
10948 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
10949 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
10950 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
10951 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
10952 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
10953 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
10954 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
10955
10956 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
10957 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
10958 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
10959 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
10960 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
10961 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
10962 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
10963
10964 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
10965 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
10966
10967 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
10968 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
10969 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
10970 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
10971 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
10972 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
10973 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
10974 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
10975 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
10976 kernel developers as
10977 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
10978 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
10979 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
10980 Lenovo forums, both for
10981 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
10982 2012-11-10</a> and for
10983 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
10984 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
10985 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
10986 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
10987 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
10988 There is even a
10989 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
10990 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
10991 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
10992
10993 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
10994 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
10995 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
10996 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
10997 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
10998 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
10999 fixed. :)</p>
11000
11001       </div>
11002       <div class="tags">
11003
11004
11005         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11006
11007
11008       </div>
11009     </div>
11010     <div class="padding"></div>
11011
11012     <div class="entry">
11013       <div class="title">
11014         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
11015       </div>
11016       <div class="date">
11017          4th July 2013
11018       </div>
11019       <div class="body">
11020         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
11021 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
11022 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
11023 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
11024 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
11025 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
11026 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
11027 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
11028 with an expencive door stop.</p>
11029
11030 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
11031 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
11032 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
11033 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
11034 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
11035 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
11036 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
11037
11038 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
11039 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
11040 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
11041 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
11042 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
11043 new laptop now. :)</p>
11044
11045 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
11046
11047       </div>
11048       <div class="tags">
11049
11050
11051         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11052
11053
11054       </div>
11055     </div>
11056     <div class="padding"></div>
11057
11058     <div class="entry">
11059       <div class="title">
11060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
11061       </div>
11062       <div class="date">
11063          3rd July 2013
11064       </div>
11065       <div class="body">
11066         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
11067 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
11068
11069 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
11070 2013-07-03</strong></p>
11071
11072 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11073 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
11074
11075 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
11076
11077 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
11078 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
11079 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
11080 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
11081 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
11082 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
11083 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
11084 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
11085 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
11086 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
11087 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
11088 desktop contains
11089 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
11090 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
11091 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
11092 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
11093
11094 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
11095 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
11096 Squeeze release.</p>
11097
11098 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
11099 <ul>
11100   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
11101   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
11102     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
11103     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
11104   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
11105     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
11106     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
11107   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
11108     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
11109     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
11110     too.</li>
11111   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
11112     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
11113 </ul>
11114 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
11115 <ul>
11116   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
11117   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
11118   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
11119     up for some language options.</li>
11120   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
11121   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
11122   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
11123     d-i is doing it.</li>
11124   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
11125     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
11126   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
11127     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
11128     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
11129   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
11130     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
11131   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
11132   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
11133     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
11134   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
11135     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
11136 </ul>
11137 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
11138 <ul>
11139   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
11140     available yet (698840).</li>
11141   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
11142 </ul>
11143 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
11144
11145 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
11146 <ul>
11147   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
11148   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
11149   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
11150 </ul>
11151
11152 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
11153 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
11154
11155 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
11156 <ul>
11157   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
11158   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
11159   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
11160 </ul>
11161
11162 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
11163 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
11164
11165 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
11166
11167 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
11168
11169       </div>
11170       <div class="tags">
11171
11172
11173         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11174
11175
11176       </div>
11177     </div>
11178     <div class="padding"></div>
11179
11180     <div class="entry">
11181       <div class="title">
11182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
11183       </div>
11184       <div class="date">
11185         25th June 2013
11186       </div>
11187       <div class="body">
11188         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
11189 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
11190 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
11191 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
11192 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
11193 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
11194 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
11195 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
11196 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
11197 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
11198 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
11199
11200 <p><pre>
11201 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
11202 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
11203 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
11204 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
11205 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
11206 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
11207 firmware-ipw2x00
11208 firmware-ipw2x00
11209 Preconfiguring packages ...
11210 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
11211 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
11212 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
11213 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
11214 #
11215 </pre></p>
11216
11217 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
11218 printed instead:</p>
11219
11220 <p><pre>
11221 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
11222 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
11223 #
11224 </pre></p>
11225
11226 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
11227 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
11228
11229 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
11230 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
11231 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
11232 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
11233 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
11234 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
11235 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
11236 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
11237 machine.</p>
11238
11239 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
11240 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
11241 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
11242 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
11243 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
11244 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
11245
11246       </div>
11247       <div class="tags">
11248
11249
11250         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11251
11252
11253       </div>
11254     </div>
11255     <div class="padding"></div>
11256
11257     <div class="entry">
11258       <div class="title">
11259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
11260       </div>
11261       <div class="date">
11262         22nd June 2013
11263       </div>
11264       <div class="body">
11265         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11266 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
11267 which check that services are running, working, and return the
11268 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
11269 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
11270 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
11271 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
11272 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
11273 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
11274
11275 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
11276 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
11277 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
11278 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
11279 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
11280 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
11281 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
11282 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
11283 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
11284 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
11285 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
11286 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
11287 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
11288 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
11289
11290 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
11291 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
11292 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
11293 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
11294 the problem.</p>
11295
11296 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
11297 please join us on
11298 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
11299 irc.debian.org</a> and the
11300 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
11301 list.</p>
11302
11303       </div>
11304       <div class="tags">
11305
11306
11307         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11308
11309
11310       </div>
11311     </div>
11312     <div class="padding"></div>
11313
11314     <div class="entry">
11315       <div class="title">
11316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
11317       </div>
11318       <div class="date">
11319         17th June 2013
11320       </div>
11321       <div class="body">
11322         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
11323 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
11324 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
11325 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
11326 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
11327 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
11328 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
11329 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
11330
11331 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11332
11333 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
11334 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
11335 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
11336 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
11337 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
11338 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
11339 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
11340 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
11341 field.</p>
11342
11343 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
11344 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
11345 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
11346 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
11347 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
11348 the only one we have in our country.</p>
11349
11350 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11351 project?</strong></p>
11352
11353 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
11354 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
11355 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
11356 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
11357 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
11358 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
11359 ways to contribute.</p>
11360
11361 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
11362 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
11363 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
11364 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
11365 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
11366 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
11367 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
11368 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
11369 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
11370 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
11371
11372 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11373 Edu?</strong></p>
11374
11375 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
11376 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
11377 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
11378 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
11379 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
11380 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
11381 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
11382 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
11383
11384 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
11385 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
11386 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
11387 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
11388 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
11389 project.</p>
11390
11391 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11392 Edu?</strong></p>
11393
11394 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
11395 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
11396 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
11397 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
11398 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
11399 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
11400 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
11401 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
11402 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
11403
11404 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
11405 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
11406 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
11407 on.</p>
11408
11409 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11410
11411 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
11412 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
11413 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
11414 Enlightenment project a lot!),
11415 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
11416 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
11417 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
11418 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
11419 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
11420
11421 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11422 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11423
11424 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
11425 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
11426 that:</p>
11427
11428 <ul>
11429
11430 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
11431
11432 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
11433     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
11434     of teenagers more?</li>
11435
11436 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
11437     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
11438     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
11439     them!)</li>
11440
11441 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
11442     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
11443     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
11444
11445 </ul>
11446
11447 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
11448 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
11449 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
11450 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
11451 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
11452
11453       </div>
11454       <div class="tags">
11455
11456
11457         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11458
11459
11460       </div>
11461     </div>
11462     <div class="padding"></div>
11463
11464     <div class="entry">
11465       <div class="title">
11466         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
11467       </div>
11468       <div class="date">
11469         12th June 2013
11470       </div>
11471       <div class="body">
11472         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
11473 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11474 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
11475 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
11476 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
11477 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
11478
11479 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11480
11481 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
11482 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
11483 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
11484
11485 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
11486 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
11487 each other.</p>
11488
11489 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11490 project?</strong></p>
11491
11492 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
11493 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
11494 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
11495 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
11496 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
11497 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
11498 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
11499 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
11500 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
11501 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
11502 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
11503 we'll get there one day.</p>
11504
11505 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11506 Edu?</strong></p>
11507
11508 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
11509 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
11510 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
11511 very high quality work.</p>
11512
11513 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
11514 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
11515 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
11516 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
11517 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
11518
11519 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11520 Edu?</strong></p>
11521
11522 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
11523 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
11524 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
11525
11526 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
11527 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
11528 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
11529 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
11530 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
11531 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
11532 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
11533 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
11534 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
11535 currently.</p>
11536
11537 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
11538 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
11539 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
11540 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
11541 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
11542 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
11543 autonomous.</p>
11544
11545 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11546
11547 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
11548 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
11549 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
11550 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
11551 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
11552
11553 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
11554 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
11555 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
11556 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
11557 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
11558 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
11559 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
11560 X.</p>
11561
11562 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
11563 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
11564 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
11565 it :p)
11566
11567 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11568 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11569
11570 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
11571 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
11572 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
11573 that.</p>
11574
11575 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
11576 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
11577 advantage of that.</p>
11578
11579 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
11580 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
11581 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
11582 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
11583 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
11584 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
11585 best solution for them.</p>
11586
11587 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
11588 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
11589 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
11590
11591       </div>
11592       <div class="tags">
11593
11594
11595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11596
11597
11598       </div>
11599     </div>
11600     <div class="padding"></div>
11601
11602     <div class="entry">
11603       <div class="title">
11604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
11605       </div>
11606       <div class="date">
11607         11th June 2013
11608       </div>
11609       <div class="body">
11610         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
11611 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
11612 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
11613 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
11614 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
11615 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
11616 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
11617 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
11618 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
11619 i915 driver used by the
11620 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
11621 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
11622
11623 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
11624 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
11625 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
11626 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
11627 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
11628
11629 <pre>
11630 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
11631 update-initramfs -u -k all
11632 </pre>
11633
11634 <p>Since March 2012 there is
11635 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
11636 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
11637 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
11638 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
11639 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
11640 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
11641 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
11642 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
11643 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
11644 number.</p>
11645
11646 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
11647 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
11648
11649 <p><pre>
11650 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
11651     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
11652     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
11653  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
11654  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
11655     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
11656  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
11657     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
11658  Latency: 0
11659  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
11660  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
11661  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
11662  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
11663  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
11664  Capabilities: <access denied>
11665  Kernel driver in use: i915
11666 </pre></p>
11667
11668 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
11669
11670 <p><pre>
11671 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
11672        ...
11673         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
11674         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
11675        ...
11676 }
11677 </pre></p>
11678
11679 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
11680 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
11681 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
11682 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
11683 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
11684 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
11685 yet shown up in
11686 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
11687 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
11688 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
11689 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
11690 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
11691 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
11692
11693 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
11694 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
11695 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
11696 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
11697 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
11698 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
11699 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
11700 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
11701 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
11702 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
11703 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
11704 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
11705
11706 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
11707 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
11708 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
11709 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
11710 backlight.</p>
11711
11712       </div>
11713       <div class="tags">
11714
11715
11716         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11717
11718
11719       </div>
11720     </div>
11721     <div class="padding"></div>
11722
11723     <div class="entry">
11724       <div class="title">
11725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
11726       </div>
11727       <div class="date">
11728         10th June 2013
11729       </div>
11730       <div class="body">
11731         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
11732 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
11733
11734 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
11735 2013-06-10</strong></p>
11736
11737 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
11738 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
11739
11740 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
11741
11742 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
11743 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
11744 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
11745 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
11746 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
11747 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
11748 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
11749 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
11750 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
11751 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
11752 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
11753 desktop contains
11754 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
11755 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
11756 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
11757 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
11758
11759 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
11760 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
11761 Squeeze release.</p>
11762
11763 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
11764
11765 <ul>
11766
11767 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
11768 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
11769 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
11770 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
11771 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
11772
11773 </ul>
11774
11775 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
11776
11777 <ul>
11778
11779 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
11780 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
11781 <li>New Romanian translation.
11782 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
11783 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
11784 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
11785 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
11786 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
11787 <li>More testsuite tests.
11788 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
11789 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
11790
11791 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
11792 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
11793
11794 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
11795 them up with GOsa².</li>
11796
11797 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
11798
11799 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
11800 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
11801 entered password). </li>
11802
11803 </ul>
11804
11805 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
11806
11807 <ul>
11808
11809 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
11810
11811 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
11812 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
11813 missing import feature).</li>
11814
11815 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
11816
11817 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
11818 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
11819 unfixed.</li>
11820
11821 </ul>
11822
11823 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
11824
11825 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
11826
11827 <ul>
11828
11829 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
11830
11831 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
11832
11833 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
11834
11835 </ul>
11836
11837 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
11838 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
11839
11840 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
11841
11842 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
11843
11844       </div>
11845       <div class="tags">
11846
11847
11848         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11849
11850
11851       </div>
11852     </div>
11853     <div class="padding"></div>
11854
11855     <div class="entry">
11856       <div class="title">
11857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
11858       </div>
11859       <div class="date">
11860          5th June 2013
11861       </div>
11862       <div class="body">
11863         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
11864 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
11865 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
11866 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
11867 the project:
11868
11869 <ol>
11870
11871 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
11872   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
11873   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
11874   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
11875   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
11876
11877 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
11878   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
11879   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
11880   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
11881   #698840</a>.</li>
11882
11883 </ol>
11884
11885 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
11886 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
11887 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
11888
11889       </div>
11890       <div class="tags">
11891
11892
11893         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11894
11895
11896       </div>
11897     </div>
11898     <div class="padding"></div>
11899
11900     <div class="entry">
11901       <div class="title">
11902         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
11903       </div>
11904       <div class="date">
11905          4th June 2013
11906       </div>
11907       <div class="body">
11908         <p>It has been a while since my last English
11909 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11910 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
11911 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
11912 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
11913 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
11914
11915 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11916
11917 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
11918 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
11919 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
11920 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
11921
11922 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
11923 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
11924 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
11925
11926 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11927 project?</strong></p>
11928
11929 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
11930 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
11931 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
11932 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
11933 manual.
11934
11935 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
11936 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
11937 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
11938 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
11939
11940 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
11941 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
11942 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
11943 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
11944 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
11945 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
11946 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
11947 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
11948 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
11949 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
11950
11951 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
11952 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
11953 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
11954 beautiful project.</p>
11955
11956 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11957 Edu?</strong></p>
11958
11959 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
11960 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
11961 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
11962
11963 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
11964 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
11965 of educational free software.</p>
11966
11967 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11968 Edu?</strong></p>
11969
11970 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
11971 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
11972 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
11973 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
11974 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
11975
11976 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
11977 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
11978 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
11979 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
11980 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
11981 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
11982 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
11983 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
11984
11985 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11986
11987 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
11988 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
11989 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
11990 also using the mathematical software
11991 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
11992 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
11993 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
11994
11995 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
11996 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
11997 statistics?</strong></p>
11998
11999 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
12000 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
12001 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
12002 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
12003
12004 <ul>
12005
12006 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
12007 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
12008 constructions in planar geometry
12009
12010 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
12011 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
12012 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
12013
12014 </ul>
12015
12016 <p>I like also
12017 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
12018 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
12019 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
12020
12021 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12022 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12023
12024 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
12025
12026 <ul>
12027
12028 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
12029
12030 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
12031     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
12032     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
12033
12034 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
12035
12036 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
12037     system.</li>
12038
12039 </ul>
12040
12041       </div>
12042       <div class="tags">
12043
12044
12045         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12046
12047
12048       </div>
12049     </div>
12050     <div class="padding"></div>
12051
12052     <div class="entry">
12053       <div class="title">
12054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
12055       </div>
12056       <div class="date">
12057          1st June 2013
12058       </div>
12059       <div class="body">
12060         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12061 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
12062 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
12063 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
12064 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
12065 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
12066 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
12067 program.</p>
12068
12069 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
12070
12071 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
12072 <p>
12073 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
12074 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
12075 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
12076 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
12077 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12078 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
12079 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
12080 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
12081 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
12082 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
12083 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
12084 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
12085 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
12086 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
12087 </p>
12088
12089 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
12090 <p>
12091 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
12092 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
12093 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
12094 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
12095 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
12096 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
12097 </p>
12098
12099 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
12100 <p>
12101 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
12102 </p>
12103
12104 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
12105 <p>
12106 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
12107 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
12108 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
12109 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
12110 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
12111 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
12112 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
12113 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
12114 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
12115 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
12116 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
12117 </p>
12118
12119 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
12120 <p>
12121 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12122 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
12123 </p>
12124
12125 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
12126 <p>
12127 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
12128 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
12129 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
12130 </p>
12131
12132 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
12133 <p>
12134 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12135 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
12136 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
12137 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
12138 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
12139 </p>
12140
12141 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
12142 <p>
12143 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
12144 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
12145 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12146 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
12147 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
12148 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
12149 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
12150 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
12151 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
12152 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
12153 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
12154 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
12155 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
12156 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
12157 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
12158 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
12159 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
12160 </p>
12161
12162 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
12163 <p>
12164 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12165 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
12166 </p>
12167
12168 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
12169 <p>
12170 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
12171 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
12172 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
12173 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12174 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
12175 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
12176 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
12177 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
12178 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
12179 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
12180 </p>
12181
12182 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
12183 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
12184 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
12185 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
12186 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
12187 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
12188 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
12189
12190       </div>
12191       <div class="tags">
12192
12193
12194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12195
12196
12197       </div>
12198     </div>
12199     <div class="padding"></div>
12200
12201     <div class="entry">
12202       <div class="title">
12203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
12204       </div>
12205       <div class="date">
12206         27th May 2013
12207       </div>
12208       <div class="body">
12209         <p>Two days ago, I asked
12210 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
12211 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
12212 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
12213 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
12214 and Windows 8.</p>
12215
12216 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
12217 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
12218 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
12219 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
12220 enough to tell.</p>
12221
12222 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
12223 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
12224 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
12225 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
12226 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
12227 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
12228 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
12229 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
12230 to follow.</p>
12231
12232 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
12233 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
12234 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
12235 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
12236 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
12237 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
12238 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
12239 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
12240
12241 <p>I've updated the
12242 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
12243 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
12244 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
12245 machine.</p>
12246
12247 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
12248 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
12249
12250       </div>
12251       <div class="tags">
12252
12253
12254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12255
12256
12257       </div>
12258     </div>
12259     <div class="padding"></div>
12260
12261     <div class="entry">
12262       <div class="title">
12263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
12264       </div>
12265       <div class="date">
12266         25th May 2013
12267       </div>
12268       <div class="body">
12269         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
12270 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
12271 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
12272 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
12273 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
12274 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
12275
12276 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
12277 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
12278 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
12279 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
12280 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
12281 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
12282 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
12283 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
12284 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
12285 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
12286
12287 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
12288 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
12289 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
12290 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
12291 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
12292 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
12293
12294 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
12295 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
12296 on new Laptops?</p>
12297
12298       </div>
12299       <div class="tags">
12300
12301
12302         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12303
12304
12305       </div>
12306     </div>
12307     <div class="padding"></div>
12308
12309     <div class="entry">
12310       <div class="title">
12311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
12312       </div>
12313       <div class="date">
12314         17th May 2013
12315       </div>
12316       <div class="body">
12317         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
12318 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
12319 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
12320 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
12321 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
12322 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
12323 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
12324 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
12325 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
12326 donate some money</a>.
12327
12328 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
12329 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
12330 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
12331 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
12332 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
12333
12334 <p>The script,
12335 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
12336 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
12337 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
12338 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
12339
12340 <ol>
12341
12342 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
12343 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
12344 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
12345     our configuration.</li>
12346 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
12347     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
12348     according to the profile specified in the config above,
12349     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
12350 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
12351     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
12352 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
12353
12354 </ol>
12355
12356 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
12357 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
12358 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
12359 the needed packages.</p>
12360
12361 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
12362 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
12363 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
12364 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
12365 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
12366 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
12367
12368 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
12369 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
12370 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
12371
12372 <p><pre>
12373 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
12374 DESKTOP="lxde"
12375 </pre></p>
12376
12377 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
12378 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
12379 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
12380 boot.</p>
12381
12382       </div>
12383       <div class="tags">
12384
12385
12386         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>.
12387
12388
12389       </div>
12390     </div>
12391     <div class="padding"></div>
12392
12393     <div class="entry">
12394       <div class="title">
12395         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
12396       </div>
12397       <div class="date">
12398         14th May 2013
12399       </div>
12400       <div class="body">
12401         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12402 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
12403 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
12404
12405 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
12406 2013-05-14</strong></p>
12407
12408 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
12409 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
12410 codename "Wheezy".</p>
12411
12412 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12413
12414 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
12415 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
12416 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
12417 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
12418 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
12419 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
12420 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
12421 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
12422
12423 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
12424 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
12425 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
12426
12427 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12428 <ul>
12429   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
12430     default.</li>
12431   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
12432   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
12433   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
12434     ibus-anthy.</li>
12435 </ul>
12436
12437 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
12438 <ul>
12439
12440   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
12441     reliability improvements.</li>
12442   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
12443     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
12444   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
12445     problems.</li>
12446   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
12447     direct:// URL.</li>
12448   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
12449   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
12450   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
12451   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
12452     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
12453   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
12454     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
12455 </ul>
12456
12457 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
12458 <ul>
12459
12460   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
12461     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
12462     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
12463   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
12464   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
12465     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
12466   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
12467   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
12468   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
12469     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
12470   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
12471     password submission problem
12472     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
12473
12474 </ul>
12475
12476 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
12477
12478 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12479 <ul>
12480
12481   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
12482   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
12483   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
12484
12485 </ul>
12486
12487 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
12488
12489 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
12490
12491 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
12492
12493 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
12494
12495       </div>
12496       <div class="tags">
12497
12498
12499         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12500
12501
12502       </div>
12503     </div>
12504     <div class="padding"></div>
12505
12506     <div class="entry">
12507       <div class="title">
12508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
12509       </div>
12510       <div class="date">
12511         11th May 2013
12512       </div>
12513       <div class="body">
12514         <P>In January,
12515 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
12516 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
12517 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
12518 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
12519 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
12520 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
12521 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
12522 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
12523 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
12524 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
12525 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
12526 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
12527
12528 <p><table>
12529 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
12530 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
12531 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
12532 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
12533 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
12534 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
12535 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
12536 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
12537 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
12538 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
12539 </table></p>
12540
12541 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
12542 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
12543 available in experimental.</p>
12544
12545 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
12546 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
12547 for LEGO designers.</p>
12548
12549       </div>
12550       <div class="tags">
12551
12552
12553         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
12554
12555
12556       </div>
12557     </div>
12558     <div class="padding"></div>
12559
12560     <div class="entry">
12561       <div class="title">
12562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
12563       </div>
12564       <div class="date">
12565          5th May 2013
12566       </div>
12567       <div class="body">
12568         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
12569 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
12570 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
12571 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
12572 soon.</p>
12573
12574 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
12575 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
12576 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
12577 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
12578 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
12579 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
12580 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
12581 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
12582 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
12583 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
12584 Edu.</a>
12585
12586 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
12587 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
12588 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
12589 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
12590 follow.<p>
12591
12592       </div>
12593       <div class="tags">
12594
12595
12596         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>.
12597
12598
12599       </div>
12600     </div>
12601     <div class="padding"></div>
12602
12603     <div class="entry">
12604       <div class="title">
12605         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
12606       </div>
12607       <div class="date">
12608         26th April 2013
12609       </div>
12610       <div class="body">
12611         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
12612 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
12613 announcement:</p>
12614
12615 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
12616 2013-04-26</strong></p>
12617
12618 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
12619 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
12620
12621 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12622
12623 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
12624 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
12625 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
12626 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
12627 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
12628 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
12629 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
12630 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
12631 installed via the network.</p>
12632
12633 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
12634 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
12635 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
12636
12637 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12638
12639 <ul>
12640 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
12641   <ul>
12642      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
12643      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
12644          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
12645          manual.)</li>
12646      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
12647      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
12648      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
12649      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
12650      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
12651      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
12652      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
12653      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
12654      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
12655      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
12656      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
12657      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
12658          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
12659          manual</a> for more details.</li>
12660      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
12661          installation.</li>
12662      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
12663          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
12664   </ul></li>
12665 </ul>
12666
12667 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
12668 <ul>
12669 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
12670     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
12671     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
12672 </ul>
12673
12674 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
12675 <ul>
12676 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
12677     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
12678     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
12679 </ul>
12680
12681 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
12682 <ul>
12683 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
12684     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
12685     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
12686 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
12687     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
12688     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
12689 </ul>
12690
12691 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
12692 <ul>
12693 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
12694     yet.</li>
12695 </ul>
12696
12697 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
12698
12699 <ul>
12700 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
12701     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
12702     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
12703 </ul>
12704
12705 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
12706
12707 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
12708 <ul>
12709 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
12710 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
12711 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
12712 </ul>
12713
12714 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
12715
12716 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
12717
12718 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
12719
12720 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
12721
12722       </div>
12723       <div class="tags">
12724
12725
12726         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12727
12728
12729       </div>
12730     </div>
12731     <div class="padding"></div>
12732
12733     <div class="entry">
12734       <div class="title">
12735         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
12736       </div>
12737       <div class="date">
12738         16th April 2013
12739       </div>
12740       <div class="body">
12741         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
12742 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
12743 Details about the gathering can be found
12744 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
12745 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
12746 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
12747 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
12748 weekend.</p>
12749
12750 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
12751 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
12752 Edu release.</p>
12753
12754 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
12755
12756       </div>
12757       <div class="tags">
12758
12759
12760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12761
12762
12763       </div>
12764     </div>
12765     <div class="padding"></div>
12766
12767     <div class="entry">
12768       <div class="title">
12769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
12770       </div>
12771       <div class="date">
12772          3rd April 2013
12773       </div>
12774       <div class="body">
12775         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
12776 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
12777 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
12778 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
12779
12780 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
12781 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
12782 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
12783 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
12784 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
12785 BTS. :)</p>
12786
12787       </div>
12788       <div class="tags">
12789
12790
12791         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
12792
12793
12794       </div>
12795     </div>
12796     <div class="padding"></div>
12797
12798     <div class="entry">
12799       <div class="title">
12800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
12801       </div>
12802       <div class="date">
12803         26th March 2013
12804       </div>
12805       <div class="body">
12806         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
12807 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
12808 font you use when printing.</p>
12809
12810 <p>Three years ago,
12811 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
12812 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
12813 changed their default front from
12814 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
12815 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
12816 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
12817 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
12818 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
12819 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
12820 prints.</p>
12821
12822 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
12823 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
12824 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
12825 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
12826 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
12827 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
12828 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
12829 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
12830 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
12831 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
12832 depend on the documents printed.</p>
12833
12834 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
12835 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
12836 and save some money in the process.</p>
12837
12838 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
12839 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
12840 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
12841 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
12842 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
12843 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
12844 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
12845 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
12846 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
12847
12848       </div>
12849       <div class="tags">
12850
12851
12852         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12853
12854
12855       </div>
12856     </div>
12857     <div class="padding"></div>
12858
12859     <div class="entry">
12860       <div class="title">
12861         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
12862       </div>
12863       <div class="date">
12864         24th March 2013
12865       </div>
12866       <div class="body">
12867         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
12868 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
12869 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
12870 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
12871 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
12872 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
12873 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
12874 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
12875 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
12876 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
12877 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
12878 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
12879
12880 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
12881 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
12882 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
12883 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
12884 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
12885 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
12886 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
12887 all I had to do was to use the
12888 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
12889 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
12890 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
12891 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
12892 xsltproc/fop (aka
12893 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
12894 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
12895 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
12896 technical detail.</p>
12897
12898 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
12899 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
12900 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
12901 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
12902 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
12903 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
12904
12905 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
12906 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
12907 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
12908 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
12909 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
12910 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
12911 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
12912 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
12913 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
12914
12915 <p><blockquote><pre>
12916 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
12917 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
12918   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
12919     &lt;hr/&gt;
12920   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
12921 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
12922 </pre></blockquote></p>
12923
12924 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
12925
12926 <p><blockquote><pre>
12927 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
12928 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
12929   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
12930     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
12931       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
12932     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
12933   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
12934 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
12935 </pre></blockquote></p>
12936
12937 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
12938 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
12939 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
12940 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
12941 enough.</p>
12942
12943 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
12944 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
12945 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
12946 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
12947 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
12948 look like this:</p>
12949
12950 <p><blockquote><pre>
12951 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
12952 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
12953   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
12954     &lt;br/&gt;
12955   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
12956 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
12957 </pre></blockquote></p>
12958
12959 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
12960
12961 <p><blockquote><pre>
12962 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
12963 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
12964   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
12965   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
12966     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
12967   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
12968 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
12969 </pre></blockquote></p>
12970
12971 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
12972 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
12973 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
12974 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
12975 page.</p>
12976
12977 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
12978 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
12979 github</a>
12980 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
12981 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
12982 days.</p>
12983
12984       </div>
12985       <div class="tags">
12986
12987
12988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12989
12990
12991       </div>
12992     </div>
12993     <div class="padding"></div>
12994
12995     <div class="entry">
12996       <div class="title">
12997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
12998       </div>
12999       <div class="date">
13000         17th March 2013
13001       </div>
13002       <div class="body">
13003         <p>Via
13004 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
13005 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
13006 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
13007 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
13008 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
13009 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
13010 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
13011
13012 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
13013 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
13014
13015 <blockquote>
13016 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
13017 </blockquote>
13018
13019 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
13020
13021 <blockquote>
13022 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
13023 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
13024 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
13025 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
13026 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
13027 </blockquote>
13028
13029 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
13030 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
13031 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
13032 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
13033
13034 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
13035 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
13036
13037 <blockquote>
13038 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
13039 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
13040 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
13041 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
13042 </blockquote>
13043
13044 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
13045 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
13046 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
13047 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
13048 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
13049
13050 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
13051 embedding:</p>
13052
13053 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
13054
13055       </div>
13056       <div class="tags">
13057
13058
13059         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13060
13061
13062       </div>
13063     </div>
13064     <div class="padding"></div>
13065
13066     <div class="entry">
13067       <div class="title">
13068         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
13069       </div>
13070       <div class="date">
13071          8th March 2013
13072       </div>
13073       <div class="body">
13074         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
13075 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
13076 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
13077 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
13078 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
13079 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
13080 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
13081
13082 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
13083
13084 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
13085 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
13086
13087 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
13088 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
13089 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
13090 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
13091 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
13092 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
13093
13094 <p>Images are available for download at
13095 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
13096
13097 <p>md5sums:
13098 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
13099 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
13100 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
13101
13102 <p>sha1sums:
13103 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
13104 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
13105 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
13106
13107 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
13108
13109 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
13110 2013-03-03:</p>
13111
13112 <ul>
13113   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
13114   <ul>
13115         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
13116         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
13117   </ul></li>
13118   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
13119   <ul>
13120         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
13121         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
13122   </ul></li>
13123   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
13124      <ul>
13125         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
13126         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
13127         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
13128                 Closes: #664596</li>
13129         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
13130                 Closes: #664976</li>
13131         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
13132            <ul>
13133                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
13134                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
13135            </ul></li>
13136         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
13137            <ul>
13138                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
13139                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
13140                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
13141                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
13142                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
13143            </ul></li>
13144         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
13145     </ul>
13146   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
13147     <ul>
13148         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
13149     </ul></li>
13150 </ul>
13151
13152 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
13153 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
13154 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
13155 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
13156
13157 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
13158 mailinglist
13159 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
13160 </p></blockquote>
13161
13162 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
13163
13164       </div>
13165       <div class="tags">
13166
13167
13168         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13169
13170
13171       </div>
13172     </div>
13173     <div class="padding"></div>
13174
13175     <div class="entry">
13176       <div class="title">
13177         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
13178       </div>
13179       <div class="date">
13180          3rd March 2013
13181       </div>
13182       <div class="body">
13183         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
13184 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
13185 support using
13186 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
13187 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
13188 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
13189 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
13190 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
13191 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
13192 using the GNU LGPL, and
13193 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
13194
13195 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
13196 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
13197 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
13198 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
13199 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
13200 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
13201
13202 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
13203 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
13204 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
13205 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
13206 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
13207 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
13208 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
13209 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
13210 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
13211 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
13212 signal distribution is handled using
13213 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
13214 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
13215 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
13216 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
13217 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
13218 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
13219 them up a bit more first.</p>
13220
13221 <p>The development is coordinated on the
13222 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
13223 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
13224 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
13225 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
13226 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
13227 development.</p>
13228
13229       </div>
13230       <div class="tags">
13231
13232
13233         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13234
13235
13236       </div>
13237     </div>
13238     <div class="padding"></div>
13239
13240     <div class="entry">
13241       <div class="title">
13242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
13243       </div>
13244       <div class="date">
13245         27th February 2013
13246       </div>
13247       <div class="body">
13248         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
13249 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
13250 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
13251 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
13252 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
13253 (where I am the chair of the board) and
13254 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
13255 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
13256 GNU», with this description:
13257
13258 <p><blockquote>
13259 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
13260 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
13261 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
13262 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
13263 </blockquote></p>
13264
13265 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
13266 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
13267 am really curious how many will show up.  See
13268 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
13269 page</a> for the location details.</p>
13270
13271       </div>
13272       <div class="tags">
13273
13274
13275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
13276
13277
13278       </div>
13279     </div>
13280     <div class="padding"></div>
13281
13282     <div class="entry">
13283       <div class="title">
13284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
13285       </div>
13286       <div class="date">
13287         15th February 2013
13288       </div>
13289       <div class="body">
13290         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
13291 now a great source of free maps available from
13292 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
13293 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
13294 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
13295 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
13296 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
13297 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
13298 page for descriptions).</p>
13299
13300 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
13301 map you can just edit the
13302 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
13303 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
13304
13305       </div>
13306       <div class="tags">
13307
13308
13309         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>.
13310
13311
13312       </div>
13313     </div>
13314     <div class="padding"></div>
13315
13316     <div class="entry">
13317       <div class="title">
13318         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
13319       </div>
13320       <div class="date">
13321         12th February 2013
13322       </div>
13323       <div class="body">
13324         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
13325 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
13326 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
13327 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
13328 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
13329 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
13330 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
13331 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
13332 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
13333 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
13334 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
13335 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
13336 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
13337 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
13338 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
13339 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
13340
13341 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
13342 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
13343 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
13344 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
13345 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
13346 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
13347 fields:</p>
13348
13349 <p><pre>
13350 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
13351 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
13352 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
13353 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
13354 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
13355 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
13356 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
13357 </pre></p>
13358
13359 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
13360 answer regarding
13361 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
13362 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
13363 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
13364 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
13365
13366 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
13367
13368 <p><pre>
13369 BEGIN:VCARD
13370 VERSION:2.1
13371 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
13372 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
13373 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
13374 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
13375 REV:20130212T095000Z
13376 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
13377 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
13378 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
13379 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
13380 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
13381 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
13382 END:VCARD
13383 </pre></p>
13384
13385 <p>The resulting QR code created using
13386 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
13387 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
13388 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
13389 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
13390 system.</p>
13391
13392 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
13393
13394 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
13395 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
13396 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
13397 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
13398
13399 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
13400 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
13401
13402       </div>
13403       <div class="tags">
13404
13405
13406         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>.
13407
13408
13409       </div>
13410     </div>
13411     <div class="padding"></div>
13412
13413     <div class="entry">
13414       <div class="title">
13415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
13416       </div>
13417       <div class="date">
13418         10th February 2013
13419       </div>
13420       <div class="body">
13421         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
13422
13423 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
13424 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
13425 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
13426 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
13427 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
13428 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
13429 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
13430 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
13431 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
13432 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
13433 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
13434
13435 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
13436 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
13437 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
13438 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
13439 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
13440 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
13441 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
13442 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
13443 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
13444 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
13445 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
13446 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
13447 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
13448 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
13449 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
13450 ones own
13451 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
13452 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
13453 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
13454 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
13455 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
13456 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
13457 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
13458 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
13459 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
13460 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
13461 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
13462
13463 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
13464 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
13465 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
13466 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
13467 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
13468 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
13469
13470 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
13471 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
13472 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
13473
13474       </div>
13475       <div class="tags">
13476
13477
13478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13479
13480
13481       </div>
13482     </div>
13483     <div class="padding"></div>
13484
13485     <div class="entry">
13486       <div class="title">
13487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
13488       </div>
13489       <div class="date">
13490          2nd February 2013
13491       </div>
13492       <div class="body">
13493         <p>My
13494 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
13495 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
13496 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
13497 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
13498 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
13499 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
13500 version too.</p>
13501
13502 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
13503 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
13504 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
13505 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
13506 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
13507 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
13508 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
13509 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
13510
13511 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
13512 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
13513 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
13514 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
13515 it. :)</p>
13516
13517 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
13518 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
13519 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
13520
13521       </div>
13522       <div class="tags">
13523
13524
13525         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>.
13526
13527
13528       </div>
13529     </div>
13530     <div class="padding"></div>
13531
13532     <div class="entry">
13533       <div class="title">
13534         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
13535       </div>
13536       <div class="date">
13537         22nd January 2013
13538       </div>
13539       <div class="body">
13540         <p>Yesterday, I
13541 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
13542 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
13543 pluggable hardware devices, which I
13544 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
13545 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
13546 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
13547 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
13548 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
13549 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
13550 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
13551 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
13552 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
13553 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
13554
13555 <pre>
13556 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
13557 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
13558 </pre>
13559
13560 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
13561 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
13562 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
13563 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
13564
13565 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
13566 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
13567 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
13568 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
13569 word.</p>
13570
13571 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
13572 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
13573 process.</p>
13574
13575 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
13576 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
13577
13578       </div>
13579       <div class="tags">
13580
13581
13582         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
13583
13584
13585       </div>
13586     </div>
13587     <div class="padding"></div>
13588
13589     <div class="entry">
13590       <div class="title">
13591         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
13592       </div>
13593       <div class="date">
13594         21st January 2013
13595       </div>
13596       <div class="body">
13597         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
13598 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
13599 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
13600 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
13601 it, fetch the
13602 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
13603 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
13604 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
13605 autostart script.</p>
13606
13607 <p>The design is simple:</p>
13608
13609 <ul>
13610
13611 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
13612 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
13613
13614 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
13615 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
13616 initially did.</li>
13617
13618 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
13619 the APT database, a database
13620 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
13621 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
13622
13623 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
13624 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
13625 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
13626 package or packages.</li>
13627
13628 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
13629 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
13630
13631 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
13632 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
13633
13634 </ul>
13635
13636 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
13637 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
13638 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
13639 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
13640
13641 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
13642 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
13643 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
13644 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
13645 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
13646
13647 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
13648 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
13649 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
13650 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
13651 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
13652 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
13653 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
13654 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
13655
13656 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
13657 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
13658 '<tt>svn checkout
13659 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
13660 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
13661 devscripts package.</p>
13662
13663 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
13664 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
13665 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
13666 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
13667 instructions</a> for details.</p>
13668
13669       </div>
13670       <div class="tags">
13671
13672
13673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
13674
13675
13676       </div>
13677     </div>
13678     <div class="padding"></div>
13679
13680     <div class="entry">
13681       <div class="title">
13682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
13683       </div>
13684       <div class="date">
13685         19th January 2013
13686       </div>
13687       <div class="body">
13688         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
13689 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
13690 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
13691 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
13692 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
13693 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
13694 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
13695 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
13696 not a durable solution.
13697
13698 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
13699 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
13700
13701 <ul>
13702
13703 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
13704   than A4).</li>
13705 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
13706 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
13707 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
13708 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
13709 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
13710 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
13711 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
13712 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
13713 size).</li>
13714 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
13715   X.org packages.</li>
13716 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
13717   the time).
13718
13719 </ul>
13720
13721 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
13722 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
13723 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
13724 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
13725 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
13726 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
13727 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
13728 still be useful.</p>
13729
13730 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
13731 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
13732 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
13733 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
13734 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
13735 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
13736
13737       </div>
13738       <div class="tags">
13739
13740
13741         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13742
13743
13744       </div>
13745     </div>
13746     <div class="padding"></div>
13747
13748     <div class="entry">
13749       <div class="title">
13750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
13751       </div>
13752       <div class="date">
13753         18th January 2013
13754       </div>
13755       <div class="body">
13756         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
13757 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
13758 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
13759 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
13760 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
13761 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
13762 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
13763
13764 <pre>
13765 #!/usr/bin/python
13766 import sys
13767 import apt
13768 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
13769     cache = apt.Cache()
13770     cache.open(None)
13771     thepkgs = []
13772     for pkg in cache:
13773         version = pkg.candidate
13774         if version is None:
13775             version = pkg.installed
13776         if version is None:
13777             continue
13778         record = version.record
13779         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
13780             continue
13781         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
13782         for t in mime_types:
13783             t = t.rstrip().strip()
13784             if t == mimetype:
13785                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
13786     return thepkgs
13787 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
13788 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
13789     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
13790 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
13791 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
13792     print "  %s" %pkg
13793 </pre>
13794
13795 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
13796
13797 <pre>
13798 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
13799 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
13800   gecko-mediaplayer
13801 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
13802 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
13803   browser-plugin-gnash
13804 %
13805 </pre>
13806
13807 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
13808 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
13809 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
13810 anyone working on adding it?</p>
13811
13812 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
13813 request for icweasel support for this feature is
13814 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
13815 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
13816 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
13817 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
13818
13819       </div>
13820       <div class="tags">
13821
13822
13823         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13824
13825
13826       </div>
13827     </div>
13828     <div class="padding"></div>
13829
13830     <div class="entry">
13831       <div class="title">
13832         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
13833       </div>
13834       <div class="date">
13835         16th January 2013
13836       </div>
13837       <div class="body">
13838         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
13839 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
13840 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
13841 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
13842 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
13843 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
13844 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
13845 downloaded by the browser.</p>
13846
13847 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
13848 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
13849 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
13850 can be found on the
13851 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
13852 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
13853 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
13854 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
13855 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
13856
13857 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
13858
13859 <pre>
13860   count MIME type
13861   ----- -----------------------
13862      32 text/plain
13863      30 audio/mpeg
13864      29 image/png
13865      28 image/jpeg
13866      27 application/ogg
13867      26 audio/x-mp3
13868      25 image/tiff
13869      25 image/gif
13870      22 image/bmp
13871      22 audio/x-wav
13872      20 audio/x-flac
13873      19 audio/x-mpegurl
13874      18 video/x-ms-asf
13875      18 audio/x-musepack
13876      18 audio/x-mpeg
13877      18 application/x-ogg
13878      17 video/mpeg
13879      17 audio/x-scpls
13880      17 audio/ogg
13881      16 video/x-ms-wmv
13882 </pre>
13883
13884 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
13885
13886 <pre>
13887   count MIME type
13888   ----- -----------------------
13889      33 text/plain
13890      32 image/png
13891      32 image/jpeg
13892      29 audio/mpeg
13893      27 image/gif
13894      26 image/tiff
13895      26 application/ogg
13896      25 audio/x-mp3
13897      22 image/bmp
13898      21 audio/x-wav
13899      19 audio/x-mpegurl
13900      19 audio/x-mpeg
13901      18 video/mpeg
13902      18 audio/x-scpls
13903      18 audio/x-flac
13904      18 application/x-ogg
13905      17 video/x-ms-asf
13906      17 text/html
13907      17 audio/x-musepack
13908      16 image/x-xbitmap
13909 </pre>
13910
13911 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
13912
13913 <pre>
13914   count MIME type
13915   ----- -----------------------
13916      31 text/plain
13917      31 image/png
13918      31 image/jpeg
13919      29 audio/mpeg
13920      28 application/ogg
13921      27 image/gif
13922      26 image/tiff
13923      26 audio/x-mp3
13924      23 audio/x-wav
13925      22 image/bmp
13926      21 audio/x-flac
13927      20 audio/x-mpegurl
13928      19 audio/x-mpeg
13929      18 video/x-ms-asf
13930      18 video/mpeg
13931      18 audio/x-scpls
13932      18 application/x-ogg
13933      17 audio/x-musepack
13934      16 video/x-ms-wmv
13935      16 video/x-msvideo
13936 </pre>
13937
13938 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
13939 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
13940 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
13941 issues.</p>
13942
13943 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
13944 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
13945
13946       </div>
13947       <div class="tags">
13948
13949
13950         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13951
13952
13953       </div>
13954     </div>
13955     <div class="padding"></div>
13956
13957     <div class="entry">
13958       <div class="title">
13959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
13960       </div>
13961       <div class="date">
13962         15th January 2013
13963       </div>
13964       <div class="body">
13965         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
13966 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
13967 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
13968 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
13969 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
13970 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
13971 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
13972 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
13973 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
13974 packages.</p>
13975
13976 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
13977 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
13978 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
13979 modalias.</p>
13980
13981 <p><blockquote>
13982 Package: package-name
13983 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
13984 </blockquote></p>
13985
13986 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
13987 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
13988
13989 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
13990 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
13991
13992 <p><blockquote>
13993 Package: cheese
13994 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
13995 </blockquote></p>
13996
13997 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
13998 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
13999
14000 <p><blockquote>
14001 Package: pcmciautils
14002 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
14003 </blockquote></p>
14004
14005 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
14006 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
14007
14008 <p><blockquote>
14009 Package: colorhug-client
14010 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
14011 </blockquote></p>
14012
14013 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
14014 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
14015 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
14016
14017 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
14018 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
14019 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
14020 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
14021 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
14022 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
14023 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
14024 Raring.</p>
14025
14026 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
14027 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
14028 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
14029 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
14030 try the
14031 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
14032 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
14033 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
14034 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
14035
14036 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
14037 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
14038
14039 <p><blockquote>
14040 % ./hw-support-lookup
14041 <br>yubikey-personalization
14042 <br>%
14043 </blockquote></p>
14044
14045 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
14046 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
14047
14048 <p><blockquote>
14049 % ./hw-support-lookup
14050 <br>pcmciautils
14051 <br>%
14052 </blockquote></p>
14053
14054 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
14055 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
14056 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
14057
14058 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
14059 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
14060 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
14061 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
14062 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
14063 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
14064 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
14065 see if it work.</p>
14066
14067 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
14068 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
14069 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
14070 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
14071
14072       </div>
14073       <div class="tags">
14074
14075
14076         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
14077
14078
14079       </div>
14080     </div>
14081     <div class="padding"></div>
14082
14083     <div class="entry">
14084       <div class="title">
14085         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
14086       </div>
14087       <div class="date">
14088         14th January 2013
14089       </div>
14090       <div class="body">
14091         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
14092 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
14093 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
14094 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
14095 in
14096 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
14097 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
14098
14099 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
14100
14101 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
14102 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
14103 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
14104 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
14105 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
14106 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
14107
14108 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
14109 this shell script:</p>
14110
14111 <pre>
14112 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
14113 </pre>
14114
14115 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
14116 using modinfo:</p>
14117
14118 <pre>
14119 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
14120 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
14121 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
14122 %
14123 </pre>
14124
14125 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
14126
14127 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
14128 Bridge memory controller:</p>
14129
14130 <p><blockquote>
14131 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
14132 </blockquote></p>
14133
14134 <p>This represent these values:</p>
14135
14136 <pre>
14137  v   00008086  (vendor)
14138  d   00002770  (device)
14139  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
14140  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
14141  bc  06        (bus class)
14142  sc  00        (bus subclass)
14143  i   00        (interface)
14144 </pre>
14145
14146 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
14147 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
14148 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
14149 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
14150
14151 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
14152 means.</p>
14153
14154 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
14155
14156 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
14157 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
14158
14159 <p><blockquote>
14160 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
14161 </blockquote></p>
14162
14163 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
14164
14165 <pre>
14166  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
14167  p    0001  (device product)
14168  d    0206  (bcddevice)
14169  dc     09  (device class)
14170  dsc    00  (device subclass)
14171  dp     00  (device protocol)
14172  ic     09  (interface class)
14173  isc    00  (interface subclass)
14174  ip     00  (interface protocol)
14175 </pre>
14176
14177 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
14178 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
14179 these alias entries show up:</p>
14180
14181 <p><blockquote>
14182 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
14183 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
14184 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
14185 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
14186 </blockquote></p>
14187
14188 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
14189 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
14190 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
14191
14192 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
14193
14194 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
14195 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
14196
14197 <p><blockquote>
14198 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
14199 </blockquote></p>
14200
14201 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
14202
14203 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
14204
14205 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
14206 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
14207 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
14208
14209 <p><blockquote>
14210 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
14211 </blockquote></p>
14212
14213 <p>The values present are</p>
14214
14215 <pre>
14216  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
14217  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
14218  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
14219  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
14220  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
14221  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
14222  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
14223  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
14224  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
14225  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
14226  ct   10             (chassis type)
14227  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
14228 </pre>
14229
14230 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
14231 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
14232
14233 <pre>
14234   3 Desktop
14235   4 Low Profile Desktop
14236   5 Pizza Box
14237   6 Mini Tower
14238   7 Tower
14239   8 Portable
14240   9 Laptop
14241  10 Notebook
14242  11 Hand Held
14243  12 Docking Station
14244  13 All In One
14245  14 Sub Notebook
14246  15 Space-saving
14247  16 Lunch Box
14248  17 Main Server Chassis
14249  18 Expansion Chassis
14250  19 Sub Chassis
14251  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
14252  21 Peripheral Chassis
14253  22 RAID Chassis
14254  23 Rack Mount Chassis
14255  24 Sealed-case PC
14256  25 Multi-system
14257  26 CompactPCI
14258  27 AdvancedTCA
14259  28 Blade
14260  29 Blade Enclosing
14261 </pre>
14262
14263 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
14264 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
14265 claim it is a desktop.</p>
14266
14267 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
14268
14269 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
14270 test machine:</p>
14271
14272 <p><blockquote>
14273 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
14274 </blockquote></p>
14275
14276 <p>The values present are</p>
14277
14278 <pre>
14279   ty  01  (type)
14280   pr  00  (prototype)
14281   id  00  (id)
14282   ex  00  (extra)
14283 </pre>
14284
14285 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
14286 the valid values are.</p>
14287
14288 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
14289
14290 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
14291 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
14292 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
14293 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
14294 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
14295 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
14296 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
14297
14298 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
14299
14300 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
14301 one can use the following shell script:</p>
14302
14303 <pre>
14304   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
14305     echo "$id" ; \
14306     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
14307   done
14308 </pre>
14309
14310 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
14311 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
14312
14313 <pre>
14314   acpi:ACPI0003:
14315     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
14316   acpi:device:
14317   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
14318   acpi:IBM0068:
14319     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
14320     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
14321     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
14322     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
14323   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
14324     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
14325     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
14326     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
14327   [...]
14328 </pre>
14329
14330 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
14331 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
14332 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
14333 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
14334
14335 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
14336 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
14337 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
14338
14339       </div>
14340       <div class="tags">
14341
14342
14343         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
14344
14345
14346       </div>
14347     </div>
14348     <div class="padding"></div>
14349
14350     <div class="entry">
14351       <div class="title">
14352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
14353       </div>
14354       <div class="date">
14355         10th January 2013
14356       </div>
14357       <div class="body">
14358         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
14359 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
14360 Launcher and updated the Debian package
14361 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
14362 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
14363 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
14364 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
14365 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
14366 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
14367 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
14368 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
14369 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
14370 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
14371 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
14372 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
14373 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
14374 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
14375 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
14376
14377       </div>
14378       <div class="tags">
14379
14380
14381         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
14382
14383
14384       </div>
14385     </div>
14386     <div class="padding"></div>
14387
14388     <div class="entry">
14389       <div class="title">
14390         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
14391       </div>
14392       <div class="date">
14393          9th January 2013
14394       </div>
14395       <div class="body">
14396         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
14397 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
14398 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
14399 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
14400 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
14401 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
14402 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
14403 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
14404 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
14405 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
14406 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
14407
14408 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
14409 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
14410 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
14411 simple:
14412
14413 <ul>
14414
14415 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
14416   starting when a user log in.</li>
14417
14418 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
14419   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
14420
14421 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
14422   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
14423   packages.</li>
14424
14425 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
14426   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
14427
14428 </ul>
14429
14430 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
14431 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
14432 discover database to find packages and
14433 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
14434 packages.</p>
14435
14436 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
14437 draft package is now checked into
14438 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
14439 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
14440 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
14441 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
14442 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
14443 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
14444 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
14445 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
14446 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
14447 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
14448 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
14449 because of the freeze).</p>
14450
14451 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
14452 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
14453 inserted):</p>
14454
14455 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
14456
14457 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
14458 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
14459 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
14460
14461 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
14462 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
14463 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
14464 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
14465 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
14466 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
14467 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
14468
14469 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
14470 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
14471 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
14472 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
14473 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
14474 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
14475 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
14476 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
14477 not be installed?</p>
14478
14479 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
14480 please send me an email. :)</p>
14481
14482       </div>
14483       <div class="tags">
14484
14485
14486         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
14487
14488
14489       </div>
14490     </div>
14491     <div class="padding"></div>
14492
14493     <div class="entry">
14494       <div class="title">
14495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
14496       </div>
14497       <div class="date">
14498          2nd January 2013
14499       </div>
14500       <div class="body">
14501         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
14502 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
14503 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
14504 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
14505 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
14506 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
14507 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
14508 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
14509 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
14510 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
14511
14512 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
14513 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
14514 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
14515
14516       </div>
14517       <div class="tags">
14518
14519
14520         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
14521
14522
14523       </div>
14524     </div>
14525     <div class="padding"></div>
14526
14527     <div class="entry">
14528       <div class="title">
14529         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
14530       </div>
14531       <div class="date">
14532         28th December 2012
14533       </div>
14534       <div class="body">
14535         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
14536 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
14537 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
14538 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
14539 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
14540 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
14541 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
14542 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
14543 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
14544 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
14545 followed by many others. :)</p>
14546
14547 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
14548 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
14549 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
14550 you want to donate to the project.</p>
14551
14552       </div>
14553       <div class="tags">
14554
14555
14556         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14557
14558
14559       </div>
14560     </div>
14561     <div class="padding"></div>
14562
14563     <div class="entry">
14564       <div class="title">
14565         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
14566       </div>
14567       <div class="date">
14568         25th December 2012
14569       </div>
14570       <div class="body">
14571         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
14572 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
14573
14574 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
14575 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
14576 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
14577 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
14578 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
14579 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
14580 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
14581 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
14582 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
14583 name.</p>
14584
14585 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
14586 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
14587 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
14588
14589 <blockquote><pre>
14590 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
14591 cd bitcoin
14592 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
14593 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
14594 </pre></blockquote>
14595
14596 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
14597 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
14598 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
14599 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
14600 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
14601 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
14602 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
14603 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
14604 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
14605
14606 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
14607 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
14608 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
14609
14610       </div>
14611       <div class="tags">
14612
14613
14614         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>.
14615
14616
14617       </div>
14618     </div>
14619     <div class="padding"></div>
14620
14621     <div class="entry">
14622       <div class="title">
14623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
14624       </div>
14625       <div class="date">
14626         21st December 2012
14627       </div>
14628       <div class="body">
14629         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
14630 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
14631 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
14632 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
14633 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
14634 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
14635 is now maintained by a
14636 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
14637 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
14638 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
14639 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
14640 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
14641 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
14642 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
14643 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
14644 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
14645 Corallo in a
14646 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
14647 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
14648 Debian package.</p>
14649
14650 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
14651 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
14652 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
14653 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
14654 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
14655 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
14656 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
14657 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
14658 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
14659 new version to unstable.
14660
14661 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
14662 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
14663 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
14664 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
14665 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
14666 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
14667 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
14668 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
14669 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
14670 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
14671 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
14672 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
14673 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
14674 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
14675 have not tested them.</p>
14676
14677 <p>My
14678 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
14679 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
14680 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
14681 years ago, as can be
14682 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
14683 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
14684 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
14685 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
14686 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
14687 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
14688 the same address as last time,
14689 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
14690
14691       </div>
14692       <div class="tags">
14693
14694
14695         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>.
14696
14697
14698       </div>
14699     </div>
14700     <div class="padding"></div>
14701
14702     <div class="entry">
14703       <div class="title">
14704         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
14705       </div>
14706       <div class="date">
14707         18th December 2012
14708       </div>
14709       <div class="body">
14710         <p>A few days ago I came across
14711 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
14712 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
14713 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
14714 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
14715 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
14716 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
14717 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
14718 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
14719 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
14720
14721 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
14722 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
14723 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
14724 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
14725
14726 <blockquote><pre>
14727 2004-05-27 Book Store
14728       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
14729       Liabilities:Visa
14730 </pre></blockquote>
14731
14732 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
14733 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
14734 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
14735 Spang</a>,
14736 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
14737 Keen</a>,
14738 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
14739 Cantino</a> and
14740 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
14741 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
14742 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
14743 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
14744 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
14745
14746 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
14747 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
14748 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
14749 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
14750 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
14751
14752 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
14753 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
14754 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
14755 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
14756 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
14757 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
14758 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
14759 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
14760 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
14761
14762       </div>
14763       <div class="tags">
14764
14765
14766         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
14767
14768
14769       </div>
14770     </div>
14771     <div class="padding"></div>
14772
14773     <div class="entry">
14774       <div class="title">
14775         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
14776       </div>
14777       <div class="date">
14778          6th December 2012
14779       </div>
14780       <div class="body">
14781         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
14782 Oslo</a>, we use the
14783 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
14784 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
14785 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
14786 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
14787 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
14788 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
14789 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
14790 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
14791 Python.</p>
14792
14793 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
14794 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
14795 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
14796 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
14797 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
14798 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
14799
14800 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
14801 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
14802 user currently logged in:</p>
14803
14804 <blockquote><pre>
14805 #!/usr/bin/env python
14806 import getpass
14807 import xmlrpclib
14808 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
14809 username = getpass.getuser()
14810 password = getpass.getpass()
14811 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
14812 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
14813 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
14814 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
14815 result = server.logout(sessionid)
14816 print result
14817 </pre></blockquote>
14818
14819 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
14820 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
14821
14822       </div>
14823       <div class="tags">
14824
14825
14826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
14827
14828
14829       </div>
14830     </div>
14831     <div class="padding"></div>
14832
14833     <div class="entry">
14834       <div class="title">
14835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
14836       </div>
14837       <div class="date">
14838         17th November 2012
14839       </div>
14840       <div class="body">
14841         <p>While working on a
14842 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
14843 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
14844 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
14845 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
14846 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
14847 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
14848
14849 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
14850 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
14851 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
14852 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
14853 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
14854 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
14855 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
14856 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
14857 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
14858 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
14859 arguments.</p>
14860
14861 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
14862 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
14863 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
14864 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
14865 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
14866 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
14867 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
14868 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
14869
14870 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
14871 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
14872 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
14873 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
14874 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
14875 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
14876 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
14877 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
14878 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
14879 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
14880 correct right holder.</p>
14881
14882 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
14883 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
14884 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
14885 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
14886 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
14887 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
14888 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
14889 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
14890 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
14891 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
14892 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
14893 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
14894 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
14895 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
14896
14897 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
14898 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
14899 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
14900
14901 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
14902 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
14903
14904       </div>
14905       <div class="tags">
14906
14907
14908         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
14909
14910
14911       </div>
14912     </div>
14913     <div class="padding"></div>
14914
14915     <div class="entry">
14916       <div class="title">
14917         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
14918       </div>
14919       <div class="date">
14920         14th November 2012
14921       </div>
14922       <div class="body">
14923         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
14924 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14925 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
14926 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
14927 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
14928 the people behind the German
14929 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
14930 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
14931 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
14932
14933 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14934
14935 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
14936 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
14937 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
14938
14939 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
14940 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
14941 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
14942 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
14943 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
14944 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
14945
14946 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
14947 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
14948 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
14949 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
14950 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
14951 relationship management and the communication processes in the
14952 project.</p>
14953
14954 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
14955 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
14956 and a yoga teacher.</p>
14957
14958 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
14959 project?</strong></p>
14960
14961 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
14962
14963 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
14964 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
14965 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
14966 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
14967 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
14968 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
14969 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
14970 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
14971 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
14972 parents.</p>
14973
14974 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
14975 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
14976 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
14977 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
14978 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
14979 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
14980 Germany.</p>
14981
14982 <p>For information about our school project you can read
14983 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
14984 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
14985
14986 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
14987 Edu?</strong></p>
14988
14989 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
14990 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
14991
14992 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
14993 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
14994 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
14995 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
14996 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
14997 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
14998 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
14999 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
15000 teachers, parents...</p>
15001
15002 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
15003 Edu?</strong></p>
15004
15005 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
15006 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
15007
15008 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
15009 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
15010 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
15011 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
15012 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
15013
15014 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
15015 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
15016 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
15017 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
15018 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
15019 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
15020 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
15021
15022 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15023
15024 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
15025 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
15026 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
15027 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
15028
15029 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15030 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15031
15032 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
15033 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
15034 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
15035 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
15036 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
15037
15038 <ul>
15039
15040 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
15041 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
15042 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
15043
15044 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
15045 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
15046 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
15047 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
15048 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
15049 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
15050 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
15051
15052 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
15053 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
15054 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
15055 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
15056
15057 </ul>
15058
15059       </div>
15060       <div class="tags">
15061
15062
15063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15064
15065
15066       </div>
15067     </div>
15068     <div class="padding"></div>
15069
15070     <div class="entry">
15071       <div class="title">
15072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
15073       </div>
15074       <div class="date">
15075          4th November 2012
15076       </div>
15077       <div class="body">
15078         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
15079 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
15080 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
15081 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
15082 see how a member of the bitcoin community
15083 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
15084 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
15085 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
15086 competition.  My thoughts go to the
15087 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
15088 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
15089 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
15090 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
15091 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
15092
15093 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
15094 that the community already seem to have
15095 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
15096 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
15097 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
15098 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
15099 wealth is available.</p>
15100
15101       </div>
15102       <div class="tags">
15103
15104
15105         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
15106
15107
15108       </div>
15109     </div>
15110     <div class="padding"></div>
15111
15112     <div class="entry">
15113       <div class="title">
15114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
15115       </div>
15116       <div class="date">
15117         26th October 2012
15118       </div>
15119       <div class="body">
15120         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
15121 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
15122 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
15123 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
15124 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
15125 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
15126 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
15127 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
15128 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
15129 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
15130 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
15131 it every time.</p>
15132
15133 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
15134 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
15135 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
15136 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
15137 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
15138 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
15139 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
15140 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
15141 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
15142 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
15143 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
15144 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
15145
15146 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
15147 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
15148 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
15149 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
15150 article: First the unplanned outage:
15151
15152 <blockquote><pre>
15153 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
15154 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
15155 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
15156 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
15157 Duration:    40 minutes
15158 Scope:       Exchange 2003
15159 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
15160              a cluster failover.
15161
15162 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
15163              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
15164 Technician:  [xxx]
15165 </pre></blockquote>
15166
15167 Next the planned outage:
15168
15169 <blockquote><pre>
15170 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
15171 Severity:    Major (Planned)
15172 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
15173 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
15174 Duration:    10 hours
15175 Scope:       H2 Transport
15176 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
15177              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
15178              4510s.
15179 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
15180              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
15181              connectivity.
15182 Technician:  [xxx]
15183 </pre></blockquote>
15184
15185 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
15186 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
15187 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
15188 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
15189 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
15190 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
15191 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
15192
15193 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
15194 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
15195 university too.  We do register
15196 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
15197 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
15198 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
15199 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
15200 for other sites to consider too?</p>
15201
15202       </div>
15203       <div class="tags">
15204
15205
15206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
15207
15208
15209       </div>
15210     </div>
15211     <div class="padding"></div>
15212
15213     <div class="entry">
15214       <div class="title">
15215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
15216       </div>
15217       <div class="date">
15218         22nd October 2012
15219       </div>
15220       <div class="body">
15221         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
15222 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
15223 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
15224 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
15225 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
15226 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
15227 background information is available in Norwegian from
15228 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
15229 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
15230 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
15231 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
15232 willing to
15233 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
15234 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
15235 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
15236 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
15237 sounded like
15238 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
15239 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
15240 later.</p>
15241
15242 <p>And thought this action is
15243 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
15244 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
15245 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
15246 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
15247 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
15248 rights.</p>
15249
15250 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
15251 unacceptable terms.  For example
15252 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
15253 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
15254 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
15255 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
15256 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
15257
15258 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
15259 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
15260 restored the account of the user, as reported by
15261 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
15262 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
15263 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
15264 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
15265 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
15266 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
15267 reading two opinions from
15268 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
15269 Phipps</a> and
15270 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
15271 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
15272 details about the original story.</p>
15273
15274       </div>
15275       <div class="tags">
15276
15277
15278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
15279
15280
15281       </div>
15282     </div>
15283     <div class="padding"></div>
15284
15285     <div class="entry">
15286       <div class="title">
15287         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
15288       </div>
15289       <div class="date">
15290         18th October 2012
15291       </div>
15292       <div class="body">
15293         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
15294 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
15295 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
15296 across a marvellous drawing by
15297 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
15298 visualising some of what is going on.
15299
15300 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
15301 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
15302
15303 <blockquote>
15304 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
15305 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
15306 </blockquote>
15307
15308 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
15309 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
15310 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
15311 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
15312 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
15313 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
15314
15315       </div>
15316       <div class="tags">
15317
15318
15319         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
15320
15321
15322       </div>
15323     </div>
15324     <div class="padding"></div>
15325
15326     <div class="entry">
15327       <div class="title">
15328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
15329       </div>
15330       <div class="date">
15331         12th October 2012
15332       </div>
15333       <div class="body">
15334         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
15335 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
15336 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
15337 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
15338 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
15339 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
15340 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
15341 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
15342 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
15343 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
15344 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
15345 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
15346 matter".</p>
15347
15348 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
15349 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
15350 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
15351 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
15352 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
15353 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
15354 to argue its side.</p>
15355
15356 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
15357 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
15358 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
15359 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
15360
15361 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
15362 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
15363 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
15364
15365       </div>
15366       <div class="tags">
15367
15368
15369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
15370
15371
15372       </div>
15373     </div>
15374     <div class="padding"></div>
15375
15376     <div class="entry">
15377       <div class="title">
15378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
15379       </div>
15380       <div class="date">
15381          3rd October 2012
15382       </div>
15383       <div class="body">
15384         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
15385 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
15386 the computer science book collection available in his local
15387 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
15388 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
15389 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
15390 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
15391 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
15392 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
15393 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
15394 recently published books.</p>
15395
15396 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
15397 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
15398 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
15399 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
15400 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
15401 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
15402 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
15403 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
15404 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
15405 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
15406 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
15407 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
15408 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
15409 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
15410 for the library that evening.</p>
15411
15412 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
15413 going to know that for example
15414 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
15415 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
15416 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
15417 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
15418 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
15419 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
15420 book right away.</p>
15421
15422       </div>
15423       <div class="tags">
15424
15425
15426         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15427
15428
15429       </div>
15430     </div>
15431     <div class="padding"></div>
15432
15433     <div class="entry">
15434       <div class="title">
15435         <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>
15436       </div>
15437       <div class="date">
15438         23rd September 2012
15439       </div>
15440       <div class="body">
15441         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
15442 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
15443 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
15444 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
15445 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
15446 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
15447
15448 When I started, I
15449 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
15450 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
15451 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
15452 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
15453 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
15454 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
15455 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
15456
15457 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
15458
15459 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
15460 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
15461 the project files currently available from
15462 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
15463
15464 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
15465 the updated
15466 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
15467 and
15468 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
15469 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
15470 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
15471 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
15472
15473       </div>
15474       <div class="tags">
15475
15476
15477         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>.
15478
15479
15480       </div>
15481     </div>
15482     <div class="padding"></div>
15483
15484     <div class="entry">
15485       <div class="title">
15486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
15487       </div>
15488       <div class="date">
15489         17th September 2012
15490       </div>
15491       <div class="body">
15492         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
15493 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
15494 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
15495 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
15496 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
15497 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
15498 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
15499
15500 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15501
15502 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
15503 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
15504 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
15505 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
15506 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
15507 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
15508 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
15509 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
15510 training is anyway very important</p>
15511
15512 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
15513 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
15514 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
15515 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
15516 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
15517
15518 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15519 project?</strong></p>
15520
15521 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
15522 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
15523 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
15524 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
15525 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
15526 hole.</p>
15527
15528 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15529 Edu?</strong></p>
15530
15531 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
15532 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
15533 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
15534 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
15535 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
15536 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
15537 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
15538 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
15539 hassle.</p>
15540
15541 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15542 Edu?</strong></p>
15543
15544 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
15545 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
15546 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
15547 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
15548 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
15549 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
15550 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
15551 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
15552
15553 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15554
15555 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
15556 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
15557 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
15558 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
15559 has the same...</p>
15560
15561 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
15562 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
15563 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
15564 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
15565
15566 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15567 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15568
15569 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
15570 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
15571 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
15572
15573 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
15574 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
15575 don't.</p>
15576
15577 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
15578 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
15579 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
15580 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
15581 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
15582 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
15583 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
15584
15585       </div>
15586       <div class="tags">
15587
15588
15589         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15590
15591
15592       </div>
15593     </div>
15594     <div class="padding"></div>
15595
15596     <div class="entry">
15597       <div class="title">
15598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
15599       </div>
15600       <div class="date">
15601         15th September 2012
15602       </div>
15603       <div class="body">
15604         <p>After the
15605 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
15606 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
15607 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
15608 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
15609 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
15610 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
15611 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
15612 was
15613 <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
15614 formal working group should be formed.</p>
15615
15616 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
15617 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
15618 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
15619 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
15620 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
15621 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
15622 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
15623 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
15624
15625 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
15626 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
15627 IETF.</p>
15628
15629       </div>
15630       <div class="tags">
15631
15632
15633         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>.
15634
15635
15636       </div>
15637     </div>
15638     <div class="padding"></div>
15639
15640     <div class="entry">
15641       <div class="title">
15642         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
15643       </div>
15644       <div class="date">
15645         12th September 2012
15646       </div>
15647       <div class="body">
15648         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
15649 publication of of
15650 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
15651 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
15652 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
15653 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
15654 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
15655 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
15656 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
15657 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
15658 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
15659 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
15660
15661 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
15662 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
15663 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
15664 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
15665
15666 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
15667 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
15668
15669       </div>
15670       <div class="tags">
15671
15672
15673         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>.
15674
15675
15676       </div>
15677     </div>
15678     <div class="padding"></div>
15679
15680     <div class="entry">
15681       <div class="title">
15682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
15683       </div>
15684       <div class="date">
15685          7th September 2012
15686       </div>
15687       <div class="body">
15688         <p>As I
15689 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
15690 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
15691 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
15692 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
15693 repository for the project</a>.</p>
15694
15695 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
15696 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
15697 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
15698 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
15699
15700 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
15701 PostScript formats at
15702 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
15703 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
15704
15705       </div>
15706       <div class="tags">
15707
15708
15709         Tags: <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>.
15710
15711
15712       </div>
15713     </div>
15714     <div class="padding"></div>
15715
15716     <div class="entry">
15717       <div class="title">
15718         <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>
15719       </div>
15720       <div class="date">
15721         23rd August 2012
15722       </div>
15723       <div class="body">
15724         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
15725 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
15726 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
15727 revisit the great site
15728 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
15729 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
15730 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
15731
15732       </div>
15733       <div class="tags">
15734
15735
15736         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>.
15737
15738
15739       </div>
15740     </div>
15741     <div class="padding"></div>
15742
15743     <div class="entry">
15744       <div class="title">
15745         <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>
15746       </div>
15747       <div class="date">
15748         17th August 2012
15749       </div>
15750       <div class="body">
15751         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
15752 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
15753 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
15754 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
15755 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
15756 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
15757 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
15758 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
15759 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
15760 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
15761 summer I
15762 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
15763 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
15764 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
15765
15766 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
15767 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
15768 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
15769 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
15770 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
15771 progress:</p>
15772
15773 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
15774
15775 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
15776 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
15777 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
15778 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
15779 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
15780 english version of the docbook source.</p>
15781
15782 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
15783 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
15784 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
15785 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
15786 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
15787 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
15788 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
15789 project files currently available from <a
15790 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
15791
15792 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
15793 the updated
15794 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
15795 and
15796 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
15797 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
15798 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
15799 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
15800
15801       </div>
15802       <div class="tags">
15803
15804
15805         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>.
15806
15807
15808       </div>
15809     </div>
15810     <div class="padding"></div>
15811
15812     <div class="entry">
15813       <div class="title">
15814         <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>
15815       </div>
15816       <div class="date">
15817         10th August 2012
15818       </div>
15819       <div class="body">
15820         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
15821 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
15822 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
15823 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
15824 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
15825 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
15826 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
15827 case for the language
15828 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
15829 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
15830
15831 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
15832 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
15833 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
15834 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
15835 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
15836
15837 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
15838 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
15839 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
15840 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
15841 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
15842 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
15843 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
15844 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
15845 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
15846 alias for 'nb'.</p>
15847
15848 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
15849 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
15850 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
15851 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
15852 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
15853 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
15854 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
15855 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
15856 at the same time. :(</p>
15857
15858 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
15859 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
15860 processors. :(</p>
15861
15862 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
15863
15864       </div>
15865       <div class="tags">
15866
15867
15868         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>.
15869
15870
15871       </div>
15872     </div>
15873     <div class="padding"></div>
15874
15875     <div class="entry">
15876       <div class="title">
15877         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
15878       </div>
15879       <div class="date">
15880         31st July 2012
15881       </div>
15882       <div class="body">
15883         <p>I tried to send this text to the
15884 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
15885 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
15886 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
15887 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
15888 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
15889 out.</p>
15890
15891 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
15892 learning curve at the moment.</p>
15893
15894 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
15895 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
15896 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
15897 available from
15898 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
15899 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
15900 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
15901 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
15902 Squeeze.</p>
15903
15904 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
15905 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
15906 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
15907 problems.</p>
15908
15909 <ul>
15910
15911 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
15912    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
15913    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
15914    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
15915    index references spanning several pages (See
15916    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
15917    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
15918    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
15919
15920 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
15921    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
15922    #683163</a>).</li>
15923
15924 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
15925    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
15926    footnote and text body, see
15927    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
15928    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
15929    refs listed are not right).</li>
15930
15931 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
15932
15933 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
15934    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
15935
15936 </ul>
15937
15938 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
15939 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
15940 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
15941
15942 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
15943
15944       </div>
15945       <div class="tags">
15946
15947
15948         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>.
15949
15950
15951       </div>
15952     </div>
15953     <div class="padding"></div>
15954
15955     <div class="entry">
15956       <div class="title">
15957         <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>
15958       </div>
15959       <div class="date">
15960         21st July 2012
15961       </div>
15962       <div class="body">
15963         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
15964 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
15965 norwegian version</a> of the book
15966 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
15967 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
15968 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
15969 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
15970 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
15971
15972 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
15973 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
15974 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
15975 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
15976 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
15977 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
15978 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
15979 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
15980 print. :)</p>
15981
15982 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
15983 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
15984 language.</p>
15985
15986       </div>
15987       <div class="tags">
15988
15989
15990         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>.
15991
15992
15993       </div>
15994     </div>
15995     <div class="padding"></div>
15996
15997     <div class="entry">
15998       <div class="title">
15999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
16000       </div>
16001       <div class="date">
16002         16th July 2012
16003       </div>
16004       <div class="body">
16005         <p>I am currently working on a
16006 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
16007 to translate</a> the book
16008 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
16009 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
16010 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
16011 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
16012 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
16013 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
16014 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
16015
16016 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
16017 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
16018 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
16019 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
16020 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
16021 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
16022 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
16023 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
16024 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
16025
16026       </div>
16027       <div class="tags">
16028
16029
16030         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>.
16031
16032
16033       </div>
16034     </div>
16035     <div class="padding"></div>
16036
16037     <div class="entry">
16038       <div class="title">
16039         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
16040       </div>
16041       <div class="date">
16042          9th July 2012
16043       </div>
16044       <div class="body">
16045         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
16046 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
16047 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
16048 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
16049 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
16050 to adjust and scale the just released
16051 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
16052 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
16053 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
16054
16055 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
16056
16057 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
16058 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
16059 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
16060 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
16061 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
16062 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
16063 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
16064 perspective when working with IT.</p>
16065
16066 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
16067 project?</strong></p>
16068
16069 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
16070 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
16071 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
16072 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
16073 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
16074 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
16075
16076 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16077 Edu?</strong></p>
16078
16079 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
16080 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
16081 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
16082 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
16083 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
16084 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
16085 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
16086 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
16087 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
16088 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
16089 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
16090 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
16091 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
16092 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
16093 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
16094 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
16095 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
16096 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
16097 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
16098 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
16099 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
16100 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
16101 quicker to update.
16102
16103 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16104 Edu?</strong></p>
16105
16106 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
16107 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
16108 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
16109 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
16110 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
16111 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
16112
16113 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
16114 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
16115 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
16116 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
16117 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
16118 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
16119 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
16120 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
16121 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
16122 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
16123 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
16124 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
16125 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
16126 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
16127 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
16128
16129 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
16130 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
16131 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
16132 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
16133 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
16134 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
16135 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
16136 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
16137
16138 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
16139 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
16140 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
16141 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
16142 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
16143 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
16144 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
16145 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
16146 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
16147 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
16148 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
16149 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
16150 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
16151 sound file.</p>
16152
16153 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
16154 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
16155 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
16156 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
16157 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
16158 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
16159 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
16160 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
16161 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
16162
16163 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
16164
16165 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
16166 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
16167 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
16168 )</p>
16169
16170 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
16171 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
16172
16173 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
16174 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
16175 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
16176 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
16177 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
16178 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
16179 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
16180 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
16181 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
16182 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
16183 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
16184 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
16185 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
16186 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
16187 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
16188
16189 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
16190 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
16191 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
16192 management with Airtime</a>,
16193 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
16194 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
16195 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
16196 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
16197 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
16198
16199       </div>
16200       <div class="tags">
16201
16202
16203         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16204
16205
16206       </div>
16207     </div>
16208     <div class="padding"></div>
16209
16210     <div class="entry">
16211       <div class="title">
16212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
16213       </div>
16214       <div class="date">
16215          8th July 2012
16216       </div>
16217       <div class="body">
16218         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
16219 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
16220 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
16221 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
16222 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
16223 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
16224 Steinberg in his blog post
16225 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
16226 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
16227 spending of your tax money.</p>
16228
16229 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
16230 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
16231 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
16232 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
16233 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
16234 purchases.</p>
16235
16236       </div>
16237       <div class="tags">
16238
16239
16240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16241
16242
16243       </div>
16244     </div>
16245     <div class="padding"></div>
16246
16247     <div class="entry">
16248       <div class="title">
16249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
16250       </div>
16251       <div class="date">
16252          7th July 2012
16253       </div>
16254       <div class="body">
16255         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
16256 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
16257 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
16258 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
16259 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
16260 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
16261 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
16262 receive.  The software is
16263
16264 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
16265 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
16266 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
16267 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
16268 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
16269 Windows</a>.</p>
16270
16271 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
16272 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
16273
16274 <p><ul>
16275
16276   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
16277     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
16278
16279   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
16280     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
16281     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
16282     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
16283     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
16284     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
16285     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
16286     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
16287     </li>
16288
16289   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
16290     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
16291
16292   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
16293     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
16294
16295   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
16296     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
16297
16298   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
16299
16300   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
16301     formats </li>
16302
16303   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
16304     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
16305     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
16306     (as separate sets)</li>
16307
16308   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
16309     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
16310     percentage)</li>
16311
16312   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
16313     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
16314     memory):
16315     <ul>
16316       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
16317       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
16318       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
16319       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
16320       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
16321       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
16322       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
16323       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
16324       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
16325       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
16326           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
16327           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
16328           activity)</li>
16329       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
16330       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
16331     </ul></li>
16332
16333   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
16334     <ul>
16335       <li>Break periods</li>
16336       <li>For teacher(s):
16337         <ul>
16338           <li>Not available periods</li>
16339           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
16340           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
16341           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
16342           <li>Min hours daily</li>
16343           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
16344
16345           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
16346             days per week</li>
16347         </ul></li>
16348       <li>For students (sets):
16349         <ul>
16350           <li>Not available periods</li>
16351           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
16352           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
16353           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
16354           <li>Min hours daily</li>
16355           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
16356
16357           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
16358             days per week</li>
16359         </ul></li>
16360       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
16361         <ul>
16362           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
16363           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
16364           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
16365           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
16366           <li>End(s) students day</li>
16367           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
16368           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
16369             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
16370           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
16371           <li>Not overlapping</li>
16372           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
16373           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
16374         </ul></li>
16375     </ul></li>
16376
16377   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
16378     <ul>
16379       <li>Room not available periods</li>
16380       <li>For teacher(s):
16381         <ul>
16382           <li>Home room(s)</li>
16383           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
16384           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
16385         </ul>
16386       </li>
16387
16388       <li>For students (sets):
16389         <ul>
16390           <li>Home room(s)</li>
16391           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
16392           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
16393         </ul>
16394       </li>
16395       <li>Preferred room(s):
16396         <ul>
16397           <li>For a subject</li>
16398           <li>For an activity tag</li>
16399           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
16400           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
16401         </ul>
16402       </li>
16403
16404       <li>For a set of activities:
16405         <ul>
16406           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
16407         </ul>
16408       </li>
16409     </ul>
16410   </li>
16411 </ul></p>
16412
16413 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
16414 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
16415 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
16416 manually, check it out.
16417
16418 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
16419 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
16420 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
16421 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
16422 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
16423 section</a>.</p>
16424
16425       </div>
16426       <div class="tags">
16427
16428
16429         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
16430
16431
16432       </div>
16433     </div>
16434     <div class="padding"></div>
16435
16436     <div class="entry">
16437       <div class="title">
16438         <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>
16439       </div>
16440       <div class="date">
16441          3rd July 2012
16442       </div>
16443       <div class="body">
16444         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
16445 project (Norwegian version of
16446 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
16447 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
16448 a problem with the municipalities using
16449 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
16450 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
16451 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
16452 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
16453 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
16454 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
16455 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
16456 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
16457 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
16458 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
16459 the From: header.</p>
16460
16461 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
16462 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
16463 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
16464 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
16465 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
16466 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
16467 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
16468 behaviour.</p>
16469
16470 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
16471 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
16472 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
16473 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
16474 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
16475 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16476 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
16477
16478       </div>
16479       <div class="tags">
16480
16481
16482         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>.
16483
16484
16485       </div>
16486     </div>
16487     <div class="padding"></div>
16488
16489     <div class="entry">
16490       <div class="title">
16491         <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>
16492       </div>
16493       <div class="date">
16494         26th June 2012
16495       </div>
16496       <div class="body">
16497         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
16498 another interview with the people behind
16499 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
16500 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
16501 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
16502 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
16503 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
16504 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
16505 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
16506
16507 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
16508
16509 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
16510 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
16511 ICT in schools</p>
16512
16513 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
16514 project?</strong></p>
16515
16516 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
16517 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
16518 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
16519 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
16520
16521 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16522 Edu?</strong></p>
16523
16524 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
16525 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
16526 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
16527 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
16528
16529 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16530 Edu?</strong></p>
16531
16532 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
16533 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
16534 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
16535 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
16536 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
16537 technologies in school.</p>
16538
16539 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
16540
16541 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
16542 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
16543 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
16544
16545 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
16546 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
16547
16548 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
16549 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
16550 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
16551 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
16552
16553 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
16554 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
16555 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
16556
16557 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
16558 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
16559 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
16560 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
16561 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
16562 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
16563 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
16564 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
16565 working there.</p>
16566
16567       </div>
16568       <div class="tags">
16569
16570
16571         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16572
16573
16574       </div>
16575     </div>
16576     <div class="padding"></div>
16577
16578     <div class="entry">
16579       <div class="title">
16580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
16581       </div>
16582       <div class="date">
16583         24th June 2012
16584       </div>
16585       <div class="body">
16586         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
16587 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
16588 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
16589 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
16590 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
16591 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
16592 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
16593 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
16594 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
16595 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
16596 missing in my book.</p>
16597
16598 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
16599 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
16600 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
16601 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
16602 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
16603 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
16604 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
16605
16606       </div>
16607       <div class="tags">
16608
16609
16610         Tags: <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>.
16611
16612
16613       </div>
16614     </div>
16615     <div class="padding"></div>
16616
16617     <div class="entry">
16618       <div class="title">
16619         <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>
16620       </div>
16621       <div class="date">
16622         11th June 2012
16623       </div>
16624       <div class="body">
16625         <p>During my work on
16626 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
16627 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
16628 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
16629 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
16630 explanation.</p>
16631
16632 <p><ul>
16633
16634 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
16635 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
16636 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
16637 system depend on tasksel tasks in
16638 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
16639 installation.</li>
16640
16641 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
16642 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
16643 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
16644 at least try to enable it for these services:
16645 <ul>
16646
16647   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
16648     quotas.</li>
16649   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
16650   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
16651   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
16652   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
16653   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
16654
16655 </ul></li>
16656
16657 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
16658 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
16659 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
16660 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
16661
16662 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
16663 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
16664 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
16665
16666 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
16667 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
16668 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
16669 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
16670 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
16671 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
16672
16673 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
16674 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
16675 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
16676 in Wheezy.
16677
16678 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
16679 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
16680 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
16681
16682 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
16683 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
16684 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
16685 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
16686
16687 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
16688 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
16689 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
16690 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
16691
16692 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
16693 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
16694 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
16695
16696 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
16697 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
16698 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
16699
16700 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
16701 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
16702 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
16703 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
16704 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
16705
16706 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
16707 <ul>
16708
16709 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
16710 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
16711 <li>and probably more?</li>
16712 </ul></li>
16713
16714 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
16715 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
16716 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
16717 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
16718 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
16719 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
16720 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
16721 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
16722
16723
16724 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
16725 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
16726 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
16727 use.</li>
16728
16729 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
16730 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
16731 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
16732 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
16733 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
16734
16735 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
16736 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
16737 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
16738 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
16739 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
16740 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
16741
16742 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
16743 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
16744 There are at least three implementations,
16745 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
16746 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
16747 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
16748 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
16749 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
16750 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
16751 given room.</li>
16752
16753 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
16754 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
16755 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
16756 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
16757 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
16758 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
16759 investigated.</li>
16760
16761 </ul></p>
16762
16763 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
16764 version.</p>
16765
16766       </div>
16767       <div class="tags">
16768
16769
16770         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16771
16772
16773       </div>
16774     </div>
16775     <div class="padding"></div>
16776
16777     <div class="entry">
16778       <div class="title">
16779         <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>
16780       </div>
16781       <div class="date">
16782          9th June 2012
16783       </div>
16784       <div class="body">
16785         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
16786 <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
16787 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
16788 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
16789 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
16790 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
16791 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
16792 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
16793 be willing to pay for.</p>
16794
16795 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
16796 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
16797 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
16798 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
16799 Orwell</a>.</p>
16800
16801       </div>
16802       <div class="tags">
16803
16804
16805         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>.
16806
16807
16808       </div>
16809     </div>
16810     <div class="padding"></div>
16811
16812     <div class="entry">
16813       <div class="title">
16814         <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>
16815       </div>
16816       <div class="date">
16817          6th June 2012
16818       </div>
16819       <div class="body">
16820         <p>A few days ago
16821 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
16822 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
16823 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
16824 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
16825 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
16826 code for HP, Dell and IBM
16827 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
16828 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
16829 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
16830 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
16831 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
16832
16833 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
16834 output:
16835
16836 <blockquote><pre>
16837 % 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>
16838 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": ""})
16839 %
16840 </pre></blockquote>
16841
16842 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
16843 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
16844 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
16845
16846       </div>
16847       <div class="tags">
16848
16849
16850         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>.
16851
16852
16853       </div>
16854     </div>
16855     <div class="padding"></div>
16856
16857     <div class="entry">
16858       <div class="title">
16859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
16860       </div>
16861       <div class="date">
16862          2nd June 2012
16863       </div>
16864       <div class="body">
16865         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
16866 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
16867 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
16868 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
16869 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
16870 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
16871
16872 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
16873
16874 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
16875 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
16876 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
16877 by Angela).</p>
16878
16879 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
16880 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
16881 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
16882 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
16883 becoming an osteopath.</p>
16884
16885 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
16886 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
16887 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
16888 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
16889 skills with communication skills.</p>
16890
16891 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
16892 project?</strong></p>
16893
16894 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
16895 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
16896 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
16897 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
16898 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
16899
16900 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
16901 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
16902 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
16903 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
16904 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
16905 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
16906 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
16907 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
16908 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
16909
16910 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
16911 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
16912 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
16913
16914 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
16915
16916 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
16917 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
16918 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
16919 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
16920 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
16921 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
16922 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
16923 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
16924 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
16925 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
16926 point.</p>
16927
16928 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
16929 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
16930 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
16931 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
16932 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
16933 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
16934
16935 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
16936 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
16937 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
16938 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
16939 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
16940 spare time.</p>
16941
16942 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
16943 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
16944 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
16945 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
16946 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
16947
16948 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
16949 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
16950 avoidance do exist.</p>
16951
16952 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
16953 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
16954 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
16955 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
16956 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
16957 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
16958 and probably a gain for all.</p>
16959
16960 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16961 Edu?</strong></p>
16962
16963 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
16964 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
16965 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
16966 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
16967 project communication, honest communication within the group of
16968 developers, etc.</p>
16969
16970 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16971 Edu?</strong></p>
16972
16973 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
16974
16975 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
16976 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
16977 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
16978 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
16979 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
16980 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
16981 contribute).</p>
16982
16983 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
16984 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
16985 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
16986 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
16987 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
16988 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
16989 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
16990 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
16991 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
16992 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
16993
16994 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
16995
16996 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
16997
16998 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
16999 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
17000 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
17001
17002 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
17003 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
17004 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
17005 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
17006
17007 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
17008 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
17009 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
17010 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
17011 whiteboard.</p>
17012
17013 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
17014
17015 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17016 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17017
17018 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
17019 enrol people.</p>
17020
17021       </div>
17022       <div class="tags">
17023
17024
17025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17026
17027
17028       </div>
17029     </div>
17030     <div class="padding"></div>
17031
17032     <div class="entry">
17033       <div class="title">
17034         <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>
17035       </div>
17036       <div class="date">
17037          1st June 2012
17038       </div>
17039       <div class="body">
17040         <p>A few years ago I wrote
17041 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
17042 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
17043 I have learned from colleges here at the
17044 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
17045 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
17046 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
17047 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
17048 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
17049
17050 <p><pre>
17051 use strict;
17052 use warnings;
17053 use SOAP::Lite;
17054 use Data::Dumper;
17055 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
17056 my $App = 'test';
17057 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
17058 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
17059 my $s = SOAP::Lite
17060     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
17061     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
17062     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
17063     ;
17064 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
17065     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
17066     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
17067     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
17068 );
17069 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
17070 </pre></p>
17071
17072 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
17073
17074 <p><pre>
17075 $VAR1 = {
17076           'Asset' => {
17077                      'Entitlements' => {
17078                                        'EntitlementData' => [
17079                                                             {
17080                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
17081                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
17082                                                               'Provider' => '',
17083                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
17084                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
17085                                                             },
17086                                                             {
17087                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
17088                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
17089                                                               'Provider' => '',
17090                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
17091                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
17092                                                             },
17093                                                             {
17094                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
17095                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
17096                                                               'Provider' => '',
17097                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
17098                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
17099                                                             }
17100                                                           ]
17101                                      },
17102                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
17103                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
17104                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
17105                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
17106                                           'Buid' => '2323',
17107                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
17108                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
17109                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
17110                                         }
17111                    }
17112         };
17113 </pre></p>
17114
17115 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
17116 service outside the
17117 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
17118 documentation</a>, and according to
17119 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
17120 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
17121 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
17122
17123 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
17124 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
17125
17126       </div>
17127       <div class="tags">
17128
17129
17130         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>.
17131
17132
17133       </div>
17134     </div>
17135     <div class="padding"></div>
17136
17137     <div class="entry">
17138       <div class="title">
17139         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
17140       </div>
17141       <div class="date">
17142         31st May 2012
17143       </div>
17144       <div class="body">
17145         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
17146 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
17147 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
17148 running Debian Squeeze, where
17149 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
17150 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
17151 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
17152 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
17153 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
17154 another day.</p>
17155
17156 <p>After calibration, I get a
17157 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
17158 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
17159 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
17160 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
17161 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
17162 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
17163 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
17164 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
17165 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
17166 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
17167 and a simple</p>
17168
17169 <p><pre>
17170 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
17171 </pre></p>
17172
17173 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
17174 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
17175 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
17176 enough for now.</p>
17177
17178       </div>
17179       <div class="tags">
17180
17181
17182         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17183
17184
17185       </div>
17186     </div>
17187     <div class="padding"></div>
17188
17189     <div class="entry">
17190       <div class="title">
17191         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
17192       </div>
17193       <div class="date">
17194         27th May 2012
17195       </div>
17196       <div class="body">
17197         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
17198 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
17199 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
17200 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
17201 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
17202 since then, helping to make sure the
17203 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
17204 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
17205
17206 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17207
17208 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
17209 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
17210 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
17211 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
17212 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
17213 our computer network.</p>
17214
17215 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
17216 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
17217 (4 months).</p>
17218
17219 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17220 project?</strong></p>
17221
17222 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
17223 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
17224 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
17225 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
17226 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
17227 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
17228 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
17229 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
17230 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
17231 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
17232 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
17233 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
17234 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
17235 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
17236
17237 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17238 Edu?</strong></p>
17239
17240 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
17241 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
17242 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
17243 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
17244 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
17245 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
17246 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
17247 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
17248
17249 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17250 Edu?</strong></p>
17251
17252 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
17253 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
17254 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
17255 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
17256 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
17257 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
17258 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
17259 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
17260 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
17261 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
17262 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
17263 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
17264
17265 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17266
17267 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
17268 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
17269 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
17270
17271 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17272 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17273
17274 <p><ol>
17275
17276 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
17277 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
17278 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
17279 developing.</li>
17280
17281 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
17282 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
17283 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
17284 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
17285 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
17286
17287 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
17288 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
17289 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
17290
17291 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
17292 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
17293 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
17294 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
17295
17296 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
17297 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
17298 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
17299
17300 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
17301
17302 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
17303 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
17304 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
17305 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
17306
17307 </ol></p>
17308
17309       </div>
17310       <div class="tags">
17311
17312
17313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17314
17315
17316       </div>
17317     </div>
17318     <div class="padding"></div>
17319
17320     <div class="entry">
17321       <div class="title">
17322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
17323       </div>
17324       <div class="date">
17325         26th May 2012
17326       </div>
17327       <div class="body">
17328         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
17329 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
17330 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
17331 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
17332 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
17333
17334 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
17335 <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>
17336 comment:</p>
17337
17338 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
17339 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
17340 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
17341 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
17342 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
17343 </blockquote></p>
17344
17345 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
17346 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
17347 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
17348 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
17349 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
17350 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
17351 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
17352 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
17353 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
17354 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
17355 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
17356 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
17357 of wasted effort.</p>
17358
17359 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
17360 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
17361 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
17362
17363 <p>See
17364 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
17365 and
17366 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
17367 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
17368 </blockquote></p>
17369
17370       </div>
17371       <div class="tags">
17372
17373
17374         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>.
17375
17376
17377       </div>
17378     </div>
17379     <div class="padding"></div>
17380
17381     <div class="entry">
17382       <div class="title">
17383         <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>
17384       </div>
17385       <div class="date">
17386         18th May 2012
17387       </div>
17388       <div class="body">
17389         <p>In january, I
17390 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
17391 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
17392 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
17393 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
17394 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
17395 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
17396 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
17397 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
17398 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
17399 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
17400
17401 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
17402 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
17403 drivers. :)</p>
17404
17405       </div>
17406       <div class="tags">
17407
17408
17409         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17410
17411
17412       </div>
17413     </div>
17414     <div class="padding"></div>
17415
17416     <div class="entry">
17417       <div class="title">
17418         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
17419       </div>
17420       <div class="date">
17421         13th May 2012
17422       </div>
17423       <div class="body">
17424         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
17425 publish another interview with the people behind
17426 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
17427 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
17428 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
17429 details get right before release.
17430
17431 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17432
17433 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
17434 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
17435 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
17436 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
17437 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
17438 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
17439 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
17440 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
17441
17442 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
17443 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
17444 home since 2006.</p>
17445
17446 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17447 project?</strong></p>
17448
17449 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
17450 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
17451 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
17452 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
17453 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
17454 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
17455
17456 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
17457 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
17458 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
17459 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
17460 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
17461 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
17462 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
17463 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
17464 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
17465 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
17466 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
17467 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
17468 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
17469 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
17470 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
17471 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
17472
17473 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17474 Edu?</strong></p>
17475
17476 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
17477 for me as today.</p>
17478
17479 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
17480
17481 <p><ul>
17482
17483 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
17484 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
17485
17486 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
17487 cost.</li>
17488
17489 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
17490 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
17491 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
17492 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
17493 server</li>
17494
17495 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
17496 school.</li>
17497
17498 </ul></p>
17499
17500 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
17501 came up in this way:</p>
17502
17503 <p><ul>
17504
17505 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
17506 now.</li>
17507
17508 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
17509 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
17510 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
17511
17512 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
17513 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
17514 interfaces used in the past.</li>
17515
17516 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
17517 different needs.</li>
17518
17519 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
17520
17521 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
17522 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
17523 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
17524
17525 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
17526 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
17527
17528 </ul></p>
17529
17530 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17531 Edu?</strong></p>
17532
17533 <p><ul>
17534
17535 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
17536 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
17537 whole municipality areas.</li>
17538
17539 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
17540 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
17541 politicians.</li>
17542
17543 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
17544
17545 </ul></p>
17546
17547 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17548
17549 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
17550 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
17551 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
17552 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
17553 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
17554 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
17555
17556 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
17557 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
17558 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
17559 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
17560 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
17561
17562 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17563 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17564
17565 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
17566 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
17567 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
17568
17569       </div>
17570       <div class="tags">
17571
17572
17573         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17574
17575
17576       </div>
17577     </div>
17578     <div class="padding"></div>
17579
17580     <div class="entry">
17581       <div class="title">
17582         <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>
17583       </div>
17584       <div class="date">
17585         30th April 2012
17586       </div>
17587       <div class="body">
17588         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
17589 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
17590
17591 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
17592 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
17593 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
17594 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
17595 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
17596 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
17597 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
17598 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
17599 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
17600 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
17601 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
17602 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
17603 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
17604 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
17605 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
17606 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
17607
17608 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
17609 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
17610 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
17611 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
17612 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
17613 finally found a Danish supplier
17614 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
17615 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
17616 days ago.</p>
17617
17618 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
17619 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
17620 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
17621 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
17622 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
17623 toys.</p>
17624
17625       </div>
17626       <div class="tags">
17627
17628
17629         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17630
17631
17632       </div>
17633     </div>
17634     <div class="padding"></div>
17635
17636     <div class="entry">
17637       <div class="title">
17638         <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>
17639       </div>
17640       <div class="date">
17641         26th April 2012
17642       </div>
17643       <div class="body">
17644         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
17645 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
17646 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
17647 that the video editor application included with
17648 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
17649 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
17650 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
17651
17652 <p><blockquote>
17653 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
17654 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
17655 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
17656 </blockquote></p>
17657
17658 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
17659
17660 <p><blockquote>
17661 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
17662 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
17663 </blockquote></p>
17664
17665 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
17666 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
17667 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
17668 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
17669 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
17670 video.  AMR is
17671 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
17672 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
17673 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
17674 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
17675 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
17676 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
17677 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
17678
17679 <p>I know why I prefer
17680 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
17681 standards</a> also for video.</p>
17682
17683       </div>
17684       <div class="tags">
17685
17686
17687         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17688
17689
17690       </div>
17691     </div>
17692     <div class="padding"></div>
17693
17694     <div class="entry">
17695       <div class="title">
17696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
17697       </div>
17698       <div class="date">
17699         19th April 2012
17700       </div>
17701       <div class="body">
17702         <p>Here in Norway, the
17703 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
17704 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
17705 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
17706 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
17707 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
17708 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
17709 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
17710 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
17711 on the same level.</p>
17712
17713 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
17714 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
17715 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
17716 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
17717 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
17718 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
17719 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
17720 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
17721 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
17722 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
17723 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
17724 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
17725 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
17726 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
17727 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
17728 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
17729 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
17730 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
17731
17732 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
17733 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
17734 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
17735 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
17736 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
17737 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
17738 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
17739 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
17740
17741 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
17742 from Simon Phipps
17743 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
17744 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
17745
17746 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
17747 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
17748 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
17749 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
17750 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
17751 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
17752 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
17753 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
17754 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
17755
17756       </div>
17757       <div class="tags">
17758
17759
17760         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>.
17761
17762
17763       </div>
17764     </div>
17765     <div class="padding"></div>
17766
17767     <div class="entry">
17768       <div class="title">
17769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
17770       </div>
17771       <div class="date">
17772         15th April 2012
17773       </div>
17774       <div class="body">
17775         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
17776 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
17777 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
17778 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
17779 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
17780 up in the recently released
17781 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
17782 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
17783
17784 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17785
17786 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
17787 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
17788 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
17789 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
17790 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
17791 information technology and science/technology.</p>
17792
17793 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17794 project?</strong></p>
17795
17796 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
17797 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
17798 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
17799 contributing.</p>
17800
17801 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17802 Edu?</strong></p>
17803
17804 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
17805 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
17806 Debian Project!</p>
17807
17808 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17809 Edu?</strong></p>
17810
17811 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
17812 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
17813 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
17814 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
17815 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
17816 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
17817 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
17818
17819 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
17820 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
17821
17822 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17823
17824 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
17825 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
17826 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
17827 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
17828
17829 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17830 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17831
17832 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
17833 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
17834 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
17835 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
17836 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
17837 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
17838 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
17839
17840 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
17841 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
17842 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
17843 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
17844 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
17845 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
17846 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
17847 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
17848
17849       </div>
17850       <div class="tags">
17851
17852
17853         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17854
17855
17856       </div>
17857     </div>
17858     <div class="padding"></div>
17859
17860     <div class="entry">
17861       <div class="title">
17862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
17863       </div>
17864       <div class="date">
17865          8th April 2012
17866       </div>
17867       <div class="body">
17868         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
17869 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
17870 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
17871 contributor to the
17872 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
17873 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
17874
17875 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17876
17877 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
17878 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
17879
17880 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17881 project?</strong></p>
17882
17883 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
17884 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
17885 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
17886 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
17887 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
17888 "localisation".</p>
17889
17890 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17891 Edu?</strong></p>
17892
17893 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17894 Edu?</strong></p>
17895
17896 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
17897 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
17898 education system.</p>
17899
17900 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
17901 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
17902 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
17903 money on the latest hardware.</p>
17904
17905 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17906
17907 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
17908 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
17909 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
17910
17911 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17912 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17913
17914 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
17915 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
17916 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
17917
17918       </div>
17919       <div class="tags">
17920
17921
17922         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17923
17924
17925       </div>
17926     </div>
17927     <div class="padding"></div>
17928
17929     <div class="entry">
17930       <div class="title">
17931         <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>
17932       </div>
17933       <div class="date">
17934          6th April 2012
17935       </div>
17936       <div class="body">
17937         <p>Recently I have spent time with
17938 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
17939 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
17940 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
17941 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
17942 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
17943 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
17944 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
17945 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
17946
17947 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
17948 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
17949 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
17950 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
17951 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
17952 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
17953 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
17954 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
17955
17956 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
17957 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
17958 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
17959 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
17960 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
17961 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
17962 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
17963 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
17964
17965 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
17966 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
17967 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
17968 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
17969 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
17970 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
17971 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
17972 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
17973 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
17974 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
17975
17976 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
17977 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
17978 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
17979 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
17980
17981 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
17982 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
17983
17984 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
17985 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
17986 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
17987 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
17988
17989       </div>
17990       <div class="tags">
17991
17992
17993         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17994
17995
17996       </div>
17997     </div>
17998     <div class="padding"></div>
17999
18000     <div class="entry">
18001       <div class="title">
18002         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
18003       </div>
18004       <div class="date">
18005          5th April 2012
18006       </div>
18007       <div class="body">
18008         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
18009 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
18010 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
18011 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
18012 for schools.  Check out his article
18013 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
18014 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
18015
18016       </div>
18017       <div class="tags">
18018
18019
18020         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18021
18022
18023       </div>
18024     </div>
18025     <div class="padding"></div>
18026
18027     <div class="entry">
18028       <div class="title">
18029         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
18030       </div>
18031       <div class="date">
18032          1st April 2012
18033       </div>
18034       <div class="body">
18035         <p>Germany is a core area for the
18036 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
18037 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
18038 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
18039
18040 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18041
18042 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
18043 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
18044 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
18045 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
18046 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
18047 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
18048 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
18049 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
18050
18051 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
18052 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
18053 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
18054 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
18055 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
18056 the end of April this year.</p>
18057
18058 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18059 project?</strong></p>
18060
18061 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
18062 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
18063 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
18064 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
18065 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
18066 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
18067 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
18068 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
18069 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
18070 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
18071 Skolelinux.</p>
18072
18073 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
18074 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
18075 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
18076 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
18077 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
18078 the admin teachers.</p>
18079
18080 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18081 Edu?</strong></p>
18082
18083 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
18084 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
18085 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
18086
18087 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
18088 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
18089 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
18090 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
18091 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
18092
18093 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18094 Edu?</strong></p>
18095
18096 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
18097
18098 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18099
18100 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
18101 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
18102 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
18103 LibreOffice.</p>
18104
18105 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18106 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18107
18108 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
18109 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
18110 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
18111
18112       </div>
18113       <div class="tags">
18114
18115
18116         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18117
18118
18119       </div>
18120     </div>
18121     <div class="padding"></div>
18122
18123     <div class="entry">
18124       <div class="title">
18125         <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>
18126       </div>
18127       <div class="date">
18128         25th March 2012
18129       </div>
18130       <div class="body">
18131         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
18132
18133 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
18134 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
18135 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
18136 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
18137 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
18138 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
18139 and download as a
18140 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
18141 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
18142
18143 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
18144   <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"' />
18145     <p>Download video as
18146       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
18147 </video></p>
18148
18149       </div>
18150       <div class="tags">
18151
18152
18153         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18154
18155
18156       </div>
18157     </div>
18158     <div class="padding"></div>
18159
18160     <div class="entry">
18161       <div class="title">
18162         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
18163       </div>
18164       <div class="date">
18165         19th March 2012
18166       </div>
18167       <div class="body">
18168         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
18169 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
18170 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
18171 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
18172 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
18173
18174 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18175
18176 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
18177 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
18178 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
18179 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
18180 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
18181 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
18182 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
18183 installations.</p>
18184
18185 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18186 project?</strong></p>
18187
18188 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
18189 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
18190 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
18191 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
18192 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
18193 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
18194 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
18195 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
18196 these things we decided to try it.</p>
18197
18198 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18199 Edu?</strong></p>
18200
18201 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
18202 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
18203 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
18204 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
18205 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
18206 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
18207 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
18208 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
18209
18210 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18211 Edu?</strong></p>
18212
18213 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
18214 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
18215 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
18216 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
18217 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
18218
18219 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18220
18221 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
18222 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
18223 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
18224 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
18225 that counts...)</p>
18226
18227 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18228 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18229
18230 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
18231 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
18232 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
18233 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
18234 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
18235 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
18236 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
18237 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
18238 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
18239 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
18240 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
18241
18242 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
18243 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
18244 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
18245
18246       </div>
18247       <div class="tags">
18248
18249
18250         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18251
18252
18253       </div>
18254     </div>
18255     <div class="padding"></div>
18256
18257     <div class="entry">
18258       <div class="title">
18259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
18260       </div>
18261       <div class="date">
18262         16th March 2012
18263       </div>
18264       <div class="body">
18265         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
18266 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
18267 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
18268 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
18269
18270 <ol>
18271
18272 <li>The documentation is written in a
18273 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
18274 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
18275 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
18276 docbook XML.</li>
18277
18278 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
18279 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
18280 with the translated text.</li>
18281
18282 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
18283 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
18284 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
18285 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
18286 images.</li>
18287
18288 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
18289 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
18290
18291 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
18292 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
18293
18294 </ol>
18295
18296 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
18297 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
18298 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
18299 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
18300 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
18301
18302 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
18303 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
18304 package</a>.</p>
18305
18306       </div>
18307       <div class="tags">
18308
18309
18310         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18311
18312
18313       </div>
18314     </div>
18315     <div class="padding"></div>
18316
18317     <div class="entry">
18318       <div class="title">
18319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
18320       </div>
18321       <div class="date">
18322         11th March 2012
18323       </div>
18324       <div class="body">
18325         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
18326 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
18327 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
18328 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
18329 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
18330 you have not done so already.</p>
18331
18332 <p>I plan to present the new version at
18333 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
18334 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
18335 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
18336
18337       </div>
18338       <div class="tags">
18339
18340
18341         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18342
18343
18344       </div>
18345     </div>
18346     <div class="padding"></div>
18347
18348     <div class="entry">
18349       <div class="title">
18350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
18351       </div>
18352       <div class="date">
18353          9th March 2012
18354       </div>
18355       <div class="body">
18356         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
18357 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
18358 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
18359 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
18360 more international audience.</p>
18361
18362 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
18363 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
18364 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
18365 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
18366 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
18367 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
18368 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
18369
18370
18371 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18372
18373 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
18374 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
18375 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
18376 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
18377 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
18378 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
18379 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
18380 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
18381 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
18382 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
18383 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
18384
18385 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18386 project?</strong></p>
18387
18388 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
18389 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
18390 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
18391 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
18392 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
18393 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
18394 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
18395 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
18396 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
18397 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
18398 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
18399 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
18400 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
18401
18402 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18403 Edu?</strong></p>
18404
18405 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
18406 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
18407 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
18408 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
18409 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
18410 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
18411 Japan.</p>
18412
18413 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18414 Edu?</strong></p>
18415
18416 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
18417 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
18418 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
18419 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
18420 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
18421 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
18422 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
18423 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
18424 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
18425 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
18426 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
18427 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
18428 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
18429 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
18430 help.</p>
18431
18432 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18433
18434 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
18435 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
18436 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
18437 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
18438 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
18439 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
18440 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
18441 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
18442 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
18443 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
18444 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
18445
18446 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18447 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18448
18449 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
18450 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
18451 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
18452 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
18453 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
18454 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
18455 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
18456 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
18457 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
18458 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
18459 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
18460 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
18461
18462       </div>
18463       <div class="tags">
18464
18465
18466         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18467
18468
18469       </div>
18470     </div>
18471     <div class="padding"></div>
18472
18473     <div class="entry">
18474       <div class="title">
18475         <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>
18476       </div>
18477       <div class="date">
18478          7th March 2012
18479       </div>
18480       <div class="body">
18481         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
18482
18483 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
18484 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
18485 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
18486 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
18487 download as a
18488 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
18489 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
18490
18491 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
18492   <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"' />
18493     <p>Download video as
18494       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
18495 </video></p>
18496
18497       </div>
18498       <div class="tags">
18499
18500
18501         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18502
18503
18504       </div>
18505     </div>
18506     <div class="padding"></div>
18507
18508     <div class="entry">
18509       <div class="title">
18510         <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>
18511       </div>
18512       <div class="date">
18513          4th March 2012
18514       </div>
18515       <div class="body">
18516         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
18517 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
18518 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
18519 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
18520 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
18521 need a software solution for your school.</p>
18522
18523       </div>
18524       <div class="tags">
18525
18526
18527         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18528
18529
18530       </div>
18531     </div>
18532     <div class="padding"></div>
18533
18534     <div class="entry">
18535       <div class="title">
18536         <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>
18537       </div>
18538       <div class="date">
18539          3rd March 2012
18540       </div>
18541       <div class="body">
18542         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
18543 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
18544 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
18545 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
18546 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
18547 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
18548 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
18549 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
18550 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
18551 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
18552 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
18553 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
18554 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
18555 year...</p>
18556
18557 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
18558 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
18559 name,
18560 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
18561 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
18562 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
18563 mean). I've been following
18564 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
18565 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
18566 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
18567 Check it out. :)</p>
18568
18569       </div>
18570       <div class="tags">
18571
18572
18573         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18574
18575
18576       </div>
18577     </div>
18578     <div class="padding"></div>
18579
18580     <div class="entry">
18581       <div class="title">
18582         <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>
18583       </div>
18584       <div class="date">
18585         27th February 2012
18586       </div>
18587       <div class="body">
18588         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
18589 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
18590 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
18591 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
18592 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
18593 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
18594 need a software solution for your school.</p>
18595
18596       </div>
18597       <div class="tags">
18598
18599
18600         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18601
18602
18603       </div>
18604     </div>
18605     <div class="padding"></div>
18606
18607     <div class="entry">
18608       <div class="title">
18609         <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>
18610       </div>
18611       <div class="date">
18612         19th February 2012
18613       </div>
18614       <div class="body">
18615         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
18616 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
18617 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
18618 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
18619 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
18620 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
18621 solution for your school.</p>
18622
18623       </div>
18624       <div class="tags">
18625
18626
18627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18628
18629
18630       </div>
18631     </div>
18632     <div class="padding"></div>
18633
18634     <div class="entry">
18635       <div class="title">
18636         <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>
18637       </div>
18638       <div class="date">
18639         14th February 2012
18640       </div>
18641       <div class="body">
18642         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
18643 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
18644 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
18645 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
18646 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
18647 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
18648 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
18649 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
18650 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
18651
18652 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
18653 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
18654 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
18655 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
18656 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
18657
18658 <blockquote><pre>
18659 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
18660 do
18661     printf "Failed disk $d: "
18662     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
18663 done
18664 </blockquote></pre>
18665
18666 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
18667 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
18668
18669 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
18670
18671 <blockquote><pre>
18672 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
18673 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
18674 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
18675 </blockquote></pre>
18676
18677 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
18678 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
18679 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
18680 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
18681 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
18682 mounted inside my box.</p>
18683
18684 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
18685 Software RAID in the
18686 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
18687 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
18688 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
18689 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
18690 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
18691 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
18692
18693       </div>
18694       <div class="tags">
18695
18696
18697         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>.
18698
18699
18700       </div>
18701     </div>
18702     <div class="padding"></div>
18703
18704     <div class="entry">
18705       <div class="title">
18706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
18707       </div>
18708       <div class="date">
18709         13th February 2012
18710       </div>
18711       <div class="body">
18712         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
18713 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
18714 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
18715 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
18716 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
18717 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
18718 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
18719 change the global proxy setting by editing
18720 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
18721 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
18722
18723 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
18724 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
18725 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
18726
18727 <blockquote><pre>
18728 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
18729 {
18730    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
18731        isPlainHostName(host) ||
18732        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
18733       return "DIRECT";
18734    else
18735       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
18736 }
18737 </pre></blockquote>
18738
18739 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
18740
18741 <blockquote><pre>
18742 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
18743 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
18744 </pre></blockquote>
18745
18746 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
18747 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
18748 would be used for
18749 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
18750 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
18751 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
18752 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
18753 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
18754 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
18755 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
18756 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
18757 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
18758 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
18759
18760 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
18761 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
18762 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
18763 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
18764 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
18765 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
18766
18767 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
18768 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
18769 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
18770 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
18771 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
18772 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
18773 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
18774 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
18775 the network setup changes.</p>
18776
18777 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
18778 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
18779 draft</a> and a
18780 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
18781 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
18782
18783       </div>
18784       <div class="tags">
18785
18786
18787         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18788
18789
18790       </div>
18791     </div>
18792     <div class="padding"></div>
18793
18794     <div class="entry">
18795       <div class="title">
18796         <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>
18797       </div>
18798       <div class="date">
18799          5th February 2012
18800       </div>
18801       <div class="body">
18802         <p>Since the Lenny version of
18803 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
18804 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
18805 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
18806 in the morning.  This is done using the
18807 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
18808
18809 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
18810 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
18811 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
18812 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
18813 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
18814 the
18815 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
18816 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
18817 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
18818 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
18819 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
18820
18821 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
18822 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
18823 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
18824 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
18825 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
18826 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
18827 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
18828
18829 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
18830 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
18831 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
18832 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
18833 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
18834
18835       </div>
18836       <div class="tags">
18837
18838
18839         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18840
18841
18842       </div>
18843     </div>
18844     <div class="padding"></div>
18845
18846     <div class="entry">
18847       <div class="title">
18848         <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>
18849       </div>
18850       <div class="date">
18851          4th February 2012
18852       </div>
18853       <div class="body">
18854         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
18855 publish the third beta version of
18856 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
18857 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
18858 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
18859 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
18860 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
18861 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
18862 on the project announcement list.</p>
18863
18864 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
18865 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
18866
18867 <ul>
18868
18869 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
18870   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
18871   the installation.</li>
18872
18873 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
18874   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
18875
18876 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
18877   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
18878   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
18879
18880 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
18881   for the local system administrator is created during installation
18882   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
18883   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
18884   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
18885   up to date on the system.</li>
18886
18887 </ul>
18888
18889 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
18890 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
18891 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
18892 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
18893
18894 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
18895 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
18896 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
18897 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
18898 will see you there?</p>
18899
18900       </div>
18901       <div class="tags">
18902
18903
18904         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18905
18906
18907       </div>
18908     </div>
18909     <div class="padding"></div>
18910
18911     <div class="entry">
18912       <div class="title">
18913         <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>
18914       </div>
18915       <div class="date">
18916         27th January 2012
18917       </div>
18918       <div class="body">
18919         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
18920 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
18921 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
18922 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
18923 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
18924 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
18925 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
18926
18927 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
18928 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
18929 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
18930 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
18931 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
18932 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
18933 not taken care of by this.</p>
18934
18935 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
18936 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
18937 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
18938 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
18939 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
18940 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
18941 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
18942 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
18943 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
18944 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
18945 firmware packages.</p>
18946
18947 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
18948 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
18949 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
18950 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
18951 initrd with extra firmware, the
18952 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
18953 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
18954 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
18955
18956 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
18957 network cards working.  For this,
18958 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
18959 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
18960 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
18961
18962 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
18963 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
18964 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
18965
18966 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
18967 try.</p>
18968
18969       </div>
18970       <div class="tags">
18971
18972
18973         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18974
18975
18976       </div>
18977     </div>
18978     <div class="padding"></div>
18979
18980     <div class="entry">
18981       <div class="title">
18982         <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>
18983       </div>
18984       <div class="date">
18985         25th January 2012
18986       </div>
18987       <div class="body">
18988         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
18989 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
18990 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
18991 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
18992 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
18993
18994 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
18995 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
18996 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
18997 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
18998 this is done, log on to the central server and run
18999 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
19000 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
19001 will look similar to this:</p>
19002
19003 <p><blockquote><pre>
19004 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
19005 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
19006 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.
19007
19008 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
19009
19010 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19011 enter password: *******
19012 %
19013 </pre></blockquote></p>
19014
19015 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
19016 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
19017 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
19018 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
19019 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
19020 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
19021 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
19022 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
19023 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
19024 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
19025 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
19026 automatically.</p>
19027
19028 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
19029 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
19030
19031 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
19032 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
19033 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
19034
19035       </div>
19036       <div class="tags">
19037
19038
19039         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
19040
19041
19042       </div>
19043     </div>
19044     <div class="padding"></div>
19045
19046     <div class="entry">
19047       <div class="title">
19048         <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>
19049       </div>
19050       <div class="date">
19051         10th January 2012
19052       </div>
19053       <div class="body">
19054         <p>In the Squeeze version of
19055 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
19056 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
19057 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
19058 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
19059 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
19060 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
19061 first time.</p>
19062
19063 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
19064 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
19065 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
19066 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
19067
19068 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
19069 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
19070 new setting.</p>
19071
19072 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
19073 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
19074 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
19075
19076       </div>
19077       <div class="tags">
19078
19079
19080         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
19081
19082
19083       </div>
19084     </div>
19085     <div class="padding"></div>
19086
19087     <div class="entry">
19088       <div class="title">
19089         <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>
19090       </div>
19091       <div class="date">
19092          7th January 2012
19093       </div>
19094       <div class="body">
19095         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
19096 the second beta version of
19097 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
19098 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
19099 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
19100 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
19101 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
19102 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
19103 on the project announcement list.</p>
19104
19105       </div>
19106       <div class="tags">
19107
19108
19109         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19110
19111
19112       </div>
19113     </div>
19114     <div class="padding"></div>
19115
19116     <div class="entry">
19117       <div class="title">
19118         <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>
19119       </div>
19120       <div class="date">
19121          3rd January 2012
19122       </div>
19123       <div class="body">
19124         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
19125 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
19126 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
19127 interesting.</p>
19128
19129 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
19130 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
19131 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
19132 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
19133 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
19134 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
19135 wrap up its tasks.</p>
19136
19137 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
19138 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
19139 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
19140 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
19141 because I was typing.</P>
19142
19143 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
19144 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
19145 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
19146 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
19147 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
19148 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
19149 generate entropy.</p>
19150
19151 <p>The fix is in
19152 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
19153 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
19154 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
19155 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
19156
19157       </div>
19158       <div class="tags">
19159
19160
19161         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19162
19163
19164       </div>
19165     </div>
19166     <div class="padding"></div>
19167
19168     <div class="entry">
19169       <div class="title">
19170         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
19171       </div>
19172       <div class="date">
19173         21st November 2011
19174       </div>
19175       <div class="body">
19176         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
19177 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
19178 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
19179 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
19180 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
19181 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
19182 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
19183 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
19184 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
19185 the tools to do so.</p>
19186
19187 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
19188 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
19189 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
19190 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
19191
19192 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
19193 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
19194 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
19195 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
19196 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
19197 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
19198 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
19199 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
19200
19201 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
19202 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
19203 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
19204
19205 <p><pre>
19206 #!/usr/bin/perl
19207 use strict;
19208 use warnings;
19209 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
19210 BEGIN {
19211     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
19212     my %rhelmodules = (
19213         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
19214         );
19215     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
19216         eval "use $module;";
19217         if ($@) {
19218             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
19219             system("yum install -y $pkg");
19220             eval "use $module;";
19221         }
19222     }
19223 }
19224 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
19225
19226 upgrade_dell();
19227
19228 exit 0;
19229
19230 sub run_firmware_script {
19231     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
19232     unless ($script) {
19233         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
19234         exit 1
19235     }
19236     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
19237
19238     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
19239         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
19240     } else {
19241         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
19242     }
19243 }
19244
19245 sub run_firmware_scripts {
19246     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
19247     # Run firmware packages
19248     for my $dir (@dirs) {
19249         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
19250         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
19251         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
19252             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
19253             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
19254         }
19255         closedir $dh;
19256     }
19257 }
19258
19259 sub download {
19260     my $url = shift;
19261     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
19262     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
19263 }
19264
19265 sub upgrade_dell {
19266     my @dirs;
19267     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
19268     chomp $product;
19269
19270     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
19271
19272         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
19273         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
19274
19275         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
19276             CLEANUP => 1
19277             );
19278         chdir($tmpdir);
19279         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
19280         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
19281         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
19282         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
19283         my $fwopts = "-q";
19284         if (@paths) {
19285             for my $url (@paths) {
19286                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
19287             }
19288             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
19289         } else {
19290             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
19291             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
19292         }
19293         chdir('/');
19294     } else {
19295         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
19296         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
19297     }
19298 }
19299
19300 sub fetch_dell_fw {
19301     my $path = shift;
19302     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
19303     download($url);
19304 }
19305
19306 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
19307 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
19308 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
19309 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
19310     my $filename = shift;
19311
19312     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
19313     chomp $product;
19314     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
19315
19316     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
19317
19318     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
19319     my @paths;
19320     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
19321         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
19322         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
19323         my $oscode;
19324         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
19325             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
19326         } else {
19327             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
19328         }
19329         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
19330         {
19331             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
19332         }
19333     }
19334     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
19335         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
19336
19337         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
19338         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
19339
19340         my $cpath = $component->{path};
19341         for my $path (@paths) {
19342             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
19343                 push(@paths, $cpath);
19344             }
19345         }
19346     }
19347     return @paths;
19348 }
19349 </pre>
19350
19351 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
19352 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
19353 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
19354 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
19355 outdated.</p>
19356
19357       </div>
19358       <div class="tags">
19359
19360
19361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19362
19363
19364       </div>
19365     </div>
19366     <div class="padding"></div>
19367
19368     <div class="entry">
19369       <div class="title">
19370         <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>
19371       </div>
19372       <div class="date">
19373          7th October 2011
19374       </div>
19375       <div class="body">
19376         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
19377 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
19378 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
19379 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
19380 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
19381 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
19382 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
19383 models.</p>
19384
19385 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
19386 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
19387 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
19388 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
19389
19390 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
19391 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
19392 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
19393 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
19394 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
19395 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
19396 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
19397 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
19398 distributed.</p>
19399
19400 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
19401
19402 <ul>
19403
19404 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
19405   other relevant equipment.</li>
19406
19407 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
19408
19409 </ul>
19410
19411 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
19412 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
19413 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
19414 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
19415 books available.</p>
19416
19417 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
19418 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
19419 libraries. :)</p>
19420
19421       </div>
19422       <div class="tags">
19423
19424
19425         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>.
19426
19427
19428       </div>
19429     </div>
19430     <div class="padding"></div>
19431
19432     <div class="entry">
19433       <div class="title">
19434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
19435       </div>
19436       <div class="date">
19437         17th September 2011
19438       </div>
19439       <div class="body">
19440         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
19441 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
19442 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
19443 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
19444 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
19445 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
19446 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
19447 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
19448
19449 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
19450
19451 <blockquote><pre>
19452 #!/bin/sh
19453 # apt-get install lsdvd
19454 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
19455 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
19456 </pre></blockquote>
19457
19458 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
19459 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
19460 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
19461 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
19462
19463 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
19464 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
19465 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
19466 back as an ISO.
19467
19468 <blockquote><pre>
19469 #!/bin/sh
19470 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
19471 set -e
19472 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
19473 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
19474 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
19475 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
19476 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
19477 </pre></blockquote>
19478
19479 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
19480
19481 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
19482 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
19483 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
19484 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
19485 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
19486
19487 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
19488 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
19489 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
19490 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
19491 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
19492 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
19493
19494       </div>
19495       <div class="tags">
19496
19497
19498         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>.
19499
19500
19501       </div>
19502     </div>
19503     <div class="padding"></div>
19504
19505     <div class="entry">
19506       <div class="title">
19507         <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>
19508       </div>
19509       <div class="date">
19510          4th August 2011
19511       </div>
19512       <div class="body">
19513         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
19514 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
19515 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
19516 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
19517 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
19518 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
19519 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
19520 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
19521 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
19522
19523 <p><blockquote>
19524 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
19525 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
19526 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
19527 </blockquote></p>
19528
19529 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
19530 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
19531 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
19532 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
19533 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
19534 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
19535 hard to explain.</p>
19536
19537 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
19538 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
19539 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
19540 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
19541 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
19542 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
19543 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
19544 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
19545 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
19546 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
19547 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
19548 mode).</p>
19549
19550 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
19551 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
19552 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
19553 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
19554 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
19555 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
19556 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
19557 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
19558 after visiting single user mode.</p>
19559
19560 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
19561 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
19562 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
19563 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
19564 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
19565 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
19566 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
19567 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
19568
19569 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
19570 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
19571 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
19572
19573       </div>
19574       <div class="tags">
19575
19576
19577         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>.
19578
19579
19580       </div>
19581     </div>
19582     <div class="padding"></div>
19583
19584     <div class="entry">
19585       <div class="title">
19586         <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>
19587       </div>
19588       <div class="date">
19589         30th July 2011
19590       </div>
19591       <div class="body">
19592         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
19593 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
19594 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
19595 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
19596 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
19597 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
19598 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
19599 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
19600 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
19601 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
19602 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
19603 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
19604 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
19605
19606 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
19607 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
19608 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
19609 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
19610 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
19611 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
19612 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
19613 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
19614 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
19615
19616 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
19617 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
19618 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
19619 is presented.</p>
19620
19621 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
19622 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
19623 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
19624 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
19625 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
19626 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
19627 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
19628 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
19629 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
19630 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
19631 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
19632 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
19633 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
19634 find time to push this forward.</p>
19635
19636       </div>
19637       <div class="tags">
19638
19639
19640         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>.
19641
19642
19643       </div>
19644     </div>
19645     <div class="padding"></div>
19646
19647     <div class="entry">
19648       <div class="title">
19649         <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>
19650       </div>
19651       <div class="date">
19652         29th July 2011
19653       </div>
19654       <div class="body">
19655         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
19656 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
19657 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
19658 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
19659 issues.</p>
19660
19661 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
19662 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
19663 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
19664
19665 <ol>
19666
19667 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
19668 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
19669 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
19670 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
19671 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
19672 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
19673 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
19674 Debian.</li>
19675
19676 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
19677 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
19678 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
19679 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
19680 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
19681 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
19682 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
19683 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
19684 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
19685 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
19686 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
19687 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
19688 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
19689
19690 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
19691 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
19692 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
19693 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
19694 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
19695 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
19696 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
19697 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
19698 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
19699 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
19700
19701 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
19702 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
19703 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
19704 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
19705 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
19706 latter behaviour.</li>
19707
19708 </ol>
19709
19710 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
19711 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
19712 it do not matter much.</p>
19713
19714 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
19715 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
19716 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
19717
19718       </div>
19719       <div class="tags">
19720
19721
19722         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19723
19724
19725       </div>
19726     </div>
19727     <div class="padding"></div>
19728
19729     <div class="entry">
19730       <div class="title">
19731         <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>
19732       </div>
19733       <div class="date">
19734         26th July 2011
19735       </div>
19736       <div class="body">
19737         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
19738 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
19739 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
19740 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
19741 security support for a few years.</p>
19742
19743 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
19744 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
19745 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
19746 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
19747 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
19748 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
19749 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
19750 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
19751 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
19752 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
19753 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
19754 easier in the future.</p>
19755
19756 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
19757 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
19758 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
19759 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
19760 do not have time for.</p>
19761
19762       </div>
19763       <div class="tags">
19764
19765
19766         Tags: <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>.
19767
19768
19769       </div>
19770     </div>
19771     <div class="padding"></div>
19772
19773     <div class="entry">
19774       <div class="title">
19775         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
19776       </div>
19777       <div class="date">
19778         20th June 2011
19779       </div>
19780       <div class="body">
19781         <p>Reading
19782 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
19783 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
19784 parts of the
19785 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
19786 and
19787 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
19788 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
19789 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
19790 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
19791
19792       </div>
19793       <div class="tags">
19794
19795
19796         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>.
19797
19798
19799       </div>
19800     </div>
19801     <div class="padding"></div>
19802
19803     <div class="entry">
19804       <div class="title">
19805         <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>
19806       </div>
19807       <div class="date">
19808         30th April 2011
19809       </div>
19810       <div class="body">
19811         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
19812 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
19813 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
19814 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
19815 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
19816 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
19817 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
19818 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
19819 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
19820 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
19821
19822 <p>Where is it?  Visit
19823 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
19824 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
19825 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
19826 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
19827
19828       </div>
19829       <div class="tags">
19830
19831
19832         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>.
19833
19834
19835       </div>
19836     </div>
19837     <div class="padding"></div>
19838
19839     <div class="entry">
19840       <div class="title">
19841         <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>
19842       </div>
19843       <div class="date">
19844         29th April 2011
19845       </div>
19846       <div class="body">
19847         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
19848 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
19849 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
19850 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
19851 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
19852 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
19853 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
19854 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
19855 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
19856 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
19857 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
19858 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
19859 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
19860
19861 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
19862 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
19863 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
19864 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
19865 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
19866 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
19867 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
19868 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
19869 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
19870 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
19871 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
19872 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
19873 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
19874
19875 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
19876 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
19877 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
19878 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
19879 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
19880 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
19881 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
19882 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
19883 it.</p>
19884
19885 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
19886 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
19887 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
19888 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
19889 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
19890 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
19891 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
19892
19893 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
19894 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
19895 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
19896 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
19897 and range= options.</p>
19898
19899 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
19900 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
19901 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
19902 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
19903 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
19904 to best handle this.  I've noticed
19905 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
19906 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
19907 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
19908 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
19909
19910 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
19911 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
19912 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
19913 discussions instead of only
19914 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
19915 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
19916 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
19917 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
19918 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
19919 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
19920
19921       </div>
19922       <div class="tags">
19923
19924
19925         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>.
19926
19927
19928       </div>
19929     </div>
19930     <div class="padding"></div>
19931
19932     <div class="entry">
19933       <div class="title">
19934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
19935       </div>
19936       <div class="date">
19937          6th April 2011
19938       </div>
19939       <div class="body">
19940         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
19941 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
19942 A few days ago the project
19943 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
19944 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
19945 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
19946 into Gnash.</p>
19947
19948       </div>
19949       <div class="tags">
19950
19951
19952         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>.
19953
19954
19955       </div>
19956     </div>
19957     <div class="padding"></div>
19958
19959     <div class="entry">
19960       <div class="title">
19961         <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>
19962       </div>
19963       <div class="date">
19964          3rd April 2011
19965       </div>
19966       <div class="body">
19967         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
19968 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
19969 update in English.</p>
19970
19971 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
19972 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
19973 of the British service
19974 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
19975 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
19976 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
19977 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
19978 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
19979 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
19980 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
19981 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
19982 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
19983 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
19984 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
19985 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
19986 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
19987
19988 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
19989 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
19990 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
19991 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
19992 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
19993 public infrastructure.</p>
19994
19995 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
19996 such service?</p>
19997
19998       </div>
19999       <div class="tags">
20000
20001
20002         Tags: <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>.
20003
20004
20005       </div>
20006     </div>
20007     <div class="padding"></div>
20008
20009     <div class="entry">
20010       <div class="title">
20011         <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>
20012       </div>
20013       <div class="date">
20014         28th January 2011
20015       </div>
20016       <div class="body">
20017         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
20018 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
20019 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
20020 available on the Internet, and check our locally
20021 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
20022 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
20023 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
20024 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
20025 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
20026 out which security holes were present in our free software
20027 collection.</p>
20028
20029 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
20030 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
20031 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
20032 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
20033 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
20034 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
20035 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
20036 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
20037 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
20038 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
20039 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
20040 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
20041 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
20042 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
20043 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
20044 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
20045
20046 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
20047 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
20048 check out, one could look up
20049 <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
20050 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
20051 The most recent one is
20052 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
20053 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
20054 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
20055
20056 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
20057 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
20058 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
20059 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
20060 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
20061 security issues out.</p>
20062
20063 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
20064 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
20065 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
20066 RHEL is providing
20067 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
20068 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
20069 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
20070
20071 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
20072 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
20073 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
20074 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
20075 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
20076 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
20077 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
20078 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
20079 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
20080 established soon.</p>
20081
20082 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
20083 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
20084 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
20085 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
20086 for their packages.</p>
20087
20088       </div>
20089       <div class="tags">
20090
20091
20092         Tags: <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>.
20093
20094
20095       </div>
20096     </div>
20097     <div class="padding"></div>
20098
20099     <div class="entry">
20100       <div class="title">
20101         <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>
20102       </div>
20103       <div class="date">
20104         23rd January 2011
20105       </div>
20106       <div class="body">
20107         <p>In the
20108 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
20109 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
20110 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
20111 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
20112 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
20113 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
20114 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
20115 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
20116 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
20117 one of my machines like this:</p>
20118
20119 <pre>
20120 loaded modules:
20121 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
20122 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
20123 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
20124 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
20125 10de:03ec pata_amd
20126 10de:03f6 sata_nv
20127 1022:1103 k8temp
20128 109e:036e bttv
20129 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
20130 11ab:4364 sky2
20131 </pre>
20132
20133 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
20134 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
20135
20136 <pre>
20137 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
20138     echo loaded pci modules:
20139     (
20140         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
20141         for address in * ; do
20142             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
20143                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
20144                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
20145                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
20146                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
20147                     echo "$id $module"
20148                 fi
20149             fi
20150         done
20151     )
20152     echo
20153 fi
20154 </pre>
20155
20156 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
20157 mappings:</p>
20158
20159 <pre>
20160 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
20161     echo loaded usb modules:
20162     (
20163         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
20164         for address in * ; do
20165             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
20166                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
20167                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
20168                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
20169                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
20170                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
20171                         echo "$id $module"
20172                     fi
20173                 fi
20174             fi
20175         done
20176     )
20177     echo
20178 fi
20179 </pre>
20180
20181 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
20182 well.</p>
20183
20184       </div>
20185       <div class="tags">
20186
20187
20188         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20189
20190
20191       </div>
20192     </div>
20193     <div class="padding"></div>
20194
20195     <div class="entry">
20196       <div class="title">
20197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
20198       </div>
20199       <div class="date">
20200         16th January 2011
20201       </div>
20202       <div class="body">
20203         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
20204 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
20205 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
20206 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
20207 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
20208 the Wikipedia article on
20209 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
20210 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
20211 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
20212 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
20213 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
20214 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
20215 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
20216 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
20217 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
20218 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
20219 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
20220 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
20221
20222 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
20223 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
20224 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
20225 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
20226 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
20227 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
20228 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
20229 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
20230 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
20231 from last week</a>.</p>
20232
20233 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
20234 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
20235 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
20236 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
20237 was without royalties and license terms, check out
20238 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
20239 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
20240
20241 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
20242 available from
20243 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
20244 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
20245 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
20246
20247 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
20248 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
20249 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
20250 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
20251
20252       </div>
20253       <div class="tags">
20254
20255
20256         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20257
20258
20259       </div>
20260     </div>
20261     <div class="padding"></div>
20262
20263     <div class="entry">
20264       <div class="title">
20265         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
20266       </div>
20267       <div class="date">
20268         12th January 2011
20269       </div>
20270       <div class="body">
20271         <p>Today I discovered
20272 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
20273 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
20274 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
20275 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
20276 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
20277 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
20278 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
20279 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
20280 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
20281 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
20282 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
20283 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
20284 on the Google announcement is available from
20285 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
20286 A good read. :)</p>
20287
20288 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
20289 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
20290 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
20291 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
20292 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
20293 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
20294 browsers support H.264, and others support
20295 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
20296 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
20297 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
20298 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
20299 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
20300 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
20301 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
20302 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
20303
20304 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
20305 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
20306 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
20307 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
20308 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
20309 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
20310 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
20311
20312 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
20313 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
20314 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
20315 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
20316 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
20317 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
20318 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
20319
20320 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
20321 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
20322 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
20323 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
20324 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
20325 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
20326 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
20327
20328 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
20329 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
20330 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
20331 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
20332 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
20333 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
20334 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
20335 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
20336 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
20337 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
20338 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
20339 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
20340 I guess time will tell.</p>
20341
20342 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
20343 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
20344 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
20345
20346       </div>
20347       <div class="tags">
20348
20349
20350         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20351
20352
20353       </div>
20354     </div>
20355     <div class="padding"></div>
20356
20357     <div class="entry">
20358       <div class="title">
20359         <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>
20360       </div>
20361       <div class="date">
20362         30th December 2010
20363       </div>
20364       <div class="body">
20365         <p>After trying to
20366 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
20367 Ogg Theora</a> to
20368 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
20369 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
20370 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
20371 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
20372 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
20373 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
20374 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
20375
20376 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
20377 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
20378 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
20379 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
20380 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
20381 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
20382 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
20383
20384 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
20385 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
20386
20387       </div>
20388       <div class="tags">
20389
20390
20391         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>.
20392
20393
20394       </div>
20395     </div>
20396     <div class="padding"></div>
20397
20398     <div class="entry">
20399       <div class="title">
20400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
20401       </div>
20402       <div class="date">
20403         27th December 2010
20404       </div>
20405       <div class="body">
20406         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
20407 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
20408 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
20409 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
20410 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
20411 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
20412 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
20413 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
20414
20415 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
20416 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
20417 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
20418 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
20419 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
20420 page</a>.</p>
20421
20422 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
20423 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
20424 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
20425 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
20426 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
20427 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
20428 specification on equal terms.</p>
20429
20430 <blockquote>
20431
20432 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
20433 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
20434 open standard:</p>
20435
20436 <ul>
20437
20438 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
20439 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
20440 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
20441 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
20442
20443 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
20444 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
20445 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
20446 nominal fee.</li>
20447
20448 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
20449 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
20450 free basis.</li>
20451
20452 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
20453
20454 </ul>
20455 </blockquote>
20456
20457 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
20458 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
20459 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
20460 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
20461 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
20462 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
20463 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
20464
20465 <blockquote>
20466
20467 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
20468
20469 <ol>
20470
20471 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
20472 tilgængelig.</li>
20473
20474 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
20475 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
20476
20477 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
20478 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
20479
20480 </ol>
20481
20482 </blockquote>
20483
20484 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
20485 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
20486
20487 <blockquote>
20488
20489 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
20490
20491 <ol>
20492
20493 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
20494 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
20495
20496 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
20497 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
20498 Standard themselves;</li>
20499
20500 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
20501 any party or in any business model;</li>
20502
20503 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
20504 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
20505 parties;</li>
20506
20507 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
20508 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
20509 parties.</li>
20510
20511 </ol>
20512
20513 </blockquote>
20514
20515 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
20516 its
20517 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
20518 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
20519
20520 <blockquote>
20521 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
20522
20523 <ul>
20524
20525 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
20526   democratic:
20527
20528          <ul>
20529
20530          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
20531             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
20532             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
20533             and managed.</li>
20534
20535          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
20536             method, can be changed through input from all
20537             participants.</li>
20538
20539          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
20540             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
20541
20542          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
20543             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
20544
20545          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
20546             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
20547             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
20548
20549          </ul>
20550
20551 </li>
20552
20553 </ul>
20554
20555 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
20556 <ul>
20557
20558 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
20559   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
20560   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
20561   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
20562   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
20563
20564 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
20565   a technical or economic barriers</li>
20566
20567 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
20568   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
20569   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
20570   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
20571   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
20572   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
20573   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
20574   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
20575   intended to function.</li>
20576
20577 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
20578   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
20579   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
20580
20581 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
20582   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
20583   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
20584   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
20585   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
20586   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
20587   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
20588   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
20589
20590       <ul>
20591
20592       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
20593         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
20594         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
20595
20596       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
20597         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
20598         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
20599         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
20600
20601       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
20602         licensor</li>
20603
20604       </ul>
20605 </li>
20606
20607 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
20608   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
20609   or restricted licensing terms</li>
20610
20611 </ul>
20612
20613 </blockquote>
20614
20615 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
20616 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
20617 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
20618 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
20619 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
20620 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
20621 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
20622 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
20623 Standards.</p>
20624
20625       </div>
20626       <div class="tags">
20627
20628
20629         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>.
20630
20631
20632       </div>
20633     </div>
20634     <div class="padding"></div>
20635
20636     <div class="entry">
20637       <div class="title">
20638         <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>
20639       </div>
20640       <div class="date">
20641         25th December 2010
20642       </div>
20643       <div class="body">
20644         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
20645 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
20646
20647 <blockquote>
20648
20649 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
20650 as follows:</p>
20651
20652 <ol>
20653
20654 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
20655 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
20656 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
20657
20658 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
20659 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
20660 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
20661 parties.</li>
20662
20663 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
20664 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
20665 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
20666
20667 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
20668 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
20669
20670 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
20671
20672 </ol>
20673
20674 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
20675 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
20676 products based on the standard.</p>
20677 </blockquote>
20678
20679 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
20680 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
20681 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
20682 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
20683 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
20684 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
20685 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
20686 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
20687
20688 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
20689
20690 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
20691 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
20692 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
20693 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
20694 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
20695 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
20696 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
20697 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
20698 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
20699 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
20700 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
20701 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
20702 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
20703 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
20704
20705 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
20706
20707 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
20708 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
20709 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
20710 documentation indicating this.</p>
20711
20712 <p>According to
20713 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
20714 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
20715 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
20716 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
20717 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
20718 report is correct.</p>
20719
20720 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
20721
20722 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
20723 container format</a> and both the
20724 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
20725 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
20726 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
20727
20728 <blockquote>
20729
20730 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
20731 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
20732 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
20733 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
20734 specification compliance.
20735
20736 </blockquote>
20737
20738 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
20739 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
20740 this is the term:<p>
20741
20742 <blockquote>
20743
20744 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
20745 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
20746 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
20747 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
20748 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
20749 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
20750 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
20751 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
20752 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
20753 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
20754 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
20755 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
20756
20757 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
20758 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
20759 </blockquote>
20760
20761 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
20762 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
20763 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
20764 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
20765 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
20766
20767 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
20768
20769 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
20770 Theora format.
20771 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
20772 and
20773 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
20774 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
20775 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
20776 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
20777 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
20778 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
20779 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
20780 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
20781
20782 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
20783
20784 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
20785
20786 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
20787
20788 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
20789 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
20790 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
20791 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
20792 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
20793 this.</p>
20794
20795 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
20796 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
20797
20798       </div>
20799       <div class="tags">
20800
20801
20802         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20803
20804
20805       </div>
20806     </div>
20807     <div class="padding"></div>
20808
20809     <div class="entry">
20810       <div class="title">
20811         <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>
20812       </div>
20813       <div class="date">
20814         25th December 2010
20815       </div>
20816       <div class="body">
20817         <p>A few days ago
20818 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
20819 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
20820 2.0 of
20821 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
20822 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
20823 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
20824 Nothing very surprising there, given
20825 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
20826 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
20827 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
20828 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
20829 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
20830 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
20831 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
20832 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
20833 standard definition from its content.</p>
20834
20835 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
20836 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
20837 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
20838 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
20839 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
20840 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
20841 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
20842 background information about that story is available in
20843 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
20844 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
20845
20846 <blockquote>
20847 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
20848 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
20849 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
20850
20851 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
20852
20853 <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>
20854
20855 <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>
20856
20857 <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>
20858
20859 <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>
20860
20861 <p>
20862 <ul>
20863 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
20864 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
20865 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
20866 </ul>
20867 </p>
20868
20869 <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>
20870
20871 <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>
20872
20873 <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>
20874
20875 <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>
20876
20877 <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>
20878
20879
20880 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
20881 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
20882 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
20883 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
20884 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
20885 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
20886
20887 </p>
20888
20889 <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>
20890
20891 <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>
20892
20893 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
20894
20895 <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>
20896
20897 <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>
20898
20899 <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>
20900
20901 <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>
20902
20903 <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>
20904
20905 <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>
20906
20907 <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>
20908
20909 <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>
20910
20911 <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>
20912
20913 <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>
20914
20915 <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>
20916
20917 <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>
20918
20919 <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>
20920
20921 <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>
20922
20923 <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>
20924
20925 <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>
20926
20927 <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>
20928
20929 <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>
20930
20931 <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>
20932
20933 <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>
20934
20935 <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>
20936
20937 <p>On security:</p>
20938
20939 <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>
20940
20941 <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>
20942
20943 <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>
20944
20945 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
20946
20947 <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>
20948
20949 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
20950
20951 <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>
20952
20953 <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>
20954
20955 <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>
20956
20957 <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>
20958
20959 <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>
20960
20961 <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>
20962
20963 <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>
20964
20965 <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>
20966
20967 <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>
20968
20969 <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>
20970
20971 <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>
20972
20973 <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>
20974
20975 <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>
20976
20977 <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>
20978
20979 <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>
20980
20981 <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>
20982
20983 <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>
20984
20985 <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>
20986
20987 <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>
20988
20989 <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>
20990
20991 <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>
20992
20993 <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>
20994
20995 <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>
20996
20997 <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>
20998
20999 <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>
21000
21001 <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>
21002
21003 <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>
21004
21005 <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>
21006
21007 <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>
21008
21009 <p>Cordially,<br>
21010 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
21011 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
21012 </blockquote>
21013
21014       </div>
21015       <div class="tags">
21016
21017
21018         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>.
21019
21020
21021       </div>
21022     </div>
21023     <div class="padding"></div>
21024
21025     <div class="entry">
21026       <div class="title">
21027         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
21028       </div>
21029       <div class="date">
21030         25th December 2010
21031       </div>
21032       <div class="body">
21033         <p>Half a year ago I
21034 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
21035 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
21036 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
21037 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
21038
21039 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
21040 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
21041 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
21042 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
21043 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
21044 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
21045 got such a great test tool available.</p>
21046
21047       </div>
21048       <div class="tags">
21049
21050
21051         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>.
21052
21053
21054       </div>
21055     </div>
21056     <div class="padding"></div>
21057
21058     <div class="entry">
21059       <div class="title">
21060         <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>
21061       </div>
21062       <div class="date">
21063         22nd December 2010
21064       </div>
21065       <div class="body">
21066         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
21067 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
21068 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
21069 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
21070 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
21071 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
21072 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
21073 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
21074 university.</p>
21075
21076 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
21077 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
21078 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
21079 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
21080 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
21081 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
21082 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
21083 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
21084
21085 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
21086 I perform on a new model.</p>
21087
21088 <ul>
21089
21090 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
21091 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
21092 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
21093
21094 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
21095 installation, X.org is working.</li>
21096
21097 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
21098 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
21099 reported by the program.</li>
21100
21101 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
21102 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
21103 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
21104 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
21105 normally test this by playing
21106 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
21107 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
21108
21109 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
21110 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
21111
21112 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
21113 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
21114
21115 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
21116 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
21117
21118 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
21119 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
21120 few.</li>
21121
21122 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
21123 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
21124 notice this.</li>
21125
21126 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
21127 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
21128 resume.</li>
21129
21130 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
21131 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
21132 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
21133 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
21134 not.</li>
21135
21136 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
21137 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
21138 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
21139 existence.</li>
21140
21141 </ul>
21142
21143 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
21144 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
21145 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
21146 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
21147 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
21148 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
21149 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
21150 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
21151
21152       </div>
21153       <div class="tags">
21154
21155
21156         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>.
21157
21158
21159       </div>
21160     </div>
21161     <div class="padding"></div>
21162
21163     <div class="entry">
21164       <div class="title">
21165         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
21166       </div>
21167       <div class="date">
21168         11th December 2010
21169       </div>
21170       <div class="body">
21171         <p>As I continue to explore
21172 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
21173 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
21174 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
21175
21176 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
21177 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
21178 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
21179 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
21180 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
21181 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
21182 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
21183 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
21184 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
21185 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
21186 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
21187 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
21188 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
21189 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
21190 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
21191 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
21192 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
21193 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
21194 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
21195 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
21196
21197 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
21198 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
21199 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
21200 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
21201 If the Skolelinux foundation
21202 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
21203 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
21204 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
21205 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
21206 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
21207 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
21208 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
21209 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
21210
21211 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
21212 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
21213 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
21214 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
21215 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
21216 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
21217 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
21218 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
21219 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
21220 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
21221 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
21222 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
21223 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
21224 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
21225 currencies.</p>
21226
21227 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
21228 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
21229 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
21230 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
21231 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
21232 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
21233 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
21234 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
21235 BitCoins.  Check out
21236 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
21237 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
21238 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
21239 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
21240 yet.</p>
21241
21242 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
21243 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
21244 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
21245 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
21246 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
21247
21248       </div>
21249       <div class="tags">
21250
21251
21252         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>.
21253
21254
21255       </div>
21256     </div>
21257     <div class="padding"></div>
21258
21259     <div class="entry">
21260       <div class="title">
21261         <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>
21262       </div>
21263       <div class="date">
21264         10th December 2010
21265       </div>
21266       <div class="body">
21267         <p>With this weeks lawless
21268 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
21269 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
21270 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
21271 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
21272 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
21273 A blog post from
21274 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
21275 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
21276 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
21277 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
21278 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
21279 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
21280 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
21281
21282 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
21283 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
21284 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
21285 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
21286 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
21287 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
21288 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
21289 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
21290 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
21291 Debian</a> soon.</p>
21292
21293 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
21294 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
21295 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
21296 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
21297 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
21298 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
21299 you can even get
21300 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
21301 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
21302 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
21303 on the current exchange rates.</p>
21304
21305 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
21306 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
21307 donations to the address
21308 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
21309
21310       </div>
21311       <div class="tags">
21312
21313
21314         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>.
21315
21316
21317       </div>
21318     </div>
21319     <div class="padding"></div>
21320
21321     <div class="entry">
21322       <div class="title">
21323         <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>
21324       </div>
21325       <div class="date">
21326          9th December 2010
21327       </div>
21328       <div class="body">
21329         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
21330 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
21331 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
21332 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
21333 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
21334 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
21335 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
21336 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
21337 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
21338 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
21339 operational.</p>
21340
21341 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
21342 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
21343 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
21344 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
21345 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
21346 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
21347 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
21348
21349       </div>
21350       <div class="tags">
21351
21352
21353         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>.
21354
21355
21356       </div>
21357     </div>
21358     <div class="padding"></div>
21359
21360     <div class="entry">
21361       <div class="title">
21362         <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>
21363       </div>
21364       <div class="date">
21365         29th November 2010
21366       </div>
21367       <div class="body">
21368         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
21369 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
21370 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
21371 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
21372 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
21373 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
21374
21375 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
21376 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
21377 will hold its
21378 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
21379 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
21380 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
21381 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
21382 vote this year.</p>
21383
21384       </div>
21385       <div class="tags">
21386
21387
21388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
21389
21390
21391       </div>
21392     </div>
21393     <div class="padding"></div>
21394
21395     <div class="entry">
21396       <div class="title">
21397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
21398       </div>
21399       <div class="date">
21400         27th November 2010
21401       </div>
21402       <div class="body">
21403         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
21404 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
21405 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
21406 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
21407 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
21408 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
21409 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
21410 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
21411
21412 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
21413 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
21414 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
21415 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
21416 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
21417 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
21418 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
21419 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
21420 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
21421 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
21422 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
21423
21424 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
21425 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
21426 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
21427 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
21428 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
21429 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
21430 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
21431 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
21432 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
21433 what is going on.</p>
21434
21435       </div>
21436       <div class="tags">
21437
21438
21439         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>.
21440
21441
21442       </div>
21443     </div>
21444     <div class="padding"></div>
21445
21446     <div class="entry">
21447       <div class="title">
21448         <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>
21449       </div>
21450       <div class="date">
21451         22nd November 2010
21452       </div>
21453       <div class="body">
21454         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
21455 upgrade testing of the
21456 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
21457 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
21458 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
21459 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
21460
21461 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
21462
21463 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
21464
21465 <blockquote><p>
21466   apache2.2-bin
21467   aptdaemon
21468   baobab
21469   binfmt-support
21470   browser-plugin-gnash
21471   cheese-common
21472   cli-common
21473   cups-pk-helper
21474   dmz-cursor-theme
21475   empathy
21476   empathy-common
21477   freedesktop-sound-theme
21478   freeglut3
21479   gconf-defaults-service
21480   gdm-themes
21481   gedit-plugins
21482   geoclue
21483   geoclue-hostip
21484   geoclue-localnet
21485   geoclue-manual
21486   geoclue-yahoo
21487   gnash
21488   gnash-common
21489   gnome
21490   gnome-backgrounds
21491   gnome-cards-data
21492   gnome-codec-install
21493   gnome-core
21494   gnome-desktop-environment
21495   gnome-disk-utility
21496   gnome-screenshot
21497   gnome-search-tool
21498   gnome-session-canberra
21499   gnome-system-log
21500   gnome-themes-extras
21501   gnome-themes-more
21502   gnome-user-share
21503   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
21504   gstreamer0.10-tools
21505   gtk2-engines
21506   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
21507   gtk2-engines-smooth
21508   hamster-applet
21509   libapache2-mod-dnssd
21510   libapr1
21511   libaprutil1
21512   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
21513   libaprutil1-ldap
21514   libart2.0-cil
21515   libboost-date-time1.42.0
21516   libboost-python1.42.0
21517   libboost-thread1.42.0
21518   libchamplain-0.4-0
21519   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
21520   libcheese-gtk18
21521   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
21522   libcryptui0
21523   libdiscid0
21524   libelf1
21525   libepc-1.0-2
21526   libepc-common
21527   libepc-ui-1.0-2
21528   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
21529   libfreerdp0
21530   libgconf2.0-cil
21531   libgdata-common
21532   libgdata7
21533   libgdu-gtk0
21534   libgee2
21535   libgeoclue0
21536   libgexiv2-0
21537   libgif4
21538   libglade2.0-cil
21539   libglib2.0-cil
21540   libgmime2.4-cil
21541   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
21542   libgnome2.24-cil
21543   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
21544   libgpod-common
21545   libgpod4
21546   libgtk2.0-cil
21547   libgtkglext1
21548   libgtksourceview2.0-common
21549   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
21550   libmono-addins0.2-cil
21551   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
21552   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
21553   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
21554   libmono-posix2.0-cil
21555   libmono-security2.0-cil
21556   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
21557   libmono-system2.0-cil
21558   libmtp8
21559   libmusicbrainz3-6
21560   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
21561   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
21562   libopal3.6.8
21563   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
21564   libpt2.6.7
21565   libpython2.6
21566   librpm1
21567   librpmio1
21568   libsdl1.2debian
21569   libsrtp0
21570   libssh-4
21571   libtelepathy-farsight0
21572   libtelepathy-glib0
21573   libtidy-0.99-0
21574   media-player-info
21575   mesa-utils
21576   mono-2.0-gac
21577   mono-gac
21578   mono-runtime
21579   nautilus-sendto
21580   nautilus-sendto-empathy
21581   p7zip-full
21582   pkg-config
21583   python-aptdaemon
21584   python-aptdaemon-gtk
21585   python-axiom
21586   python-beautifulsoup
21587   python-bugbuddy
21588   python-clientform
21589   python-coherence
21590   python-configobj
21591   python-crypto
21592   python-cupshelpers
21593   python-elementtree
21594   python-epsilon
21595   python-evolution
21596   python-feedparser
21597   python-gdata
21598   python-gdbm
21599   python-gst0.10
21600   python-gtkglext1
21601   python-gtksourceview2
21602   python-httplib2
21603   python-louie
21604   python-mako
21605   python-markupsafe
21606   python-mechanize
21607   python-nevow
21608   python-notify
21609   python-opengl
21610   python-openssl
21611   python-pam
21612   python-pkg-resources
21613   python-pyasn1
21614   python-pysqlite2
21615   python-rdflib
21616   python-serial
21617   python-tagpy
21618   python-twisted-bin
21619   python-twisted-conch
21620   python-twisted-core
21621   python-twisted-web
21622   python-utidylib
21623   python-webkit
21624   python-xdg
21625   python-zope.interface
21626   remmina
21627   remmina-plugin-data
21628   remmina-plugin-rdp
21629   remmina-plugin-vnc
21630   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
21631   rhythmbox-plugins
21632   rpm-common
21633   rpm2cpio
21634   seahorse-plugins
21635   shotwell
21636   software-center
21637   system-config-printer-udev
21638   telepathy-gabble
21639   telepathy-mission-control-5
21640   telepathy-salut
21641   tomboy
21642   totem
21643   totem-coherence
21644   totem-mozilla
21645   totem-plugins
21646   transmission-common
21647   xdg-user-dirs
21648   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
21649   xserver-xephyr
21650 </p></blockquote>
21651
21652 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
21653
21654 <blockquote><p>
21655   cheese
21656   ekiga
21657   eog
21658   epiphany-extensions
21659   evolution-exchange
21660   fast-user-switch-applet
21661   file-roller
21662   gcalctool
21663   gconf-editor
21664   gdm
21665   gedit
21666   gedit-common
21667   gnome-games
21668   gnome-games-data
21669   gnome-nettool
21670   gnome-system-tools
21671   gnome-themes
21672   gnuchess
21673   gucharmap
21674   guile-1.8-libs
21675   libavahi-ui0
21676   libdmx1
21677   libgalago3
21678   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
21679   libgtksourceview2.0-0
21680   liblircclient0
21681   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
21682   libspeexdsp1
21683   libsvga1
21684   rhythmbox
21685   seahorse
21686   sound-juicer
21687   system-config-printer
21688   totem-common
21689   transmission-gtk
21690   vinagre
21691   vino
21692 </p></blockquote>
21693
21694 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
21695
21696 <blockquote><p>
21697   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
21698 </p></blockquote>
21699
21700 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
21701
21702 <blockquote><p>
21703 [nothing]
21704 </p></blockquote>
21705
21706 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
21707
21708 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
21709
21710 <blockquote><p>
21711   ksmserver
21712 </p></blockquote>
21713
21714 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
21715
21716 <blockquote><p>
21717   kwin
21718   network-manager-kde
21719 </p></blockquote>
21720
21721 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
21722
21723 <blockquote><p>
21724   arts
21725   dolphin
21726   freespacenotifier
21727   google-gadgets-gst
21728   google-gadgets-xul
21729   kappfinder
21730   kcalc
21731   kcharselect
21732   kde-core
21733   kde-plasma-desktop
21734   kde-standard
21735   kde-window-manager
21736   kdeartwork
21737   kdeartwork-emoticons
21738   kdeartwork-style
21739   kdeartwork-theme-icon
21740   kdebase
21741   kdebase-apps
21742   kdebase-workspace
21743   kdebase-workspace-bin
21744   kdebase-workspace-data
21745   kdeeject
21746   kdelibs
21747   kdeplasma-addons
21748   kdeutils
21749   kdewallpapers
21750   kdf
21751   kfloppy
21752   kgpg
21753   khelpcenter4
21754   kinfocenter
21755   konq-plugins-l10n
21756   konqueror-nsplugins
21757   kscreensaver
21758   kscreensaver-xsavers
21759   ktimer
21760   kwrite
21761   libgle3
21762   libkde4-ruby1.8
21763   libkonq5
21764   libkonq5-templates
21765   libnetpbm10
21766   libplasma-ruby
21767   libplasma-ruby1.8
21768   libqt4-ruby1.8
21769   marble-data
21770   marble-plugins
21771   netpbm
21772   nuvola-icon-theme
21773   plasma-dataengines-workspace
21774   plasma-desktop
21775   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
21776   plasma-runners-addons
21777   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
21778   plasma-scriptengine-python
21779   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
21780   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
21781   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
21782   plasma-scriptengines
21783   plasma-wallpapers-addons
21784   plasma-widget-folderview
21785   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
21786   ruby
21787   sweeper
21788   update-notifier-kde
21789   xscreensaver-data-extra
21790   xscreensaver-gl
21791   xscreensaver-gl-extra
21792   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
21793 </p></blockquote>
21794
21795 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
21796
21797 <blockquote><p>
21798   ark
21799   google-gadgets-common
21800   google-gadgets-qt
21801   htdig
21802   kate
21803   kdebase-bin
21804   kdebase-data
21805   kdepasswd
21806   kfind
21807   klipper
21808   konq-plugins
21809   konqueror
21810   ksysguard
21811   ksysguardd
21812   libarchive1
21813   libcln6
21814   libeet1
21815   libeina-svn-06
21816   libggadget-1.0-0b
21817   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
21818   libgps19
21819   libkdecorations4
21820   libkephal4
21821   libkonq4
21822   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
21823   libkscreensaver5
21824   libksgrd4
21825   libksignalplotter4
21826   libkunitconversion4
21827   libkwineffects1a
21828   libmarblewidget4
21829   libntrack-qt4-1
21830   libntrack0
21831   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
21832   libplasmaclock4a
21833   libplasmagenericshell4
21834   libprocesscore4a
21835   libprocessui4a
21836   libqalculate5
21837   libqedje0a
21838   libqtruby4shared2
21839   libqzion0a
21840   libruby1.8
21841   libscim8c2a
21842   libsmokekdecore4-3
21843   libsmokekdeui4-3
21844   libsmokekfile3
21845   libsmokekhtml3
21846   libsmokekio3
21847   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
21848   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
21849   libsmokekparts3
21850   libsmokektexteditor3
21851   libsmokekutils3
21852   libsmokenepomuk3
21853   libsmokephonon3
21854   libsmokeplasma3
21855   libsmokeqtcore4-3
21856   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
21857   libsmokeqtgui4-3
21858   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
21859   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
21860   libsmokeqtscript4-3
21861   libsmokeqtsql4-3
21862   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
21863   libsmokeqttest4-3
21864   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
21865   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
21866   libsmokeqtxml4-3
21867   libsmokesolid3
21868   libsmokesoprano3
21869   libtaskmanager4a
21870   libtidy-0.99-0
21871   libweather-ion4a
21872   libxklavier16
21873   libxxf86misc1
21874   okteta
21875   oxygencursors
21876   plasma-dataengines-addons
21877   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
21878   plasma-widget-lancelot
21879   plasma-widgets-addons
21880   plasma-widgets-workspace
21881   polkit-kde-1
21882   ruby1.8
21883   systemsettings
21884   update-notifier-common
21885 </p></blockquote>
21886
21887 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
21888 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
21889 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
21890 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
21891
21892       </div>
21893       <div class="tags">
21894
21895
21896         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>.
21897
21898
21899       </div>
21900     </div>
21901     <div class="padding"></div>
21902
21903     <div class="entry">
21904       <div class="title">
21905         <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>
21906       </div>
21907       <div class="date">
21908         22nd November 2010
21909       </div>
21910       <div class="body">
21911         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
21912 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
21913 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
21914 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
21915 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
21916 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
21917 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
21918 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
21919 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
21920
21921 <p>I found
21922 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
21923 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
21924 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
21925 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
21926 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
21927 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
21928
21929 <pre>
21930 #!/bin/sh
21931
21932 # Based on
21933 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
21934
21935 set -e
21936 set -x
21937
21938 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
21939     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
21940     exit 1
21941 else
21942     host="$1"
21943 fi
21944
21945 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
21946     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
21947     exit 1
21948 fi
21949
21950 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
21951 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
21952 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
21953 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
21954
21955 img=$host.img
21956 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
21957 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
21958
21959 parted $img mklabel msdos
21960 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
21961 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
21962 parted $img set 1 boot on
21963
21964 modprobe dm-mod
21965 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
21966 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
21967
21968 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
21969 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
21970 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
21971
21972 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
21973 losetup -d /dev/loop0
21974 </pre>
21975
21976 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
21977 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
21978
21979 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
21980 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
21981 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
21982 seem to work just fine.</p>
21983
21984       </div>
21985       <div class="tags">
21986
21987
21988         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>.
21989
21990
21991       </div>
21992     </div>
21993     <div class="padding"></div>
21994
21995     <div class="entry">
21996       <div class="title">
21997         <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>
21998       </div>
21999       <div class="date">
22000         20th November 2010
22001       </div>
22002       <div class="body">
22003         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
22004 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
22005 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
22006 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
22007
22008 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
22009 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
22010 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
22011
22012 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
22013
22014 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
22015
22016 <blockquote><p>
22017   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
22018   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
22019   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
22020   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
22021   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
22022   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
22023   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
22024   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
22025   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
22026   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
22027   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
22028   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
22029   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
22030   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
22031   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
22032   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
22033   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
22034   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
22035   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
22036   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
22037   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
22038   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
22039   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
22040   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
22041   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
22042   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
22043   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
22044   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
22045   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
22046   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
22047   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
22048   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
22049   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
22050   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
22051   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
22052   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
22053   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
22054   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
22055   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
22056   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
22057   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
22058   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
22059   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
22060   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
22061   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
22062   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
22063   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
22064   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
22065   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
22066   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
22067   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
22068   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
22069   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
22070   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
22071   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
22072   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
22073   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
22074   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
22075   zip
22076 </p></blockquote>
22077
22078 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
22079
22080 <blockquote><p>
22081   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
22082   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
22083   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
22084   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
22085   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
22086   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
22087   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
22088   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
22089   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
22090   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
22091   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
22092   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
22093   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
22094   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
22095   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
22096   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
22097   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
22098   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
22099   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
22100   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
22101   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
22102   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
22103   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
22104   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
22105   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
22106   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
22107   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
22108   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
22109   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
22110 </p></blockquote>
22111
22112 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
22113
22114 <blockquote><p>
22115   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
22116 </p></blockquote>
22117
22118 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
22119
22120 <blockquote><p>
22121 [nothing]
22122 </p></blockquote>
22123
22124 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
22125
22126 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
22127
22128 <blockquote><p>
22129   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
22130   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
22131   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
22132   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
22133   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
22134   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
22135   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
22136   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
22137   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
22138   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
22139   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
22140   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
22141   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
22142   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
22143   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
22144   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
22145   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
22146   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
22147   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
22148   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
22149   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
22150   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
22151   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
22152   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
22153   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
22154   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
22155   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
22156   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
22157   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
22158   ttf-sazanami-gothic
22159 </p></blockquote>
22160
22161 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
22162
22163 <blockquote><p>
22164   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
22165   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
22166   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
22167   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
22168   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
22169   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
22170   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
22171   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
22172   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
22173   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
22174   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
22175   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
22176   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
22177   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
22178   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
22179   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
22180   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
22181   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
22182   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
22183   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
22184   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
22185   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
22186   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
22187   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
22188   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
22189   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
22190   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
22191   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
22192   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
22193   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
22194   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
22195   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
22196   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
22197 </p></blockquote>
22198
22199 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
22200
22201 <blockquote><p>
22202   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
22203   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
22204   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
22205   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
22206   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
22207   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
22208   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
22209 </p></blockquote>
22210
22211 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
22212
22213 <blockquote><p>
22214   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
22215 </p></blockquote>
22216
22217       </div>
22218       <div class="tags">
22219
22220
22221         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>.
22222
22223
22224       </div>
22225     </div>
22226     <div class="padding"></div>
22227
22228     <div class="entry">
22229       <div class="title">
22230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
22231       </div>
22232       <div class="date">
22233         20th November 2010
22234       </div>
22235       <div class="body">
22236         <p>Answering
22237 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
22238 call from the Gnash project</a> for
22239 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
22240 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
22241 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
22242 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
22243 releases out more often.</p>
22244
22245 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
22246 I have considered setting up a <a
22247 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
22248 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
22249 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
22250 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
22251 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
22252 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
22253 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
22254 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
22255 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
22256 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
22257 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
22258 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
22259
22260       </div>
22261       <div class="tags">
22262
22263
22264         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>.
22265
22266
22267       </div>
22268     </div>
22269     <div class="padding"></div>
22270
22271     <div class="entry">
22272       <div class="title">
22273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
22274       </div>
22275       <div class="date">
22276          9th November 2010
22277       </div>
22278       <div class="body">
22279         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
22280
22281 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
22282 3D linked in from
22283 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
22284 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
22285
22286       </div>
22287       <div class="tags">
22288
22289
22290         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>.
22291
22292
22293       </div>
22294     </div>
22295     <div class="padding"></div>
22296
22297     <div class="entry">
22298       <div class="title">
22299         <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>
22300       </div>
22301       <div class="date">
22302          7th November 2010
22303       </div>
22304       <div class="body">
22305         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
22306 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
22307 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
22308 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
22309 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
22310 working using this DVD.</p>
22311
22312 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
22313 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
22314 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
22315 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
22316 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
22317 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
22318 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
22319
22320 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
22321 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
22322 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
22323 Debian archive.</p>
22324
22325 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
22326 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
22327 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
22328 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
22329 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
22330 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
22331 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
22332 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
22333 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
22334 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
22335 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
22336 free X driver should work.</p>
22337
22338 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
22339 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
22340 DVD more useful again.</p>
22341
22342       </div>
22343       <div class="tags">
22344
22345
22346         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
22347
22348
22349       </div>
22350     </div>
22351     <div class="padding"></div>
22352
22353     <div class="entry">
22354       <div class="title">
22355         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
22356       </div>
22357       <div class="date">
22358         24th October 2010
22359       </div>
22360       <div class="body">
22361         <p>Some updates.</p>
22362
22363 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
22364 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
22365 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
22366 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
22367 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
22368 :)</p>
22369
22370 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
22371 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
22372 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
22373 It is called
22374 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
22375 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
22376 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
22377 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
22378 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
22379 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
22380
22381 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
22382 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
22383 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
22384 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
22385 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
22386 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
22387 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
22388 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
22389 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
22390 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
22391
22392       </div>
22393       <div class="tags">
22394
22395
22396         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>.
22397
22398
22399       </div>
22400     </div>
22401     <div class="padding"></div>
22402
22403     <div class="entry">
22404       <div class="title">
22405         <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>
22406       </div>
22407       <div class="date">
22408         19th October 2010
22409       </div>
22410       <div class="body">
22411         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
22412 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
22413 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
22414 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
22415 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
22416 AVM2 flash files.</p>
22417
22418 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
22419 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
22420 following text:</P>
22421
22422 <p><blockquote>
22423
22424   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
22425   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
22426
22427   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
22428
22429   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
22430
22431   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
22432   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
22433   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
22434   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
22435   days. The project web page is available from
22436   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
22437   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
22438   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
22439
22440   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
22441   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
22442   to get this to happen.</p>
22443
22444   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
22445   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
22446
22447 </blockquote></p>
22448
22449 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
22450 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
22451 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
22452 :)</p>
22453
22454       </div>
22455       <div class="tags">
22456
22457
22458         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>.
22459
22460
22461       </div>
22462     </div>
22463     <div class="padding"></div>
22464
22465     <div class="entry">
22466       <div class="title">
22467         <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>
22468       </div>
22469       <div class="date">
22470          9th October 2010
22471       </div>
22472       <div class="body">
22473         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
22474 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
22475 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
22476 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
22477 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
22478 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
22479 robots.</p>
22480
22481 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
22482 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
22483 a few less important features too.</p>
22484
22485 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
22486 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
22487 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
22488 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
22489
22490 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
22491 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
22492 source or binary package:</p>
22493
22494 <p><ul>
22495 <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>
22496 <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>
22497 <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>
22498 </ul></p>
22499
22500 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
22501 please let me know.</p>
22502
22503       </div>
22504       <div class="tags">
22505
22506
22507         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>.
22508
22509
22510       </div>
22511     </div>
22512     <div class="padding"></div>
22513
22514     <div class="entry">
22515       <div class="title">
22516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
22517       </div>
22518       <div class="date">
22519          3rd October 2010
22520       </div>
22521       <div class="body">
22522         <p><ul>
22523
22524 <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
22525 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
22526
22527 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
22528 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
22529 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
22530
22531 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
22532 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
22533 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
22534 simple setup.
22535
22536 </ul></p>
22537
22538       </div>
22539       <div class="tags">
22540
22541
22542         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>.
22543
22544
22545       </div>
22546     </div>
22547     <div class="padding"></div>
22548
22549     <div class="entry">
22550       <div class="title">
22551         <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>
22552       </div>
22553       <div class="date">
22554          9th September 2010
22555       </div>
22556       <div class="body">
22557         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
22558 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
22559 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
22560 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
22561 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
22562 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
22563 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
22564 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
22565 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
22566
22567 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
22568 written:</p>
22569
22570 <blockquote>
22571 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
22572 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
22573 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
22574 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
22575 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
22576
22577 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
22578 standard.</p>
22579 </blockquote>
22580
22581 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
22582 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
22583 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
22584 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
22585
22586 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
22587 read
22588 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
22589 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
22590 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
22591 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
22592 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
22593 the issue.  The solution is to support the
22594 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
22595 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
22596 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
22597
22598       </div>
22599       <div class="tags">
22600
22601
22602         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22603
22604
22605       </div>
22606     </div>
22607     <div class="padding"></div>
22608
22609     <div class="entry">
22610       <div class="title">
22611         <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>
22612       </div>
22613       <div class="date">
22614          4th September 2010
22615       </div>
22616       <div class="body">
22617         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
22618 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
22619 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
22620 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
22621 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
22622 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
22623 installed.</p>
22624
22625 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
22626 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
22627 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
22628 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
22629 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
22630 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
22631 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
22632 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
22633 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
22634
22635 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
22636 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
22637 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
22638 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
22639 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
22640 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
22641 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
22642 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
22643 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
22644 pages they want to visit.</p>
22645
22646 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
22647 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
22648 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
22649 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
22650 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
22651 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
22652 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
22653 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
22654 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
22655 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
22656 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
22657
22658       </div>
22659       <div class="tags">
22660
22661
22662         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>.
22663
22664
22665       </div>
22666     </div>
22667     <div class="padding"></div>
22668
22669     <div class="entry">
22670       <div class="title">
22671         <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>
22672       </div>
22673       <div class="date">
22674          1st September 2010
22675       </div>
22676       <div class="body">
22677         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
22678 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
22679 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
22680 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
22681 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
22682 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
22683 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
22684 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
22685 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
22686 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
22687 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
22688 drive around.</p>
22689
22690 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
22691 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
22692
22693 <p><pre>
22694 use Spykee;
22695 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
22696 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
22697 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
22698 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
22699 $spykee->left();
22700 sleep 2;
22701 $spykee->right();
22702 sleep 2;
22703 $spykee->forward();
22704 sleep 2;
22705 $spykee->back();
22706 sleep 2;
22707 $spykee->stop();
22708 </pre></p>
22709
22710 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
22711 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
22712 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
22713 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
22714 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
22715 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
22716 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
22717 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
22718 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
22719 going. :).</p>
22720
22721 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
22722 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
22723 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
22724 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
22725
22726       </div>
22727       <div class="tags">
22728
22729
22730         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>.
22731
22732
22733       </div>
22734     </div>
22735     <div class="padding"></div>
22736
22737     <div class="entry">
22738       <div class="title">
22739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
22740       </div>
22741       <div class="date">
22742         30th August 2010
22743       </div>
22744       <div class="body">
22745         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
22746 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
22747 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
22748 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
22749 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
22750 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
22751 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
22752
22753 <pre>
22754 % ln foo bar
22755 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
22756 %
22757 </pre>
22758
22759 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
22760 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
22761 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
22762 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
22763 nevertheless. :)</p>
22764
22765 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
22766 git from
22767 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
22768
22769       </div>
22770       <div class="tags">
22771
22772
22773         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
22774
22775
22776       </div>
22777     </div>
22778     <div class="padding"></div>
22779
22780     <div class="entry">
22781       <div class="title">
22782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
22783       </div>
22784       <div class="date">
22785         26th August 2010
22786       </div>
22787       <div class="body">
22788         <p>My file system sematics program
22789 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
22790 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
22791 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
22792 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
22793 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
22794 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
22795 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
22796 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
22797 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
22798 script:</p>
22799
22800 <pre>
22801 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
22802   mode_t retval = 0;
22803   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
22804   if (-1 != fd) {
22805     unlink(name);
22806     struct stat statbuf;
22807     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
22808       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
22809     }
22810     close(fd);
22811   }
22812   return retval;
22813 }
22814
22815 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
22816 int test_umask(void) {
22817   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
22818
22819   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
22820   mode_t newmode;
22821   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
22822     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
22823            newmode);
22824   }
22825   umask(007);
22826   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
22827     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
22828            newmode);
22829   }
22830
22831   umask (orig_umask);
22832   return 0;
22833 }
22834
22835 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
22836   [...]
22837   test_umask();
22838   return 0;
22839 }
22840 </pre>
22841
22842 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
22843
22844 <pre>
22845 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
22846 info: testing symlink creation
22847 info: testing subdirectory creation
22848 info: testing fcntl locking
22849   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
22850   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
22851   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
22852   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
22853   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
22854   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
22855 info: testing umask effect on file creation
22856 </pre>
22857
22858 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
22859 result:</p>
22860
22861 <pre>
22862 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
22863 info: testing symlink creation
22864 info: testing subdirectory creation
22865 info: testing fcntl locking
22866   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
22867   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
22868   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
22869   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
22870   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
22871   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
22872 info: testing umask effect on file creation
22873   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
22874   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
22875 </pre>
22876
22877 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
22878 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
22879 directory.</p>
22880
22881 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
22882 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
22883
22884 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
22885 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
22886 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
22887
22888       </div>
22889       <div class="tags">
22890
22891
22892         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
22893
22894
22895       </div>
22896     </div>
22897     <div class="padding"></div>
22898
22899     <div class="entry">
22900       <div class="title">
22901         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
22902       </div>
22903       <div class="date">
22904         15th August 2010
22905       </div>
22906       <div class="body">
22907         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
22908 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
22909 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
22910 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
22911 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
22912 long time.</p>
22913
22914       </div>
22915       <div class="tags">
22916
22917
22918         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>.
22919
22920
22921       </div>
22922     </div>
22923     <div class="padding"></div>
22924
22925     <div class="entry">
22926       <div class="title">
22927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
22928       </div>
22929       <div class="date">
22930          9th August 2010
22931       </div>
22932       <div class="body">
22933         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
22934 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
22935 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
22936 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
22937 generated configuration.</p>
22938
22939 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
22940 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
22941 without any manual configuration.</p>
22942
22943 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
22944 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
22945 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
22946 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
22947 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
22948 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
22949 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
22950 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
22951 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
22952 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
22953 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
22954 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
22955 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
22956 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
22957 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
22958 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
22959 use.</p>
22960
22961 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
22962 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
22963 working properly out of the box:</p>
22964
22965 <ul>
22966 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
22967 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
22968 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
22969 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
22970 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
22971 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
22972 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
22973 </ul>
22974
22975 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
22976
22977 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
22978 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
22979 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
22980 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
22981 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
22982
22983 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
22984 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
22985 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
22986 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
22987 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
22988 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
22989 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
22990 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
22991
22992 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
22993 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
22994 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
22995 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
22996 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
22997 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
22998 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
22999 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
23000 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
23001 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
23002 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
23003 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
23004 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
23005 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
23006 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
23007 current DNS domain is used.</p>
23008
23009 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
23010 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
23011 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
23012 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
23013 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
23014 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
23015 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
23016 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
23017 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
23018 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
23019 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
23020 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
23021 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
23022
23023 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
23024 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
23025 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
23026 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
23027 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
23028 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
23029 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
23030 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
23031 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
23032 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
23033 do for now. :)</p>
23034
23035 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
23036 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
23037 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
23038 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
23039 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
23040 yet.</p>
23041
23042 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
23043 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
23044
23045 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
23046 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
23047 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
23048 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
23049
23050       </div>
23051       <div class="tags">
23052
23053
23054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23055
23056
23057       </div>
23058     </div>
23059     <div class="padding"></div>
23060
23061     <div class="entry">
23062       <div class="title">
23063         <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>
23064       </div>
23065       <div class="date">
23066          8th August 2010
23067       </div>
23068       <div class="body">
23069         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
23070 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
23071 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
23072 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
23073 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
23074 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
23075 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
23076
23077 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
23078 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
23079 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
23080 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
23081 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
23082 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
23083 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
23084
23085 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
23086 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
23087 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
23088 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
23089 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
23090
23091 <pre>
23092 /*
23093  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
23094  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
23095  * directory.
23096  * License: GPL v2 or later
23097  *
23098  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
23099  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
23100 */
23101
23102 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
23103 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
23104 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
23105
23106 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
23107
23108 #include &lt;errno.h>
23109 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
23110 #include &lt;stdio.h>
23111 #include &lt;string.h>
23112 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
23113 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
23114 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
23115 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
23116 #include &lt;unistd.h>
23117
23118 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
23119 /*
23120  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
23121  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
23122  * below.
23123  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
23124  */
23125 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
23126 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
23127   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
23128 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
23129   char *zErrMsg;
23130   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
23131   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
23132   unlink(name);
23133   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
23134   if( rc ){
23135     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
23136     sqlite3_close(db);
23137     return -1;
23138   }
23139
23140   /* create tables */
23141   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
23142   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
23143     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
23144     sqlite3_close(db);
23145     return -1;
23146   }
23147   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
23148   sqlite3_close(db);
23149   return 0;
23150 }
23151 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
23152
23153 /*
23154  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
23155  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
23156  * done in the sqlite3 library.
23157  * See also
23158  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
23159  * POSIX specification
23160  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
23161  */
23162 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
23163   struct flock fl;
23164   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
23165   unlink(name);
23166   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
23167   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
23168
23169   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
23170   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
23171   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
23172   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
23173   fl.l_len    = 1;
23174   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
23175   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23176
23177   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
23178   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
23179   fl.l_len    = 510;
23180   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
23181   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23182
23183   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
23184   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
23185   fl.l_len    = 1;
23186   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
23187   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23188
23189   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
23190   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
23191   fl.l_len    = 1;
23192   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
23193   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23194
23195   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
23196   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
23197   fl.l_len    = 510;
23198   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23199
23200   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
23201   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
23202   fl.l_len    = 2;
23203   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
23204   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23205
23206   close(fd);
23207   return 0;
23208 }
23209
23210 /*
23211  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
23212  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
23213  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
23214  * slowing down file operations.
23215  */
23216 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
23217 #define LEVELS 5
23218   char *path = strdup("test");
23219   char *dirs[LEVELS];
23220   int level;
23221   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
23222   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
23223     char *newpath = NULL;
23224     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
23225       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
23226              path, strerror(errno));
23227       break;
23228     }
23229     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
23230     free(path);
23231     path = newpath;
23232   }
23233   return 0;
23234 }
23235
23236 /*
23237  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
23238  * KDE.
23239  */
23240 int test_symlinks(void) {
23241   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
23242   unlink("symlink");
23243   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
23244     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
23245   return 0;
23246 }
23247
23248 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
23249   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
23250   test_symlinks();
23251   test_subdirectory_creation();
23252 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
23253   test_sqlite_open();
23254 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
23255   test_gcompris_locking();
23256   return 0;
23257 }
23258 </pre>
23259
23260 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
23261 this:</p>
23262
23263 <pre>
23264 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
23265 info: testing symlink creation
23266 info: testing subdirectory creation
23267 info: sqlite worked
23268 info: testing fcntl locking
23269   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
23270   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
23271   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
23272   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
23273   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
23274   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
23275 </pre>
23276
23277 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
23278 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
23279 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
23280 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
23281 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
23282 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
23283 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
23284 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
23285
23286 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
23287 it. :)</p>
23288
23289 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
23290 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
23291 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
23292
23293       </div>
23294       <div class="tags">
23295
23296
23297         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23298
23299
23300       </div>
23301     </div>
23302     <div class="padding"></div>
23303
23304     <div class="entry">
23305       <div class="title">
23306         <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>
23307       </div>
23308       <div class="date">
23309          7th August 2010
23310       </div>
23311       <div class="body">
23312         <p>A few days ago, I
23313 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
23314 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
23315 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
23316 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
23317 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
23318 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
23319 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
23320 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
23321 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
23322
23323 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
23324 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
23325 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
23326 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
23327 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
23328 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
23329 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
23330 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
23331 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
23332 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
23333 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
23334 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
23335 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
23336 gave it a IP address.</p>
23337
23338 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
23339 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
23340 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
23341 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
23342 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
23343 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
23344 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
23345 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
23346
23347 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
23348 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
23349 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
23350 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
23351 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
23352 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
23353
23354 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
23355 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
23356 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
23357 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
23358 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
23359 with UID and GID values.</p>
23360
23361 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
23362 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
23363
23364       </div>
23365       <div class="tags">
23366
23367
23368         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23369
23370
23371       </div>
23372     </div>
23373     <div class="padding"></div>
23374
23375     <div class="entry">
23376       <div class="title">
23377         <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>
23378       </div>
23379       <div class="date">
23380          3rd August 2010
23381       </div>
23382       <div class="body">
23383         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
23384 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
23385 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
23386 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
23387 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
23388 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
23389 servers.</p>
23390
23391 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
23392 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
23393 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
23394 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
23395 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
23396 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
23397 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
23398 .uio.no.</p>
23399
23400 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
23401 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
23402 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
23403 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
23404 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
23405 university servers.</p>
23406
23407 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
23408 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
23409 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
23410 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
23411 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
23412 uses.</p>
23413
23414       </div>
23415       <div class="tags">
23416
23417
23418         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23419
23420
23421       </div>
23422     </div>
23423     <div class="padding"></div>
23424
23425     <div class="entry">
23426       <div class="title">
23427         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
23428       </div>
23429       <div class="date">
23430         27th July 2010
23431       </div>
23432       <div class="body">
23433         <p>I discovered this while doing
23434 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
23435 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
23436 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
23437 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
23438 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
23439
23440 <p>An example is from todays
23441 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
23442 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
23443 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
23444 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
23445 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
23446 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
23447 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
23448
23449 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
23450
23451 <blockquote><pre>
23452 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
23453  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
23454   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
23455 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
23456  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
23457 </pre></blockquote>
23458
23459 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
23460 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
23461 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
23462 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
23463 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
23464 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
23465 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
23466 of dependency loops.</p>
23467
23468 <p>Thanks to
23469 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
23470 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
23471 dependencies
23472 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
23473 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
23474
23475 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
23476 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
23477 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
23478 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
23479 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
23480 it.</p>
23481
23482       </div>
23483       <div class="tags">
23484
23485
23486         Tags: <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>.
23487
23488
23489       </div>
23490     </div>
23491     <div class="padding"></div>
23492
23493     <div class="entry">
23494       <div class="title">
23495         <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>
23496       </div>
23497       <div class="date">
23498         27th July 2010
23499       </div>
23500       <div class="body">
23501         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
23502 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
23503 completed.</p>
23504
23505 <blockquote>
23506 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
23507 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
23508 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
23509 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
23510 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
23511 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
23512 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
23513 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
23514
23515 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
23516 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
23517 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
23518
23519 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
23520 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
23521 much.</p>
23522
23523 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
23524
23525 <ul>
23526 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
23527 <ul>
23528   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
23529          combination with some new artwork
23530   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
23531   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
23532   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
23533   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
23534   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
23535   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
23536   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
23537   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
23538   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
23539 </ul></li>
23540 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
23541     Enabled for:
23542 <ul>
23543   <li>PAM
23544   <li>LDAP
23545   <li>IMAP
23546   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
23547 </ul>
23548 </li>
23549 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
23550 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
23551     fetched from LDAP.</li>
23552 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
23553 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
23554 </ul>
23555 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
23556
23557 <ul>
23558 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
23559     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
23560     for testing.</li>
23561 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
23562     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
23563     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
23564 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
23565 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
23566 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
23567 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
23568     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
23569 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
23570     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
23571     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
23572 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
23573     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
23574     and help out with translations.</li>
23575 </ul>
23576
23577 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
23578
23579 <ul>
23580 <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>
23581 <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>
23582 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
23583 </ul>
23584 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
23585
23586 <ul>
23587 <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>
23588 <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>
23589 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
23590 </ul>
23591
23592 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
23593 get closer to the final release.</p>
23594
23595 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
23596
23597 <ul>
23598 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
23599 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
23600 </ul>
23601
23602 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
23603 <ul>
23604 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
23605 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
23606 </ul>
23607 <p>How to report bugs:
23608 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
23609
23610 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
23611 </blockquote>
23612
23613       </div>
23614       <div class="tags">
23615
23616
23617         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23618
23619
23620       </div>
23621     </div>
23622     <div class="padding"></div>
23623
23624     <div class="entry">
23625       <div class="title">
23626         <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>
23627       </div>
23628       <div class="date">
23629         25th July 2010
23630       </div>
23631       <div class="body">
23632         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
23633 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
23634 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
23635 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
23636 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
23637
23638 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
23639 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
23640 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
23641 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
23642 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
23643 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
23644 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
23645
23646 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
23647 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
23648 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
23649 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
23650 up. :)</p>
23651
23652 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
23653 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
23654 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
23655
23656 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
23657 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
23658 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
23659 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
23660 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
23661 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
23662 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
23663 release another day.</p>
23664
23665 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
23666 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
23667
23668       </div>
23669       <div class="tags">
23670
23671
23672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23673
23674
23675       </div>
23676     </div>
23677     <div class="padding"></div>
23678
23679     <div class="entry">
23680       <div class="title">
23681         <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>
23682       </div>
23683       <div class="date">
23684         18th July 2010
23685       </div>
23686       <div class="body">
23687         <p>Thanks to
23688 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
23689 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
23690 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
23691 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
23692 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
23693 only available from the development server, until more experience is
23694 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
23695
23696 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
23697 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
23698 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
23699 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
23700 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
23701 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
23702 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
23703
23704       </div>
23705       <div class="tags">
23706
23707
23708         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>.
23709
23710
23711       </div>
23712     </div>
23713     <div class="padding"></div>
23714
23715     <div class="entry">
23716       <div class="title">
23717         <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>
23718       </div>
23719       <div class="date">
23720         17th July 2010
23721       </div>
23722       <div class="body">
23723         <p>This is a
23724 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
23725 on my
23726 <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
23727 work</a> on
23728 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
23729 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
23730
23731 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
23732 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
23733 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
23734 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
23735
23736 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
23737 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
23738 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
23739
23740 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
23741
23742 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
23743 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
23744 the web.
23745
23746 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
23747 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
23748 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
23749 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
23750 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
23751 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
23752
23753 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
23754 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
23755 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
23756 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
23757 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
23758 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
23759 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
23760 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
23761 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
23762 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
23763 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
23764 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
23765 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
23766 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
23767 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
23768 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
23769
23770 <blockquote><pre>
23771 ldapsearch -h ldap \
23772   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
23773   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
23774   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
23775   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
23776   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
23777   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
23778
23779 ldapsearch -h ldap \
23780   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
23781   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
23782   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
23783   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
23784   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
23785 </pre></blockquote>
23786
23787 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
23788 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
23789 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
23790 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
23791 also exist.</p>
23792
23793 <blockquote><pre>
23794 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
23795 objectclass: top
23796 objectclass: dnsdomain
23797 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
23798 dc: tjener
23799 arecord: 10.0.2.2
23800 associateddomain: tjener.intern
23801
23802 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
23803 objectclass: top
23804 objectclass: dnsdomain2
23805 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
23806 dc: 2
23807 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
23808 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
23809 </pre></blockquote>
23810
23811 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
23812 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
23813 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
23814 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
23815 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
23816 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
23817 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
23818 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
23819 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
23820 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
23821 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
23822 instead.</p>
23823
23824 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
23825 like this:</p>
23826
23827 <blockquote><pre>
23828 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
23829   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
23830   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
23831   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
23832   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
23833   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
23834
23835 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
23836   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
23837 </pre></blockquote>
23838
23839 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
23840 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
23841 reverse lookups.</p>
23842
23843 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
23844 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
23845 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
23846 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
23847
23848 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
23849 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
23850 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
23851
23852 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
23853 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
23854 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
23855 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
23856 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
23857
23858 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
23859 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
23860 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
23861 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
23862 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
23863
23864 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
23865 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
23866 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
23867 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
23868 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
23869 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
23870
23871 <blockquote><pre>
23872 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
23873     SUP top
23874     AUXILIARY
23875     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
23876           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
23877           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
23878           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
23879           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
23880     ))
23881 </pre></blockquote>
23882
23883 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
23884 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
23885 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
23886 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
23887 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
23888 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
23889
23890 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
23891
23892 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
23893 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
23894 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
23895 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
23896 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
23897
23898 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
23899 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
23900 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
23901 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
23902
23903 <blockquote><pre>
23904 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
23905 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
23906 </pre></blockquote>
23907
23908 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
23909 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
23910 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
23911 search result is this entry:</p>
23912
23913 <blockquote><pre>
23914 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
23915 cn: dhcp
23916 objectClass: top
23917 objectClass: dhcpServer
23918 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
23919 </pre></blockquote>
23920
23921 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
23922 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
23923 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
23924 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
23925 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
23926 The search result is this entry:</p>
23927
23928 <blockquote><pre>
23929 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
23930 cn: DHCP Config
23931 objectClass: top
23932 objectClass: dhcpService
23933 objectClass: dhcpOptions
23934 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
23935 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
23936 dhcpStatements: authoritative
23937 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
23938 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
23939 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
23940 </pre></blockquote>
23941
23942 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
23943 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
23944 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
23945 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
23946 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
23947 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
23948 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
23949 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
23950 related computer objects.</p>
23951
23952 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
23953 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
23954 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
23955 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
23956 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
23957 like:</p>
23958
23959 <blockquote><pre>
23960 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
23961 cn: hostname
23962 objectClass: top
23963 objectClass: dhcpHost
23964 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
23965 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
23966 </pre></blockquote>
23967
23968 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
23969 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
23970 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
23971 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
23972 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
23973 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
23974 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
23975 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
23976 structural object class.
23977
23978 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
23979
23980 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
23981 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
23982 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
23983 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
23984 in the configuration.</p>
23985
23986 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
23987 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
23988 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
23989 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
23990 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
23991 structure.</p>
23992
23993 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
23994 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
23995
23996 <blockquote><pre>
23997 ou=services
23998   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
23999     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
24000     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
24001       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
24002         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
24003     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
24004       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
24005         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
24006     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
24007       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
24008 </pre></blockquote>
24009
24010 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
24011 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
24012 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
24013 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
24014
24015 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
24016 like this:</p>
24017
24018 <blockquote><pre>
24019 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24020 dc: hostname
24021 objectClass: top
24022 objectClass: dhcpHost
24023 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
24024 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
24025 associateddomain: hostname.intern
24026 arecord: 10.11.12.13
24027 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
24028 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
24029 </pre></blockquote>
24030
24031 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
24032 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
24033 auxiliary object class.</p>
24034
24035       </div>
24036       <div class="tags">
24037
24038
24039         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>.
24040
24041
24042       </div>
24043     </div>
24044     <div class="padding"></div>
24045
24046     <div class="entry">
24047       <div class="title">
24048         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
24049       </div>
24050       <div class="date">
24051         14th July 2010
24052       </div>
24053       <div class="body">
24054         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
24055 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
24056 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
24057 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
24058 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
24059
24060 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
24061 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
24062
24063 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
24064 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
24065 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
24066 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
24067 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
24068 to a slave DNS server.</p>
24069
24070 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
24071 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
24072 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
24073 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
24074 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
24075 seem to work.</p>
24076
24077 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
24078 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
24079 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
24080 this:</p>
24081
24082 <blockquote><pre>
24083   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24084   cn: hostname
24085   objectClass: dhcphost
24086   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
24087   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
24088   associateddomain: hostname.intern
24089   arecord: 10.11.12.13
24090   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
24091   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
24092   ldapconfigsound: Y
24093 </pre></blockquote>
24094
24095 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
24096 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
24097 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
24098 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
24099
24100 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
24101 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
24102 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
24103 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
24104 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
24105 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
24106 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
24107 might be a good place to put it.</p>
24108
24109 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
24110 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24111
24112       </div>
24113       <div class="tags">
24114
24115
24116         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>.
24117
24118
24119       </div>
24120     </div>
24121     <div class="padding"></div>
24122
24123     <div class="entry">
24124       <div class="title">
24125         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
24126       </div>
24127       <div class="date">
24128         11th July 2010
24129       </div>
24130       <div class="body">
24131         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
24132 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
24133 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
24134 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
24135
24136 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
24137 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
24138 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
24139 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
24140 LTSP clients.</p>
24141
24142 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
24143 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
24144 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
24145
24146 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
24147 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
24148 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
24149
24150 <blockquote><pre>
24151 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
24152 #
24153 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
24154 #
24155 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
24156 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
24157 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
24158 #
24159 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
24160 # existence of attribute names.
24161 #
24162 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
24163 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
24164 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
24165 #
24166 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
24167 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
24168 #
24169 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
24170 #     SUP top
24171 #     AUXILIARY
24172 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
24173
24174 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
24175 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
24176     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
24177     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
24178         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
24179         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
24180             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
24181             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
24182             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
24183             # bass value on to clients
24184             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
24185         done
24186     done
24187 fi
24188 </pre></blockquote>
24189
24190 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
24191 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
24192 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
24193 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
24194 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
24195
24196 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
24197 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24198
24199 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
24200 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
24201 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
24202 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
24203 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
24204 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
24205
24206       </div>
24207       <div class="tags">
24208
24209
24210         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>.
24211
24212
24213       </div>
24214     </div>
24215     <div class="padding"></div>
24216
24217     <div class="entry">
24218       <div class="title">
24219         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
24220       </div>
24221       <div class="date">
24222          9th July 2010
24223       </div>
24224       <div class="body">
24225         <p>Since
24226 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
24227 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
24228 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
24229 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
24230 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
24231 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
24232 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
24233 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
24234 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
24235 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
24236 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
24237 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
24238 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
24239
24240       </div>
24241       <div class="tags">
24242
24243
24244         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>.
24245
24246
24247       </div>
24248     </div>
24249     <div class="padding"></div>
24250
24251     <div class="entry">
24252       <div class="title">
24253         <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>
24254       </div>
24255       <div class="date">
24256          3rd July 2010
24257       </div>
24258       <div class="body">
24259         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
24260 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
24261 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
24262 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
24263 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
24264 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
24265 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
24266 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
24267
24268 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
24269 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
24270 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
24271 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
24272 publish the difference.</p>
24273
24274 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
24275
24276 <blockquote><p>
24277   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
24278   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
24279   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
24280   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
24281   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
24282   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
24283   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
24284   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
24285 </p></blockquote>
24286
24287 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
24288
24289 <blockquote><p>
24290   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
24291   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
24292   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
24293   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
24294   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
24295   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
24296   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
24297   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
24298   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
24299   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
24300   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
24301   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
24302   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
24303   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
24304   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
24305   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
24306   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
24307   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
24308   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
24309   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
24310 </p></blockquote>
24311
24312 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
24313
24314 <blockquote><p>
24315   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
24316   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
24317   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
24318   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
24319   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
24320   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
24321   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
24322   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
24323   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
24324   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
24325   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
24326   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
24327   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
24328   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
24329   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
24330   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
24331   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
24332   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
24333   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
24334   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
24335   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
24336 </p></blockquote>
24337
24338 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
24339
24340 <blockquote><p>
24341   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
24342   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
24343   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
24344 </p></blockquote>
24345
24346 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
24347 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
24348 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
24349 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
24350 the difference somewhat.
24351
24352       </div>
24353       <div class="tags">
24354
24355
24356         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>.
24357
24358
24359       </div>
24360     </div>
24361     <div class="padding"></div>
24362
24363     <div class="entry">
24364       <div class="title">
24365         <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>
24366       </div>
24367       <div class="date">
24368          1st July 2010
24369       </div>
24370       <div class="body">
24371         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
24372 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
24373 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
24374 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
24375 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
24376 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
24377 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
24378 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
24379 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
24380
24381 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
24382
24383 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
24384 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
24385 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
24386 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
24387 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
24388 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
24389 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
24390 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
24391 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
24392 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
24393 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
24394 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
24395 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
24396 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
24397 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
24398
24399 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
24400
24401 <blockquote><pre>
24402 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
24403 </pre></blockquote>
24404
24405 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
24406 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
24407 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
24408 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
24409 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
24410 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
24411 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
24412 on how to get this working.</p>
24413
24414 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
24415 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
24416 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
24417 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
24418 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
24419 instructions I found in the
24420 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
24421 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
24422
24423 <blockquote><pre>
24424         debug-level             0
24425         reload-count            unlimited
24426         paranoia                no
24427
24428         enable-cache            passwd          yes
24429         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
24430         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
24431         suggested-size          passwd          211
24432         check-files             passwd          yes
24433         persistent              passwd          yes
24434         shared                  passwd          yes
24435         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
24436         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
24437
24438         enable-cache            group           yes
24439         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
24440         negative-time-to-live   group           20
24441         suggested-size          group           211
24442         check-files             group           yes
24443         persistent              group           yes
24444         shared                  group           yes
24445         max-db-size             group           33554432
24446         auto-propagate          group           yes
24447
24448         enable-cache            hosts           no
24449         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
24450         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
24451         suggested-size          hosts           211
24452         check-files             hosts           yes
24453         persistent              hosts           yes
24454         shared                  hosts           yes
24455         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
24456
24457         enable-cache            services        yes
24458         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
24459         negative-time-to-live   services        20
24460         suggested-size          services        211
24461         check-files             services        yes
24462         persistent              services        yes
24463         shared                  services        yes
24464         max-db-size             services        33554432
24465 </pre></blockquote>
24466
24467 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
24468 automatically like the one provided in
24469 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
24470 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
24471 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
24472 look like this:</p>
24473
24474 <blockquote><pre>
24475 passwd:         files ldap
24476 group:          files ldap
24477 shadow:         files ldap
24478 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
24479 networks:       files
24480 protocols:      files
24481 services:       files
24482 ethers:         files
24483 rpc:            files
24484 netgroup:       files ldap
24485 </pre></blockquote>
24486
24487 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
24488 shadow and netgroup.</p>
24489
24490 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
24491 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
24492 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
24493 attributes cached.
24494
24495 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
24496   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
24497
24498 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
24499 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
24500 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
24501 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
24502 discovered sssd.</p>
24503
24504 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
24505
24506 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
24507 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
24508 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
24509 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
24510 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
24511 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
24512 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
24513 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
24514 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
24515 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
24516 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
24517 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
24518 version 1.2 is now in testing.
24519
24520 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
24521 roaming setup I want</p>
24522
24523 <blockquote><pre>
24524 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
24525 </pre></blockquote>
24526
24527 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
24528 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
24529
24530 <blockquote><pre>
24531 [sssd]
24532 config_file_version = 2
24533 reconnection_retries = 3
24534 sbus_timeout = 30
24535 services = nss, pam
24536 domains = INTERN
24537
24538 [nss]
24539 filter_groups = root
24540 filter_users = root
24541 reconnection_retries = 3
24542
24543 [pam]
24544 reconnection_retries = 3
24545
24546 [domain/INTERN]
24547 enumerate = false
24548 cache_credentials = true
24549
24550 id_provider = ldap
24551 auth_provider = ldap
24552 chpass_provider = ldap
24553
24554 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
24555 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24556 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
24557 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
24558 </pre></blockquote>
24559
24560 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
24561 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
24562
24563 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
24564 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
24565 modify it manually.</p>
24566
24567 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
24568 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24569
24570       </div>
24571       <div class="tags">
24572
24573
24574         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
24575
24576
24577       </div>
24578     </div>
24579     <div class="padding"></div>
24580
24581     <div class="entry">
24582       <div class="title">
24583         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
24584       </div>
24585       <div class="date">
24586         28th June 2010
24587       </div>
24588       <div class="body">
24589         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
24590 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
24591 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
24592 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
24593 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
24594 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
24595 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
24596 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
24597 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
24598 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
24599
24600 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
24601 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
24602 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
24603 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
24604 released.</p>
24605
24606 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
24607 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
24608 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
24609 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
24610
24611 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
24612 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24613
24614 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
24615 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
24616 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
24617 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
24618 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
24619
24620       </div>
24621       <div class="tags">
24622
24623
24624         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>.
24625
24626
24627       </div>
24628     </div>
24629     <div class="padding"></div>
24630
24631     <div class="entry">
24632       <div class="title">
24633         <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>
24634       </div>
24635       <div class="date">
24636         24th June 2010
24637       </div>
24638       <div class="body">
24639         <p>A while back, I
24640 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
24641 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
24642 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
24643 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
24644
24645 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
24646 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
24647 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
24648 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
24649
24650 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
24651 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
24652 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
24653 Debian Edu.</p>
24654
24655 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
24656 the
24657 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
24658 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
24659 available today from IETF.</p>
24660
24661 <pre>
24662 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
24663 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
24664 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
24665  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
24666         NAME 'dhcpHost'
24667         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
24668 -       SUP top
24669 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
24670         MUST cn
24671         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
24672         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
24673 </pre>
24674
24675 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
24676 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
24677 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
24678
24679 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
24680 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24681
24682       </div>
24683       <div class="tags">
24684
24685
24686         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>.
24687
24688
24689       </div>
24690     </div>
24691     <div class="padding"></div>
24692
24693     <div class="entry">
24694       <div class="title">
24695         <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>
24696       </div>
24697       <div class="date">
24698         16th June 2010
24699       </div>
24700       <div class="body">
24701         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
24702 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
24703 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
24704 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
24705 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
24706 this:
24707
24708 <blockquote><pre>
24709 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
24710 tasksel --new-install
24711 </pre></blockquote>
24712
24713 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
24714 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
24715 any output what so ever.
24716
24717 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
24718 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
24719 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
24720 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
24721 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
24722 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
24723 code like this:
24724
24725 <blockquote><pre>
24726 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
24727 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
24728 $cmd
24729 </pre></blockquote>
24730
24731 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
24732 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
24733 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
24734 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
24735 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
24736 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
24737 installation.</p>
24738
24739 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
24740 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
24741 like this.</p>
24742
24743       </div>
24744       <div class="tags">
24745
24746
24747         Tags: <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>.
24748
24749
24750       </div>
24751     </div>
24752     <div class="padding"></div>
24753
24754     <div class="entry">
24755       <div class="title">
24756         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
24757       </div>
24758       <div class="date">
24759         13th June 2010
24760       </div>
24761       <div class="body">
24762         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
24763 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
24764 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
24765 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
24766 pages.</p>
24767
24768 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
24769 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
24770 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
24771 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
24772 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
24773 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
24774 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
24775 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
24776 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
24777 see how the project is doing.</p>
24778
24779 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
24780 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
24781 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
24782 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
24783 Windows.  This is great.</p>
24784
24785       </div>
24786       <div class="tags">
24787
24788
24789         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>.
24790
24791
24792       </div>
24793     </div>
24794     <div class="padding"></div>
24795
24796     <div class="entry">
24797       <div class="title">
24798         <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>
24799       </div>
24800       <div class="date">
24801         13th June 2010
24802       </div>
24803       <div class="body">
24804         <p>My
24805 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
24806 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
24807 finally made the upgrade logs available from
24808 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
24809 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
24810 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
24811 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
24812
24813 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
24814 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
24815 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
24816 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
24817 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
24818 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
24819 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
24820 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
24821
24822 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
24823 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
24824 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
24825 too surprising.</p>
24826
24827 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
24828 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
24829 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
24830 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
24831 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
24832 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
24833 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
24834 continue.</p>
24835
24836 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
24837 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
24838   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
24839   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
24840   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
24841   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
24842   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
24843   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
24844   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
24845   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
24846   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
24847   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
24848   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
24849   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
24850   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
24851   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
24852   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
24853   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
24854   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
24855   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
24856   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
24857   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
24858   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
24859   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
24860   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
24861   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
24862   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
24863   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
24864   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
24865   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
24866
24867 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
24868
24869 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
24870   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
24871   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
24872   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
24873   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
24874   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
24875   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
24876   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
24877   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
24878   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
24879   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
24880   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
24881   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
24882   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
24883   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
24884   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
24885   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
24886   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
24887   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
24888   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
24889   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
24890   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
24891   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
24892   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
24893   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
24894   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
24895   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
24896   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
24897   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
24898   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
24899   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
24900   zip</p>
24901
24902 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
24903
24904 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
24905   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
24906   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
24907   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
24908   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
24909   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
24910   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
24911   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
24912   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
24913   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
24914   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
24915   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
24916   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
24917   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
24918   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
24919   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
24920   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
24921   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
24922   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
24923   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
24924   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
24925   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
24926   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
24927   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
24928   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
24929   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
24930   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
24931   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
24932
24933 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
24934 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
24935   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
24936   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
24937   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
24938   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
24939   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
24940   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
24941   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
24942   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
24943   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
24944   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
24945   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
24946   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
24947   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
24948   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
24949   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
24950   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
24951   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
24952   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
24953   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
24954   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
24955   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
24956   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
24957   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
24958   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
24959   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
24960   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
24961   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
24962   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
24963   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
24964   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
24965   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
24966   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
24967   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
24968   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
24969   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
24970   xulrunner-1.9</p>
24971
24972
24973       </div>
24974       <div class="tags">
24975
24976
24977         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>.
24978
24979
24980       </div>
24981     </div>
24982     <div class="padding"></div>
24983
24984     <div class="entry">
24985       <div class="title">
24986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
24987       </div>
24988       <div class="date">
24989         11th June 2010
24990       </div>
24991       <div class="body">
24992         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
24993 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
24994 have been discovered and reported in the process
24995 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
24996 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
24997 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
24998 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
24999 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
25000
25001 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
25002 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
25003 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
25004 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
25005 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
25006 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
25007
25008 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
25009 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
25010 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
25011 is created.  The bug report
25012 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
25013 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
25014 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
25015 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
25016 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
25017 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
25018 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
25019 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
25020 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
25021 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
25022 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
25023 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
25024 Debian Squeeze.</p>
25025
25026 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
25027 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
25028 trick:</p>
25029
25030 <blockquote><pre>
25031 #!/bin/sh
25032 set -ex
25033
25034 if [ "$1" ] ; then
25035     desktop=$1
25036 else
25037     desktop=gnome
25038 fi
25039
25040 from=lenny
25041 to=squeeze
25042
25043 exec &lt; /dev/null
25044 unset LANG
25045 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
25046 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
25047 fuser -mv .
25048 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
25049 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
25050 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
25051 #!/bin/sh
25052 exit 101
25053 EOF
25054 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
25055 exit_cleanup() {
25056     umount $tmpdir/proc
25057 }
25058 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
25059 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
25060 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
25061
25062 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
25063
25064 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
25065 # to return the correct answers.
25066 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
25067     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
25068
25069 # Include the desktop and laptop task
25070 for test in desktop laptop ; do
25071     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
25072 #!/bin/sh
25073 exit 2
25074 EOF
25075     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
25076 done
25077
25078 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
25079 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
25080 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
25081 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
25082
25083 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
25084 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
25085 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
25086 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
25087 fuser -mv
25088 </pre></blockquote>
25089
25090 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
25091 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
25092 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
25093 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
25094 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
25095 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
25096
25097 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
25098 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
25099 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
25100 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
25101 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
25102 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
25103 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
25104
25105 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
25106 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
25107 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
25108 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
25109 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
25110 packages.</p>
25111
25112       </div>
25113       <div class="tags">
25114
25115
25116         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>.
25117
25118
25119       </div>
25120     </div>
25121     <div class="padding"></div>
25122
25123     <div class="entry">
25124       <div class="title">
25125         <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>
25126       </div>
25127       <div class="date">
25128          6th June 2010
25129       </div>
25130       <div class="body">
25131         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
25132 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
25133 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
25134 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
25135 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
25136 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
25137 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
25138
25139 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
25140 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
25141 COLUMNS):</p>
25142
25143 <blockquote><pre>
25144 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
25145 previous=N
25146 PREVLEVEL=
25147 RUNLEVEL=
25148 runlevel=S
25149 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
25150 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
25151 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
25152 </pre></blockquote>
25153
25154 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
25155 script.</p>
25156
25157 <blockquote><pre>
25158 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
25159 previous=N
25160 PREVLEVEL=N
25161 RUNLEVEL=S
25162 runlevel=S
25163 </pre></blockquote>
25164
25165 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
25166 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
25167 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
25168
25169 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
25170 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
25171 choice.</p>
25172
25173       </div>
25174       <div class="tags">
25175
25176
25177         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>.
25178
25179
25180       </div>
25181     </div>
25182     <div class="padding"></div>
25183
25184     <div class="entry">
25185       <div class="title">
25186         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
25187       </div>
25188       <div class="date">
25189          6th June 2010
25190       </div>
25191       <div class="body">
25192         <p>Via the
25193 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
25194 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
25195 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
25196 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
25197 following the standards wars of today.</p>
25198
25199       </div>
25200       <div class="tags">
25201
25202
25203         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>.
25204
25205
25206       </div>
25207     </div>
25208     <div class="padding"></div>
25209
25210     <div class="entry">
25211       <div class="title">
25212         <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>
25213       </div>
25214       <div class="date">
25215          3rd June 2010
25216       </div>
25217       <div class="body">
25218         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
25219 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
25220 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
25221 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
25222 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
25223
25224 <blockquote><pre>
25225 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
25226   vendor                    count
25227   Dell Computer Corporation     1
25228     PowerEdge 1750              1
25229   IBM                           1
25230     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
25231   Intel                         2
25232   [no-dmi-info]                 3
25233 maintainer:~#
25234 </pre></blockquote>
25235
25236 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
25237 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
25238 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
25239 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
25240 option to list the individual machines.</p>
25241
25242 <p>A larger list is
25243 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
25244 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
25245 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
25246 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
25247 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
25248 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
25249 collector.</p>
25250
25251       </div>
25252       <div class="tags">
25253
25254
25255         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>.
25256
25257
25258       </div>
25259     </div>
25260     <div class="padding"></div>
25261
25262     <div class="entry">
25263       <div class="title">
25264         <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>
25265       </div>
25266       <div class="date">
25267          1st June 2010
25268       </div>
25269       <div class="body">
25270         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
25271 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
25272 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
25273 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
25274 wait.</p>
25275
25276 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
25277 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
25278 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
25279 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
25280 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
25281 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
25282
25283 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
25284 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
25285 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
25286 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
25287 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
25288 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
25289 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
25290 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
25291
25292 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
25293
25294       </div>
25295       <div class="tags">
25296
25297
25298         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>.
25299
25300
25301       </div>
25302     </div>
25303     <div class="padding"></div>
25304
25305     <div class="entry">
25306       <div class="title">
25307         <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>
25308       </div>
25309       <div class="date">
25310         27th May 2010
25311       </div>
25312       <div class="body">
25313         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
25314 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
25315 issues are known and should be solved:
25316
25317 <p><ul>
25318
25319 <li>The wicd package seen to
25320 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
25321 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
25322 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
25323 seem to be on the case.</li>
25324
25325 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
25326 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
25327 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
25328 maintainer is on the case.</li>
25329
25330 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
25331 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
25332 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
25333 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
25334 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
25335 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
25336 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
25337 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
25338
25339 </ul></p>
25340
25341 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
25342 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
25343 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
25344 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
25345
25346 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
25347 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
25348 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
25349 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
25350
25351 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
25352
25353       </div>
25354       <div class="tags">
25355
25356
25357         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>.
25358
25359
25360       </div>
25361     </div>
25362     <div class="padding"></div>
25363
25364     <div class="entry">
25365       <div class="title">
25366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
25367       </div>
25368       <div class="date">
25369         22nd May 2010
25370       </div>
25371       <div class="body">
25372         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
25373 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
25374 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
25375 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
25376
25377 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
25378 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
25379 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
25380 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
25381 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
25382 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
25383 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
25384 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
25385 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
25386 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
25387 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
25388 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
25389 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
25390 going to work.</p>
25391
25392 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
25393 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
25394 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
25395 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
25396 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
25397 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
25398 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
25399 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
25400 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
25401 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
25402 Edu.</p>
25403
25404 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
25405 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
25406 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
25407 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
25408 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
25409 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
25410
25411 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
25412 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
25413
25414       </div>
25415       <div class="tags">
25416
25417
25418         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>.
25419
25420
25421       </div>
25422     </div>
25423     <div class="padding"></div>
25424
25425     <div class="entry">
25426       <div class="title">
25427         <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>
25428       </div>
25429       <div class="date">
25430         19th May 2010
25431       </div>
25432       <div class="body">
25433         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
25434 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
25435 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
25436 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
25437 into unstable.  The
25438 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
25439 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
25440 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
25441 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
25442 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
25443 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
25444 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
25445
25446 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
25447 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
25448 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
25449 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
25450 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
25451 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
25452 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
25453 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
25454
25455 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
25456 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
25457 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
25458 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
25459 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
25460 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
25461 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
25462
25463 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
25464 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
25465 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
25466 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
25467 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
25468 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
25469 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
25470 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
25471 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
25472 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
25473 on the home directory servers.</p>
25474
25475 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
25476 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
25477 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
25478 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
25479 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
25480 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
25481
25482 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
25483 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25484
25485       </div>
25486       <div class="tags">
25487
25488
25489         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25490
25491
25492       </div>
25493     </div>
25494     <div class="padding"></div>
25495
25496     <div class="entry">
25497       <div class="title">
25498         <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>
25499       </div>
25500       <div class="date">
25501         14th May 2010
25502       </div>
25503       <div class="body">
25504         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
25505 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
25506 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
25507 expected, if I am to believe the
25508 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
25509 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
25510 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
25511 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
25512 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
25513 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
25514 version.</p>
25515
25516 More information about
25517 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
25518 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
25519 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
25520 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
25521
25522 <blockquote><pre>
25523 CONCURRENCY=none
25524 </pre></blockquote>
25525
25526 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
25527 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
25528 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
25529 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
25530
25531       </div>
25532       <div class="tags">
25533
25534
25535         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>.
25536
25537
25538       </div>
25539     </div>
25540     <div class="padding"></div>
25541
25542     <div class="entry">
25543       <div class="title">
25544         <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>
25545       </div>
25546       <div class="date">
25547         14th May 2010
25548       </div>
25549       <div class="body">
25550         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
25551 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
25552 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
25553 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
25554 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
25555 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
25556 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
25557 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
25558
25559 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
25560 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
25561 this on the collector host:</p>
25562
25563 <blockquote><pre>
25564 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
25565 </pre></blockquote>
25566
25567 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
25568 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
25569
25570 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
25571 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
25572 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
25573 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
25574 written yet.</p>
25575
25576       </div>
25577       <div class="tags">
25578
25579
25580         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>.
25581
25582
25583       </div>
25584     </div>
25585     <div class="padding"></div>
25586
25587     <div class="entry">
25588       <div class="title">
25589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
25590       </div>
25591       <div class="date">
25592         13th May 2010
25593       </div>
25594       <div class="body">
25595         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
25596 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
25597 has been
25598 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
25599
25600 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
25601 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
25602 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
25603 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
25604 based boot system.  Tollef is
25605 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
25606 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
25607 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
25608 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
25609 at the moment do not.</p>
25610
25611 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
25612 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
25613 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
25614 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
25615 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
25616 way forward.</p>
25617
25618 <p>In the mean time, based on the
25619 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
25620 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
25621 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
25622 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
25623 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
25624 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
25625 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
25626 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
25627
25628       </div>
25629       <div class="tags">
25630
25631
25632         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>.
25633
25634
25635       </div>
25636     </div>
25637     <div class="padding"></div>
25638
25639     <div class="entry">
25640       <div class="title">
25641         <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>
25642       </div>
25643       <div class="date">
25644          6th May 2010
25645       </div>
25646       <div class="body">
25647         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
25648 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
25649 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
25650 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
25651 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
25652 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
25653 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
25654
25655 <blockquote><pre>
25656 CONCURRENCY=makefile
25657 </pre></blockquote>
25658
25659 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
25660 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
25661 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
25662 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
25663 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
25664 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
25665 make this happen.</p>
25666
25667 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
25668 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
25669 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
25670 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
25671 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
25672
25673 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
25674 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
25675 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
25676 fix the remaining issues.</p>
25677
25678 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
25679 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
25680 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
25681 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
25682
25683       </div>
25684       <div class="tags">
25685
25686
25687         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>.
25688
25689
25690       </div>
25691     </div>
25692     <div class="padding"></div>
25693
25694     <div class="entry">
25695       <div class="title">
25696         <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>
25697       </div>
25698       <div class="date">
25699          2nd May 2010
25700       </div>
25701       <div class="body">
25702         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
25703 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
25704 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
25705
25706 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
25707 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
25708 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
25709 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
25710 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
25711
25712 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
25713 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
25714
25715 <blockquote><pre>
25716 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
25717 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
25718 Password expires                                        : never
25719 Password inactive                                       : never
25720 Account expires                                         : never
25721 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
25722 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
25723 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
25724 root@tjener:~#
25725 </pre></blockquote>
25726
25727 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
25728 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
25729 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
25730 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
25731 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
25732 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
25733
25734 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
25735 intended:</p>
25736
25737 <blockquote><pre>
25738 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
25739 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
25740 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
25741 Password expires                                        : never
25742 Password inactive                                       : never
25743 Account expires                                         : never
25744 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
25745 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
25746 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
25747 root@tjener:~#
25748 </pre></blockquote>
25749
25750 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
25751 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
25752 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
25753
25754 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
25755 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
25756
25757 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
25758 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25759
25760 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
25761 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
25762 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
25763 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
25764 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
25765 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
25766 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
25767
25768 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
25769 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
25770 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
25771 change.</p>
25772
25773       </div>
25774       <div class="tags">
25775
25776
25777         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25778
25779
25780       </div>
25781     </div>
25782     <div class="padding"></div>
25783
25784     <div class="entry">
25785       <div class="title">
25786         <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>
25787       </div>
25788       <div class="date">
25789         28th April 2010
25790       </div>
25791       <div class="body">
25792         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
25793 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
25794 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
25795 and go.</p>
25796
25797 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
25798 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
25799 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
25800 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
25801
25802 <ul>
25803
25804  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
25805    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
25806    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
25807    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
25808    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
25809    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
25810    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
25811    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
25812    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
25813    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
25814    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
25815    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
25816
25817  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
25818    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
25819    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
25820    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
25821    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
25822    or the Fedora developed
25823    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
25824    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
25825
25826  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
25827    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
25828    directory, using unison.</li>
25829
25830  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
25831    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
25832    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
25833    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
25834    implemented.</li>
25835
25836  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
25837    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
25838
25839  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
25840    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
25841    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
25842
25843 </ul>
25844
25845 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
25846 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
25847 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
25848 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
25849 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
25850 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
25851 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
25852 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
25853 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
25854
25855 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
25856 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25857
25858       </div>
25859       <div class="tags">
25860
25861
25862         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25863
25864
25865       </div>
25866     </div>
25867     <div class="padding"></div>
25868
25869     <div class="entry">
25870       <div class="title">
25871         <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>
25872       </div>
25873       <div class="date">
25874         19th April 2010
25875       </div>
25876       <div class="body">
25877         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
25878 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
25879 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
25880 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
25881 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
25882 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
25883 restrictions on the web, for example from
25884 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
25885 epub-version from
25886 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
25887 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
25888 strongly recommend this book.</p>
25889
25890       </div>
25891       <div class="tags">
25892
25893
25894         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>.
25895
25896
25897       </div>
25898     </div>
25899     <div class="padding"></div>
25900
25901     <div class="entry">
25902       <div class="title">
25903         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
25904       </div>
25905       <div class="date">
25906         14th April 2010
25907       </div>
25908       <div class="body">
25909         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
25910 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
25911 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
25912 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
25913 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
25914 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
25915 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
25916 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
25917 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
25918
25919 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
25920 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
25921 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
25922 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
25923 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
25924
25925 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
25926 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
25927
25928 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
25929 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
25930 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
25931 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
25932 to work properly.</p>
25933
25934 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
25935 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
25936 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
25937 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
25938 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
25939 time.</p>
25940
25941 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
25942 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
25943 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
25944 up in a few days.</p>
25945
25946       </div>
25947       <div class="tags">
25948
25949
25950         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25951
25952
25953       </div>
25954     </div>
25955     <div class="padding"></div>
25956
25957     <div class="entry">
25958       <div class="title">
25959         <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>
25960       </div>
25961       <div class="date">
25962          6th March 2010
25963       </div>
25964       <div class="body">
25965         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
25966 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
25967 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
25968 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
25969 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
25970 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
25971
25972 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
25973 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
25974 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
25975 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
25976
25977 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
25978 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
25979 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
25980 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
25981 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
25982 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
25983
25984       </div>
25985       <div class="tags">
25986
25987
25988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25989
25990
25991       </div>
25992     </div>
25993     <div class="padding"></div>
25994
25995     <div class="entry">
25996       <div class="title">
25997         <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>
25998       </div>
25999       <div class="date">
26000         11th February 2010
26001       </div>
26002       <div class="body">
26003         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
26004 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
26005 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
26006 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
26007 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
26008 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
26009 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
26010
26011 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
26012
26013 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
26014 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
26015 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
26016 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
26017
26018       </div>
26019       <div class="tags">
26020
26021
26022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26023
26024
26025       </div>
26026     </div>
26027     <div class="padding"></div>
26028
26029     <div class="entry">
26030       <div class="title">
26031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
26032       </div>
26033       <div class="date">
26034         27th January 2010
26035       </div>
26036       <div class="body">
26037         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
26038 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
26039 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
26040 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
26041 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
26042 further.</p>
26043
26044 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
26045 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
26046 configured to be a server for the
26047 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
26048 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
26049 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
26050 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
26051 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
26052 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
26053 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
26054 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
26055 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
26056 and Nagios configuration.</p>
26057
26058 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
26059 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
26060 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
26061 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
26062
26063 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
26064 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
26065 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
26066 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
26067 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
26068 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
26069 the machine.</p>
26070
26071 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
26072 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
26073 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
26074 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
26075
26076 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
26077 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
26078 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
26079 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
26080 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
26081 everything is taken care of.</p>
26082
26083       </div>
26084       <div class="tags">
26085
26086
26087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26088
26089
26090       </div>
26091     </div>
26092     <div class="padding"></div>
26093
26094     <div class="entry">
26095       <div class="title">
26096         <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>
26097       </div>
26098       <div class="date">
26099         12th August 2009
26100       </div>
26101       <div class="body">
26102         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
26103 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
26104 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
26105 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
26106
26107 <table>
26108 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
26109 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
26110 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
26111 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
26112 </table>
26113
26114 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
26115 got these numbers:</p>
26116
26117 <table>
26118 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
26119 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
26120 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
26121 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
26122 </table>
26123
26124 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
26125
26126 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
26127 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
26128 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
26129 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
26130 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
26131
26132
26133 <table>
26134 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
26135 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
26136 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
26137 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
26138 </table>
26139
26140 <p>And with 'site:no':
26141
26142 <table>
26143 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
26144 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
26145 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
26146 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
26147 </table>
26148
26149 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
26150 numbers.</p>
26151
26152       </div>
26153       <div class="tags">
26154
26155
26156         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>.
26157
26158
26159       </div>
26160     </div>
26161     <div class="padding"></div>
26162
26163     <div class="entry">
26164       <div class="title">
26165         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
26166       </div>
26167       <div class="date">
26168          8th August 2009
26169       </div>
26170       <div class="body">
26171         <p>According to <a
26172 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
26173 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
26174 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
26175 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
26176 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
26177 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
26178 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
26179 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
26180 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
26181 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
26182
26183 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
26184 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
26185 seminar this autumn.</p>
26186
26187       </div>
26188       <div class="tags">
26189
26190
26191         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>.
26192
26193
26194       </div>
26195     </div>
26196     <div class="padding"></div>
26197
26198     <div class="entry">
26199       <div class="title">
26200         <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>
26201       </div>
26202       <div class="date">
26203         27th July 2009
26204       </div>
26205       <div class="body">
26206         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
26207 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
26208 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
26209 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
26210 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
26211 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
26212 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
26213
26214 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
26215 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
26216 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
26217
26218       </div>
26219       <div class="tags">
26220
26221
26222         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>.
26223
26224
26225       </div>
26226     </div>
26227     <div class="padding"></div>
26228
26229     <div class="entry">
26230       <div class="title">
26231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
26232       </div>
26233       <div class="date">
26234         22nd July 2009
26235       </div>
26236       <div class="body">
26237         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
26238 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
26239 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
26240 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
26241 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
26242 the package up to date.</p>
26243
26244 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
26245 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
26246 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
26247 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
26248 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
26249 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
26250 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
26251 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
26252 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
26253 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
26254 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
26255 working on the future release.</p>
26256
26257 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
26258 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
26259
26260       </div>
26261       <div class="tags">
26262
26263
26264         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>.
26265
26266
26267       </div>
26268     </div>
26269     <div class="padding"></div>
26270
26271     <div class="entry">
26272       <div class="title">
26273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
26274       </div>
26275       <div class="date">
26276         24th June 2009
26277       </div>
26278       <div class="body">
26279         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
26280 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
26281 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
26282 funded
26283 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
26284 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
26285 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
26286 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
26287 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
26288 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
26289
26290 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
26291 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
26292 boot:</p>
26293
26294 <ul>
26295
26296 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
26297
26298 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
26299    clock is in UTC.</li>
26300
26301 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
26302    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
26303    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
26304
26305 </ul>
26306
26307 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
26308 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
26309 Villegas</a>.
26310
26311 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
26312 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
26313 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
26314 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
26315 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
26316 using this.</p>
26317
26318 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
26319 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
26320 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
26321 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
26322 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
26323 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
26324 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
26325
26326       </div>
26327       <div class="tags">
26328
26329
26330         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>.
26331
26332
26333       </div>
26334     </div>
26335     <div class="padding"></div>
26336
26337     <div class="entry">
26338       <div class="title">
26339         <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>
26340       </div>
26341       <div class="date">
26342          2nd May 2009
26343       </div>
26344       <div class="body">
26345         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
26346 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
26347 do not yet know them.</p>
26348
26349 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
26350 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
26351 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
26352 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
26353 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
26354 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
26355 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
26356 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
26357 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
26358 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
26359 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
26360
26361 <p>The second one is
26362 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
26363 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
26364 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
26365 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
26366 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
26367 and the company behind it is running
26368 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
26369 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
26370 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
26371 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
26372 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
26373 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
26374 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
26375 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
26376
26377 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
26378 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
26379 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
26380 surrounded by today.</p>
26381
26382       </div>
26383       <div class="tags">
26384
26385
26386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
26387
26388
26389       </div>
26390     </div>
26391     <div class="padding"></div>
26392
26393     <div class="entry">
26394       <div class="title">
26395         <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>
26396       </div>
26397       <div class="date">
26398         28th April 2009
26399       </div>
26400       <div class="body">
26401         <p>Julien Blache
26402 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
26403 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
26404 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
26405 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
26406 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
26407 properties.</p>
26408
26409       </div>
26410       <div class="tags">
26411
26412
26413         Tags: <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>.
26414
26415
26416       </div>
26417     </div>
26418     <div class="padding"></div>
26419
26420     <div class="entry">
26421       <div class="title">
26422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
26423       </div>
26424       <div class="date">
26425          5th April 2009
26426       </div>
26427       <div class="body">
26428         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
26429 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
26430 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
26431 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
26432 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
26433 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
26434 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
26435 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
26436
26437 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
26438 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
26439 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
26440   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
26441   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
26442
26443 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
26444 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
26445 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
26446 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
26447
26448 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
26449 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
26450 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
26451 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
26452
26453 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
26454 set -e
26455 URL="$1"
26456 SAVEFILE="$2"
26457 DURATION="$3"
26458 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
26459   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
26460   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
26461 pid=$!
26462 sleep $DURATION
26463 kill $pid
26464 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
26465
26466       </div>
26467       <div class="tags">
26468
26469
26470         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>.
26471
26472
26473       </div>
26474     </div>
26475     <div class="padding"></div>
26476
26477     <div class="entry">
26478       <div class="title">
26479         <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>
26480       </div>
26481       <div class="date">
26482         30th March 2009
26483       </div>
26484       <div class="body">
26485         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
26486 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
26487 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
26488 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
26489 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
26490 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
26491 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
26492 application.</p>
26493
26494 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
26495 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
26496 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
26497 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
26498 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
26499 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
26500 blocked from doing so.</p>
26501
26502 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
26503 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
26504 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
26505 requirements change.</p>
26506
26507 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
26508 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
26509 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
26510
26511       </div>
26512       <div class="tags">
26513
26514
26515         Tags: <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>.
26516
26517
26518       </div>
26519     </div>
26520     <div class="padding"></div>
26521
26522     <div class="entry">
26523       <div class="title">
26524         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
26525       </div>
26526       <div class="date">
26527         29th March 2009
26528       </div>
26529       <div class="body">
26530         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
26531 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
26532 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
26533 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
26534 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
26535 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
26536 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
26537 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
26538 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
26539 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
26540 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
26541 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
26542 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
26543 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
26544 now. :)</p>
26545
26546       </div>
26547       <div class="tags">
26548
26549
26550         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>.
26551
26552
26553       </div>
26554     </div>
26555     <div class="padding"></div>
26556
26557     <div class="entry">
26558       <div class="title">
26559         <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>
26560       </div>
26561       <div class="date">
26562         29th March 2009
26563       </div>
26564       <div class="body">
26565         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
26566 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
26567 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
26568 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
26569 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
26570 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
26571
26572 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
26573 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
26574 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
26575 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
26576 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
26577 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
26578 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
26579 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
26580 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
26581 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
26582 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
26583 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
26584 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
26585
26586 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
26587 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
26588 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
26589 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
26590
26591 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
26592 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
26593
26594 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
26595 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
26596 new IETF work group?</p>
26597
26598       </div>
26599       <div class="tags">
26600
26601
26602         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>.
26603
26604
26605       </div>
26606     </div>
26607     <div class="padding"></div>
26608
26609     <div class="entry">
26610       <div class="title">
26611         <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>
26612       </div>
26613       <div class="date">
26614         28th February 2009
26615       </div>
26616       <div class="body">
26617         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
26618 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
26619 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
26620 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
26621 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
26622 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
26623 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
26624 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
26625 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
26626 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
26627 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
26628 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
26629 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
26630 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
26631 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
26632 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
26633 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
26634 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
26635 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
26636 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
26637 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
26638 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
26639 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
26640 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
26641 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
26642 machine.</p>
26643
26644 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
26645 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
26646 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
26647 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
26648 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
26649 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
26650 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
26651
26652 <pre>
26653 use LWP::Simple;
26654 use POSIX;
26655 use WWW::Mechanize;
26656 use Date::Parse;
26657 [...]
26658 sub get_support_info {
26659     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
26660     my $str;
26661
26662     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
26663         # fetch website from Dell support
26664         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
26665         my $webpage = get($url);
26666         return undef unless ($webpage);
26667
26668         my $daysleft = -1;
26669         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
26670         foreach my $line (@lines) {
26671             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
26672             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
26673             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
26674
26675             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
26676             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
26677             my $lastend = "";
26678             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
26679                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
26680
26681                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
26682                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
26683                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
26684                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
26685                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
26686                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
26687                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
26688             }
26689             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
26690             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
26691                 if ($lastend lt $today);
26692         }
26693     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
26694         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
26695         my $url =
26696             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
26697         $mech->get($url);
26698         my $fields = {
26699             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
26700             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
26701             'country' => 'NO',
26702             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
26703             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
26704         };
26705         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
26706                             fields      => $fields );
26707         # Next step is screen scraping
26708         my $content = $mech->content();
26709
26710         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
26711         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
26712         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
26713         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
26714
26715         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
26716
26717         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
26718             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
26719                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
26720             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
26721             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
26722                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
26723             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
26724                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
26725
26726             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
26727
26728             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
26729                 if ($end lt $today);
26730         }
26731     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
26732         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
26733         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
26734         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
26735             my $content =
26736                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
26737             if ($content) {
26738                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
26739                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
26740                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
26741                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
26742
26743                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
26744                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
26745
26746                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
26747
26748                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
26749                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
26750                     if ($end lt $today);
26751             }
26752         }
26753     }
26754     return $str;
26755 }
26756 </pre>
26757
26758 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
26759 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
26760 from dmidecode.</p>
26761
26762 <pre>
26763 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
26764                        "447707-B21");
26765 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
26766 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
26767                        "1234567");
26768 </pre>
26769
26770 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
26771 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
26772
26773 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
26774 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
26775 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
26776 do so.</p>
26777
26778       </div>
26779       <div class="tags">
26780
26781
26782         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>.
26783
26784
26785       </div>
26786     </div>
26787     <div class="padding"></div>
26788
26789     <div class="entry">
26790       <div class="title">
26791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
26792       </div>
26793       <div class="date">
26794         20th February 2009
26795       </div>
26796       <div class="body">
26797         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
26798 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
26799 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
26800 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
26801 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
26802 the "missing" computer.</p>
26803
26804 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
26805 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
26806 code blocks as defined in the
26807 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
26808 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
26809 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
26810 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
26811 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
26812 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
26813 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
26814 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
26815 codes.</p>
26816
26817 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
26818 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
26819 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
26820 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
26821 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
26822 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
26823
26824 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
26825 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
26826 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
26827 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
26828 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
26829 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
26830 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
26831 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
26832 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
26833 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
26834
26835 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
26836 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
26837 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
26838
26839       </div>
26840       <div class="tags">
26841
26842
26843         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>.
26844
26845
26846       </div>
26847     </div>
26848     <div class="padding"></div>
26849
26850     <div class="entry">
26851       <div class="title">
26852         <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>
26853       </div>
26854       <div class="date">
26855         17th January 2009
26856       </div>
26857       <div class="body">
26858         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
26859 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
26860 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
26861 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
26862 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
26863 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
26864 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
26865 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
26866 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
26867 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
26868 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
26869 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
26870 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
26871 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
26872
26873 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
26874 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
26875 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
26876 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
26877 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
26878 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
26879 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
26880 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
26881 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
26882 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
26883 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
26884 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
26885 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
26886 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
26887 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
26888 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
26889 playing when the download is done.</p>
26890
26891 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
26892 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
26893 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
26894 too.</p>
26895
26896 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
26897 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
26898 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
26899 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
26900
26901       </div>
26902       <div class="tags">
26903
26904
26905         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
26906
26907
26908       </div>
26909     </div>
26910     <div class="padding"></div>
26911
26912     <div class="entry">
26913       <div class="title">
26914         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
26915       </div>
26916       <div class="date">
26917         28th December 2008
26918       </div>
26919       <div class="body">
26920         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
26921 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
26922 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
26923 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
26924 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
26925 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
26926 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
26927 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
26928 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
26929 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
26930 source, sink and mixer applications and
26931 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
26932 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
26933 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
26934 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
26935 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
26936 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
26937 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
26938 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
26939 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
26940
26941 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
26942 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
26943 larger stick as well.</p>
26944
26945       </div>
26946       <div class="tags">
26947
26948
26949         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>.
26950
26951
26952       </div>
26953     </div>
26954     <div class="padding"></div>
26955
26956     <div class="entry">
26957       <div class="title">
26958         <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>
26959       </div>
26960       <div class="date">
26961          7th December 2008
26962       </div>
26963       <div class="body">
26964         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
26965 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
26966 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
26967 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
26968 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
26969 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
26970 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
26971 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
26972
26973 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
26974 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
26975 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
26976 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
26977 of these cards.</p>
26978
26979       </div>
26980       <div class="tags">
26981
26982
26983         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>.
26984
26985
26986       </div>
26987     </div>
26988     <div class="padding"></div>
26989
26990     <div class="entry">
26991       <div class="title">
26992         <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>
26993       </div>
26994       <div class="date">
26995         25th November 2008
26996       </div>
26997       <div class="body">
26998         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
26999 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
27000 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
27001 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
27002 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
27003 notes are available on
27004 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
27005 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
27006 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
27007 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
27008 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
27009 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
27010 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
27011 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
27012 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
27013
27014 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
27015 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
27016
27017       </div>
27018       <div class="tags">
27019
27020
27021         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>.
27022
27023
27024       </div>
27025     </div>
27026     <div class="padding"></div>
27027
27028     <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>
27029     <div id="sidebar">
27030
27031
27032
27033 <h2>Archive</h2>
27034 <ul>
27035
27036 <li>2016
27037 <ul>
27038
27039 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
27040
27041 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
27042
27043 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
27044
27045 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
27046
27047 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
27048
27049 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
27050
27051 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
27052
27053 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
27054
27055 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
27056
27057 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
27058
27059 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
27060
27061 </ul></li>
27062
27063 <li>2015
27064 <ul>
27065
27066 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
27067
27068 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
27069
27070 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
27071
27072 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
27073
27074 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
27075
27076 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
27077
27078 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
27079
27080 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
27081
27082 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
27083
27084 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
27085
27086 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
27087
27088 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
27089
27090 </ul></li>
27091
27092 <li>2014
27093 <ul>
27094
27095 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
27096
27097 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
27098
27099 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
27100
27101 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
27102
27103 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
27104
27105 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
27106
27107 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
27108
27109 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
27110
27111 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
27112
27113 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
27114
27115 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
27116
27117 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
27118
27119 </ul></li>
27120
27121 <li>2013
27122 <ul>
27123
27124 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
27125
27126 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
27127
27128 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
27129
27130 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
27131
27132 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
27133
27134 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
27135
27136 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
27137
27138 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
27139
27140 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
27141
27142 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
27143
27144 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
27145
27146 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
27147
27148 </ul></li>
27149
27150 <li>2012
27151 <ul>
27152
27153 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
27154
27155 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
27156
27157 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
27158
27159 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
27160
27161 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
27162
27163 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
27164
27165 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
27166
27167 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
27168
27169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
27170
27171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
27172
27173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
27174
27175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
27176
27177 </ul></li>
27178
27179 <li>2011
27180 <ul>
27181
27182 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
27183
27184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
27185
27186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
27187
27188 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
27189
27190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
27191
27192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
27193
27194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
27195
27196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
27197
27198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
27199
27200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
27201
27202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
27203
27204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
27205
27206 </ul></li>
27207
27208 <li>2010
27209 <ul>
27210
27211 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
27212
27213 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
27214
27215 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
27216
27217 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
27218
27219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
27220
27221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
27222
27223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
27224
27225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
27226
27227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
27228
27229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
27230
27231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
27232
27233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
27234
27235 </ul></li>
27236
27237 <li>2009
27238 <ul>
27239
27240 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
27241
27242 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
27243
27244 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
27245
27246 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
27247
27248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
27249
27250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
27251
27252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
27253
27254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
27255
27256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
27257
27258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
27259
27260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
27261
27262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
27263
27264 </ul></li>
27265
27266 <li>2008
27267 <ul>
27268
27269 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
27270
27271 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
27272
27273 </ul></li>
27274
27275 </ul>
27276
27277
27278
27279 <h2>Tags</h2>
27280 <ul>
27281
27282  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
27283
27284  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
27285
27286  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
27287
27288  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
27289
27290  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
27291
27292  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (16)</a></li>
27293
27294  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
27295
27296  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
27297
27298  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (141)</a></li>
27299
27300  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
27301
27302  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
27303
27304  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (16)</a></li>
27305
27306  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (23)</a></li>
27307
27308  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
27309
27310  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (333)</a></li>
27311
27312  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
27313
27314  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
27315
27316  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (29)</a></li>
27317
27318  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
27319
27320  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
27321
27322  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
27323
27324  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
27325
27326  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (13)</a></li>
27327
27328  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
27329
27330  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
27331
27332  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
27333
27334  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
27335
27336  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
27337
27338  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
27339
27340  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (39)</a></li>
27341
27342  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (8)</a></li>
27343
27344  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (283)</a></li>
27345
27346  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (182)</a></li>
27347
27348  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (26)</a></li>
27349
27350  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
27351
27352  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (62)</a></li>
27353
27354  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (95)</a></li>
27355
27356  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
27357
27358  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
27359
27360  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
27361
27362  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
27363
27364  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
27365
27366  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
27367
27368  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (5)</a></li>
27369
27370  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
27371
27372  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (52)</a></li>
27373
27374  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
27375
27376  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
27377
27378  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (49)</a></li>
27379
27380  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (5)</a></li>
27381
27382  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
27383
27384  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (43)</a></li>
27385
27386  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
27387
27388  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
27389
27390  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
27391
27392  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (59)</a></li>
27393
27394  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
27395
27396  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
27397
27398 </ul>
27399
27400
27401     </div>
27402     <p style="text-align: right">
27403  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
27404 </p>
27405
27406   </body>
27407 </html>