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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/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         14th March 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
  32 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
  33 in Debian Edu / Skolelinux, is to update the automount rules in LDAP
  34 and let the automount daemon on the clients take care of the rest.  I
  35 was reminded about the need to document this better when one of the
  36 customers of <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>,
  37 where I am on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The
  38 steps to get this working are the following:</p>
  39
  40 <p><ol>
  41
  42 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
  43 example host here.</li>
  44
  45 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
  46 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
  47
  48 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
  49 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
  50
  51 </ol></p>
  52
  53 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
  54 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
  55 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section etting
  56 started).</p>
  57
  58 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
  59 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
  60
  61 <p><blockquote><pre>
  62 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
  63 Export list for nas-server:
  64 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
  65 root@tjener:~#
  66 </pre></blockquote></p>
  67
  68 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
  69 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
  70 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
  71 NFS access.</p>
  72
  73 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
  74 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
  75 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
  76
  77 <p><blockquote><pre>
  78 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
  79 </pre></blockquote></p>
  80
  81 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
  82 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
  83 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
  84 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
  85
  86 <p><blockquote><pre>
  87 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
  88 objectClass: automount
  89 cn: nas-server
  90 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
  91
  92 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
  93 objectClass: top
  94 objectClass: automountMap
  95 ou: auto.nas-server
  96
  97 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
  98 objectClass: automount
  99 cn: /
 100 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
 101 </pre></blockquote></p>
 102
 103 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
 104 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
 105 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
 106
 107 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
 108 the storage server directly by just visiting the
 109 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
 110 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
 111
 112       </div>
 113       <div class="tags">
 114
 115
 116         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
 117
 118
 119       </div>
 120     </div>
 121     <div class="padding"></div>
 122
 123     <div class="entry">
 124       <div class="title">
 125         <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>
 126       </div>
 127       <div class="date">
 128         22nd February 2014
 129       </div>
 130       <div class="body">
 131         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
 132 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
 133 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
 134 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
 135 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
 136 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
 137 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
 138 proper home since then.</p>
 139
 140 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
 141 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
 142 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
 143 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
 144 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
 145
 146 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
 147 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
 148 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
 149 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
 150 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
 151 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
 152 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
 153 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
 154 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
 155
 156       </div>
 157       <div class="tags">
 158
 159
 160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 161
 162
 163       </div>
 164     </div>
 165     <div class="padding"></div>
 166
 167     <div class="entry">
 168       <div class="title">
 169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
 170       </div>
 171       <div class="date">
 172          3rd February 2014
 173       </div>
 174       <div class="body">
 175         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
 176 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
 177 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
 178 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
 179 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
 180 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
 181 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
 182 <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>,
 183 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
 184
 185 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
 186 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
 187 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
 188 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
 189 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
 190 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
 191
 192 <p><blockquote><pre>
 193 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
 194 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
 195 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
 196 dhclient /dev/eth0
 197 </pre></blockquote></p>
 198
 199 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
 200 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
 201 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
 202
 203 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
 204 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
 205 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
 206 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
 207 side.</p>
 208
 209 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
 210 stuff:</p>
 211
 212 <p><blockquote><pre>
 213 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 214 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
 215 EOF
 216 apt-get update
 217 apt-get dist-upgrade
 218 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
 219     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
 220 update-alternatives --config runsystem
 221 </pre></blockquote></p>
 222
 223 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
 224 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
 225 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
 226 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
 227 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
 228 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
 229 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
 230 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
 231 ssh instead.
 232
 233 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
 234 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
 235 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
 236 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
 237 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
 238 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
 239
 240 <p><blockquote><pre>
 241 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 242 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
 243 EOF
 244 </pre></blockquote></p>
 245
 246 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
 247 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
 248 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
 249 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
 250
 251 <p><blockquote><pre>
 252 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
 253 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
 254 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
 255 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
 256 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
 257 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
 258 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
 259 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
 260 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
 261 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
 262 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
 263 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
 264 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
 265 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
 266 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
 267 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
 268 #
 269 </pre></blockquote></p>
 270
 271 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
 272 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
 273 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
 274 command line stuff.<p>
 275
 276       </div>
 277       <div class="tags">
 278
 279
 280         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>.
 281
 282
 283       </div>
 284     </div>
 285     <div class="padding"></div>
 286
 287     <div class="entry">
 288       <div class="title">
 289         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
 290       </div>
 291       <div class="date">
 292         29th January 2014
 293       </div>
 294       <div class="body">
 295         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
 296 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
 297 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
 298 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
 299 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
 300 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
 301 investigated in
 302 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
 303 from December 2013, in the article
 304 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
 305 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
 306 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
 307 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
 308 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
 309 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
 310 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
 311 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
 312
 313 <p><blockquote>
 314 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
 315 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
 316 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
 317 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
 318 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
 319 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
 320 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
 321 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
 322 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
 323 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
 324 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
 325 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
 326
 327 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
 328 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
 329 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
 330 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
 331 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
 332 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
 333 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
 334 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
 335 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
 336 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
 337 </blockquote><p>
 338
 339 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
 340 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
 341 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
 342 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
 343 summarized like this:</p>
 344
 345 <p><blockquote>
 346 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
 347 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
 348 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
 349 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
 350 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
 351 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
 352 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
 353 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
 354 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
 355 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
 356 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
 357 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
 358 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
 359 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
 360 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
 361 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
 362 </blockquote></p>
 363
 364 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
 365 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
 366 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
 367 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
 368
 369 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 370 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 371 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 372
 373       </div>
 374       <div class="tags">
 375
 376
 377         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>.
 378
 379
 380       </div>
 381     </div>
 382     <div class="padding"></div>
 383
 384     <div class="entry">
 385       <div class="title">
 386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
 387       </div>
 388       <div class="date">
 389         14th January 2014
 390       </div>
 391       <div class="body">
 392         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
 393 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
 394 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
 395 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
 396 the source.  The company behind it provide
 397 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
 398 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
 399 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
 400 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
 401 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
 402 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
 403 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
 404 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
 405 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
 406 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
 407 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
 408 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
 409 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
 410 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
 411 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
 412 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
 413 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
 414 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
 415 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
 416
 417 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
 418
 419 <ul>
 420
 421   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
 422   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
 423   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
 424
 425 </ul>
 426
 427 <p>You can
 428 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 429 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 430 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 431 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 432 include a test suite check.</p>
 433
 434       </div>
 435       <div class="tags">
 436
 437
 438         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>.
 439
 440
 441       </div>
 442     </div>
 443     <div class="padding"></div>
 444
 445     <div class="entry">
 446       <div class="title">
 447         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
 448       </div>
 449       <div class="date">
 450         25th December 2013
 451       </div>
 452       <div class="body">
 453         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 454 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
 455 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
 456 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
 457 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
 458 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
 459 George</a>.</p>
 460
 461 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
 462
 463 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 464
 465 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
 466 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
 467 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
 468 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
 469 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
 470 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
 471
 472 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
 473 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
 474 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
 475 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
 476 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
 477 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
 478 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
 479 to help building another school's informational education concept from
 480 scratch.</p>
 481
 482 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
 483 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
 484 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
 485
 486 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
 487 and cycling.</p>
 488
 489 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 490 project?</strong></p>
 491
 492 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
 493 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
 494 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
 495 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
 496 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
 497 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
 498
 499 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
 500 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
 501 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
 502 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
 503 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
 504 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
 505 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
 506 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
 507 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
 508
 509 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
 510 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
 511 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
 512 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
 513
 514 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 515 Edu?</strong></p>
 516
 517 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
 518 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
 519 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
 520 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
 521 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
 522 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
 523 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
 524 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
 525 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
 526 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
 527 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
 528 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
 529 that it rocks!</p>
 530
 531 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
 532 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
 533 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
 534 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
 535 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
 536 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
 537 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
 538
 539 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 540 Edu?</strong></p>
 541
 542 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
 543 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
 544 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
 545 can list a few points about that:</p>
 546
 547 <ul>
 548
 549  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
 550  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
 551  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
 552
 553 </ul>
 554
 555 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
 556
 557 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 558
 559 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
 560 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
 561 year.</p>
 562
 563 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
 564 run text tools. I use
 565 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
 566 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
 567 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
 568 based full-featured student management software with the two),
 569 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
 570 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
 571 coloured world called the WWW, I use
 572 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
 573 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
 574 e-mail.</p>
 575
 576 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
 577 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
 578 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
 579 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
 580 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
 581 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
 582 Facebook now ;).</p>
 583
 584 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 585 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 586
 587 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
 588 side is what I have experienced.</p>
 589
 590 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
 591 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
 592 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
 593 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
 594 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
 595 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
 596 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
 597 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
 598 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
 599 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
 600 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
 601 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
 602 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
 603 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
 604 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
 605 plain criminal.</p>
 606
 607 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
 608 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
 609 founded an association named
 610 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
 611 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
 612 area of free and open source software, for example the
 613 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
 614 Teckids and are the youth programme of
 615 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
 616 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
 617 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
 618 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
 619 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
 620 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
 621
 622 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
 623 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
 624 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
 625 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
 626 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
 627 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
 628 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
 629 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
 630 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
 631 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
 632 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
 633 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
 634
 635 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
 636 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
 637 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
 638 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
 639
 640 <!--
 641
 642 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
 643
 644 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
 645 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
 646
 647  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
 648    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
 649    of the decision makers above;
 650  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
 651    knowledge about free software
 652
 653 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
 654
 655 -->
 656
 657       </div>
 658       <div class="tags">
 659
 660
 661         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
 662
 663
 664       </div>
 665     </div>
 666     <div class="padding"></div>
 667
 668     <div class="entry">
 669       <div class="title">
 670         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
 671       </div>
 672       <div class="date">
 673          6th December 2013
 674       </div>
 675       <div class="body">
 676         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
 677 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 678 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
 679 had a new school administrator show up on
 680 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
 681 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
 682 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
 683 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
 684 Germany a few years ago.</p>
 685
 686 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 687
 688 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
 689 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
 690 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
 691 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
 692
 693 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
 694 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
 695 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
 696 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
 697 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
 698 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
 699 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
 700 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
 701 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
 702
 703 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 704 project?</strong></p>
 705
 706 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
 707 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
 708 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
 709 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
 710
 711 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 712 Edu?</strong></p>
 713
 714 <ul>
 715   <li>Quick installation,</li>
 716   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
 717   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
 718   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
 719     single company,</li>
 720   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
 721     experience and problem solutions.</li>
 722 </ul>
 723
 724 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 725 Edu?</strong></p>
 726
 727 <ul>
 728   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
 729   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
 730   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
 731   working again reliably.
 732
 733   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
 734   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
 735   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
 736   as their base.
 737
 738   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
 739   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
 740   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
 741   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
 742   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
 743   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
 744
 745   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
 746   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
 747   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
 748   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
 749   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
 750   schemes.</li>
 751
 752   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
 753   compared to Debian.</li>
 754
 755 </ul>
 756
 757 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
 758 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
 759 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
 760 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
 761
 762 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 763
 764 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
 765 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
 766 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
 767 programming languages for teaching.</p>
 768
 769 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 770 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 771
 772 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
 773
 774 <ul>
 775
 776   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
 777     teaching and learning.</li>
 778
 779   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
 780     home, and at their working place without running into license or
 781     conversion problems.</li>
 782
 783   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
 784     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
 785     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
 786     science, not products.</li>
 787
 788   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
 789     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
 790
 791 </ul>
 792
 793       </div>
 794       <div class="tags">
 795
 796
 797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 798
 799
 800       </div>
 801     </div>
 802     <div class="padding"></div>
 803
 804     <div class="entry">
 805       <div class="title">
 806         <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>
 807       </div>
 808       <div class="date">
 809         30th November 2013
 810       </div>
 811       <div class="body">
 812         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
 813 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
 814 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
 815 experiment with interesting network technology, the
 816 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
 817 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
 818 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
 819 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
 820 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
 821 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
 822 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
 823 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
 824 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
 825 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
 826 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
 827 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
 828 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
 829 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
 830 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
 831 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
 832
 833       </div>
 834       <div class="tags">
 835
 836
 837         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>.
 838
 839
 840       </div>
 841     </div>
 842     <div class="padding"></div>
 843
 844     <div class="entry">
 845       <div class="title">
 846         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
 847       </div>
 848       <div class="date">
 849         24th November 2013
 850       </div>
 851       <div class="body">
 852         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
 853 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
 854 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
 855 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
 856 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
 857 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
 858 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
 859 is working on.  I checked the
 860 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
 861 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
 862 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
 863 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
 864 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
 865 These are the release notes:</p>
 866
 867 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
 868
 869 <ul>
 870
 871   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
 872    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
 873    up.</li>
 874
 875   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
 876
 877   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
 878    Matthias Klose.</li>
 879
 880   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
 881    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
 882
 883   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
 884    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
 885    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
 886
 887 </ul>
 888
 889 <p>You can
 890 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 891 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 892 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 893 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 894 include a testsuite check.</p>
 895
 896       </div>
 897       <div class="tags">
 898
 899
 900         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>.
 901
 902
 903       </div>
 904     </div>
 905     <div class="padding"></div>
 906
 907     <div class="entry">
 908       <div class="title">
 909         <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>
 910       </div>
 911       <div class="date">
 912         21st November 2013
 913       </div>
 914       <div class="body">
 915         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
 916 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
 917 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
 918 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
 919 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
 920 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
 921 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
 922 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
 923 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
 924 TED talk
 925 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
 926 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
 927 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
 928
 929 <blockquote>
 930
 931 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
 932 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
 933 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
 934 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
 935 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
 936 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
 937 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
 938 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
 939 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
 940 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
 941 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
 942
 943 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
 944 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
 945 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
 946
 947 </blockquote>
 948
 949 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
 950 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
 951 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
 952 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
 953 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
 954 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
 955 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
 956 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
 957 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
 958
 959       </div>
 960       <div class="tags">
 961
 962
 963         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>.
 964
 965
 966       </div>
 967     </div>
 968     <div class="padding"></div>
 969
 970     <div class="entry">
 971       <div class="title">
 972         <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>
 973       </div>
 974       <div class="date">
 975         13th November 2013
 976       </div>
 977       <div class="body">
 978         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
 979 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
 980 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
 981 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
 982 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
 983 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
 984 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
 985 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
 986 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
 987 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
 988 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
 989 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
 990 right away. :)</p>
 991
 992       </div>
 993       <div class="tags">
 994
 995
 996         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>.
 997
 998
 999       </div>
1000     </div>
1001     <div class="padding"></div>
1002
1003     <div class="entry">
1004       <div class="title">
1005         <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>
1006       </div>
1007       <div class="date">
1008         10th November 2013
1009       </div>
1010       <div class="body">
1011         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
1012 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
1013 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
1014 MR3040 as a mesh node using
1015 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
1016
1017 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
1018 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
1019 and downloaded
1020 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
1021 recommended firmware image</a>
1022 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
1023 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
1024 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
1025 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
1026 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
1027
1028 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
1029 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
1030 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
1031 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
1032 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
1033 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
1034 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
1035 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
1036 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
1037 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
1038 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
1039 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
1040 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
1041
1042 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
1043 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
1044 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
1045 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
1046 them:</p>
1047
1048 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
1049
1050 <pre>
1051
1052 config interface 'loopback'
1053         option ifname 'lo'
1054         option proto 'static'
1055         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
1056         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
1057
1058 config globals 'globals'
1059         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
1060
1061 config interface 'lan'
1062         option ifname 'eth0'
1063         option type 'bridge'
1064         option proto 'dhcp'
1065         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
1066         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
1067         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
1068         option ip6assign '60'
1069
1070 config interface 'mesh'
1071         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1072         option mtu '1528'
1073         option proto 'batadv'
1074         option mesh 'bat0'
1075 </pre>
1076
1077 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
1078 <pre>
1079
1080 config wifi-device 'radio0'
1081         option type 'mac80211'
1082         option channel '11'
1083         option hwmode '11ng'
1084         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
1085         option htmode 'HT20'
1086         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
1087         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
1088         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
1089         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
1090         option disabled '0'
1091
1092 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
1093         option device 'radio0'
1094         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1095         option network 'mesh'
1096         option encryption 'none'
1097         option mode 'adhoc'
1098         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
1099         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
1100 </pre>
1101 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
1102 <pre>
1103
1104 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
1105         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
1106         option 'aggregated_ogms'
1107         option 'ap_isolation'
1108         option 'bonding'
1109         option 'fragmentation'
1110         option 'gw_bandwidth'
1111         option 'gw_mode'
1112         option 'gw_sel_class'
1113         option 'log_level'
1114         option 'orig_interval'
1115         option 'vis_mode'
1116         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
1117         option 'distributed_arp_table'
1118         option 'network_coding'
1119         option 'hop_penalty'
1120
1121 # yet another batX instance
1122 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
1123 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
1124 </pre>
1125
1126 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
1127 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
1128 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
1129
1130       </div>
1131       <div class="tags">
1132
1133
1134         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>.
1135
1136
1137       </div>
1138     </div>
1139     <div class="padding"></div>
1140
1141     <div class="entry">
1142       <div class="title">
1143         <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>
1144       </div>
1145       <div class="date">
1146          2nd November 2013
1147       </div>
1148       <div class="body">
1149         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1150 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
1151 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1152 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1153 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
1154
1155 <p><pre>
1156 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1157 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
1158 # Provides:          rsyslog
1159 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
1160 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
1161 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
1162 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
1163 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
1164 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1165 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1166 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1167 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
1168 ### END INIT INFO
1169 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
1170 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1171 </pre></p>
1172
1173 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1174 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
1175 info/comments.</p>
1176
1177 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
1178 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1179
1180 <p><pre>
1181 #!/bin/sh
1182
1183 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1184 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
1185 # and status_of_proc is working.
1186 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1187
1188 #
1189 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1190
1191 #
1192 do_start()
1193 {
1194         # Return
1195         #   0 if daemon has been started
1196         #   1 if daemon was already running
1197         #   2 if daemon could not be started
1198         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
1199                 || return 1
1200         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
1201                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
1202                 || return 2
1203         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
1204         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
1205         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
1206 }
1207
1208 #
1209 # Function that stops the daemon/service
1210 #
1211 do_stop()
1212 {
1213         # Return
1214         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
1215         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
1216         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
1217         #   other if a failure occurred
1218         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1219         RETVAL="$?"
1220         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
1221         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
1222         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
1223         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
1224         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
1225         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
1226         # sleep for some time.
1227         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
1228         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
1229         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
1230         rm -f $PIDFILE
1231         return "$RETVAL"
1232 }
1233
1234 #
1235 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
1236 #
1237 do_reload() {
1238         #
1239         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
1240         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
1241         # then implement that here.
1242         #
1243         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1244         return 0
1245 }
1246
1247 SCRIPTNAME=$1
1248 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
1249 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
1250 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
1251     script="$1"
1252     shift
1253     . $script
1254 else
1255     exit 0
1256 fi
1257
1258 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
1259 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
1260
1261 # Exit if the package is not installed
1262 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
1263
1264 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
1265 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
1266
1267 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
1268 . /lib/init/vars.sh
1269
1270 case "$1" in
1271   start)
1272         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
1273         do_start
1274         case "$?" in
1275                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1276                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1277         esac
1278         ;;
1279   stop)
1280         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
1281         do_stop
1282         case "$?" in
1283                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1284                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1285         esac
1286         ;;
1287   status)
1288         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
1289         ;;
1290   #reload|force-reload)
1291         #
1292         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
1293         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
1294         #
1295         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
1296         #do_reload
1297         #log_end_msg $?
1298         #;;
1299   restart|force-reload)
1300         #
1301         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
1302         # 'force-reload' alias
1303         #
1304         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
1305         do_stop
1306         case "$?" in
1307           0|1)
1308                 do_start
1309                 case "$?" in
1310                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
1311                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
1312                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
1313                 esac
1314                 ;;
1315           *)
1316                 # Failed to stop
1317                 log_end_msg 1
1318                 ;;
1319         esac
1320         ;;
1321   *)
1322         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
1323         exit 3
1324         ;;
1325 esac
1326
1327 :
1328 </pre></p>
1329
1330 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
1331 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
1332 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
1333 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
1334
1335 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
1336 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
1337 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
1338 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
1339 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
1340
1341       </div>
1342       <div class="tags">
1343
1344
1345         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>.
1346
1347
1348       </div>
1349     </div>
1350     <div class="padding"></div>
1351
1352     <div class="entry">
1353       <div class="title">
1354         <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>
1355       </div>
1356       <div class="date">
1357          1st November 2013
1358       </div>
1359       <div class="body">
1360         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
1361 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
1362 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
1363 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1364 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
1365 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
1366 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1367 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1368 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
1369 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1370 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1371 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
1372
1373 <p>The source is now available from
1374 <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>
1375
1376       </div>
1377       <div class="tags">
1378
1379
1380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1381
1382
1383       </div>
1384     </div>
1385     <div class="padding"></div>
1386
1387     <div class="entry">
1388       <div class="title">
1389         <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>
1390       </div>
1391       <div class="date">
1392         27th October 2013
1393       </div>
1394       <div class="body">
1395         <p>The
1396 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
1397 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
1398 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1399 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1400 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1401 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
1402 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1403 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
1404 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1405 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1406 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1407 Raspberry Pi.</p>
1408
1409 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
1410 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1411 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1412 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1413 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1414 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
1415 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
1416 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
1417 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1418 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
1419 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
1420 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
1421 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1422 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1423 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
1424 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1425 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
1426 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1427 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1428 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
1429 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1430 available from
1431 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
1432 upstream project page</a>.</p>
1433
1434 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1435 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1436 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1437 list:</p>
1438
1439 <p><pre>
1440 #!/bin/sh
1441 set -e # Exit on first error
1442 rootdir="$1"
1443 cd "$rootdir"
1444 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
1445 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1446 EOF
1447 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
1448 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1449 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1450     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1451 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1452 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1453 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1454 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1455 </pre></p>
1456
1457 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1458 to build the image:</p>
1459
1460 <pre>
1461 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1462     --variant minbase \
1463     --arch armel \
1464     --distribution jessie \
1465     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1466     --image test.img \
1467     --size 600M \
1468     --bootsize 64M \
1469     --boottype vfat \
1470     --log-level debug \
1471     --verbose \
1472     --no-kernel \
1473     --no-extlinux \
1474     --root-password raspberry \
1475     --hostname raspberrypi \
1476     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
1477     --customize `pwd`/customize \
1478     --package netbase \
1479     --package git-core \
1480     --package binutils \
1481     --package ca-certificates \
1482     --package wget \
1483     --package kmod
1484 </pre></p>
1485
1486 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
1487 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
1488 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
1489 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
1490 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
1491 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
1492 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
1493
1494 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
1495 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
1496 build dependency list.</p>
1497
1498 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
1499 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
1500 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
1501 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
1502
1503       </div>
1504       <div class="tags">
1505
1506
1507         Tags: <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>.
1508
1509
1510       </div>
1511     </div>
1512     <div class="padding"></div>
1513
1514     <div class="entry">
1515       <div class="title">
1516         <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>
1517       </div>
1518       <div class="date">
1519         21st October 2013
1520       </div>
1521       <div class="body">
1522         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
1523 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
1524 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
1525 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
1526 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
1527 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
1528 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
1529 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
1530
1531 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
1532 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
1533 instead, I started playing with a
1534 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
1535 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
1536 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
1537 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
1538 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
1539 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
1540 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
1541 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
1542 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
1543 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
1544 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
1545 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
1546 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
1547 every client on the local network.</p>
1548
1549 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
1550 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
1551 and a script
1552 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
1553 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
1554 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
1555 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
1556 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
1557 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
1558 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
1559 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
1560 support.</p>
1561
1562 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
1563 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
1564
1565 <p><pre>
1566 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
1567     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
1568 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
1569 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
1570 %
1571 </pre></p>
1572
1573 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
1574 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
1575 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
1576 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
1577 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
1578 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
1579
1580 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
1581 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
1582 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
1583
1584 <p><table>
1585
1586 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
1587 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
1588 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
1589 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
1590 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
1591 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
1592
1593 </table></p>
1594
1595 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
1596 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
1597 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
1598 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
1599 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
1600 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
1601 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
1602
1603       </div>
1604       <div class="tags">
1605
1606
1607         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>.
1608
1609
1610       </div>
1611     </div>
1612     <div class="padding"></div>
1613
1614     <div class="entry">
1615       <div class="title">
1616         <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>
1617       </div>
1618       <div class="date">
1619         19th October 2013
1620       </div>
1621       <div class="body">
1622         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
1623 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
1624 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
1625 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
1626 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
1627 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
1628 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
1629 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
1630
1631       </div>
1632       <div class="tags">
1633
1634
1635         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>.
1636
1637
1638       </div>
1639     </div>
1640     <div class="padding"></div>
1641
1642     <div class="entry">
1643       <div class="title">
1644         <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>
1645       </div>
1646       <div class="date">
1647         15th October 2013
1648       </div>
1649       <div class="body">
1650         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
1651 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
1652 these. :)</p>
1653
1654 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
1655 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
1656 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
1657 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
1658 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
1659 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
1660 hope you will to. :)</p>
1661
1662 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
1663 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
1664 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
1665 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
1666 donated.  Are you next?</p>
1667
1668 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
1669 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
1670 statement under the heading
1671 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
1672 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
1673 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
1674 too.</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/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>.
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/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
1690       </div>
1691       <div class="date">
1692         11th October 2013
1693       </div>
1694       <div class="body">
1695         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
1696 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
1697 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
1698 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
1699 successful examples like
1700 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
1701 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
1702 (see
1703 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
1704 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
1705 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
1706 can be seen from their
1707 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
1708 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
1709 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
1710 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
1711 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
1712
1713 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
1714 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
1715 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
1716 my recent involvement in
1717 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
1718 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
1719 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
1720 when possible, given that most communication between people are
1721 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
1722 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
1723 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
1724 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
1725 important over the years.</p>
1726
1727 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
1728 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
1729 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
1730 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
1731 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
1732 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
1733 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
1734 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
1735 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
1736 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
1737 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
1738 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
1739 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
1740 speakers about this talk (from
1741 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
1742
1743 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
1744
1745 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
1746 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
1747 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
1748 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
1749 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
1750 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
1751 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
1752 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
1753 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
1754 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
1755 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
1756 that project (from
1757 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
1758
1759 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
1760
1761 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
1762 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
1763 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
1764 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
1765 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
1766 based community mesh networks.</p>
1767
1768 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
1769 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
1770 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
1771 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
1772 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
1773 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
1774 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
1775 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
1776 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
1777
1778 <p><table>
1779 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
1780 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
1781 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
1782 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
1783 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
1784 </table></p>
1785
1786 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
1787 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
1788 VillageTelco about
1789 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
1790 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
1791 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
1792 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
1793 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
1794 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
1795
1796 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
1797 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
1798 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
1799 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
1800
1801 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
1802 us on IRC, either channel
1803 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
1804 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
1805 irc.freenode.net.</p>
1806
1807 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
1808 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
1809 and Innovation called
1810 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
1811 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
1812 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
1813 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
1814 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
1815 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
1816 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
1817 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
1818
1819 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
1820 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
1821 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
1822 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
1823 mesh system.</p>
1824
1825       </div>
1826       <div class="tags">
1827
1828
1829         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>.
1830
1831
1832       </div>
1833     </div>
1834     <div class="padding"></div>
1835
1836     <div class="entry">
1837       <div class="title">
1838         <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>
1839       </div>
1840       <div class="date">
1841          8th October 2013
1842       </div>
1843       <div class="body">
1844         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
1845 Salvador had published a
1846 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
1847 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
1848 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
1849 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
1850 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
1851 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
1852 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
1853 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
1854 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
1855 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
1856 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
1857 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
1858 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
1859 computers without hard drives by installing one central
1860 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
1861
1862 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
1863
1864 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1865
1866 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
1867 me know. :)</p>
1868
1869       </div>
1870       <div class="tags">
1871
1872
1873         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
1874
1875
1876       </div>
1877     </div>
1878     <div class="padding"></div>
1879
1880     <div class="entry">
1881       <div class="title">
1882         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
1883       </div>
1884       <div class="date">
1885         29th September 2013
1886       </div>
1887       <div class="body">
1888         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
1889 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
1890 complete announcement text can be found at
1891 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
1892 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
1893
1894 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
1895 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
1896 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
1897 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
1898
1899       </div>
1900       <div class="tags">
1901
1902
1903         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1904
1905
1906       </div>
1907     </div>
1908     <div class="padding"></div>
1909
1910     <div class="entry">
1911       <div class="title">
1912         <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>
1913       </div>
1914       <div class="date">
1915         27th September 2013
1916       </div>
1917       <div class="body">
1918         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
1919 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
1920 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
1921 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
1922
1923 <ul>
1924
1925 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
1926 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
1927
1928 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
1929 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
1930
1931 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
1932 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
1933 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
1934 (Youtube)</li>
1935
1936 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
1937 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
1938
1939 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
1940 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
1941
1942 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
1943 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
1944 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
1945
1946 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
1947 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
1948 (Youtube)</li>
1949
1950 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
1951 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
1952
1953 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
1954 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
1955
1956 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
1957 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
1958 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
1959
1960 </ul>
1961
1962 <p>A larger list is available from
1963 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
1964 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
1965
1966 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
1967 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
1968 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
1969 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
1970 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
1971 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
1972 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
1973 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
1974 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
1975 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1976 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1977
1978       </div>
1979       <div class="tags">
1980
1981
1982         Tags: <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>.
1983
1984
1985       </div>
1986     </div>
1987     <div class="padding"></div>
1988
1989     <div class="entry">
1990       <div class="title">
1991         <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>
1992       </div>
1993       <div class="date">
1994         16th September 2013
1995       </div>
1996       <div class="body">
1997         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1998 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
1999
2000 <blockquote>
2001 <p>Hi,</p>
2002
2003 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
2004 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2005 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
2006
2007 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
2008 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
2009 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
2010 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
2011
2012 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
2013 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
2014
2015 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
2016 compared to beta1:</p>
2017
2018 <ul>
2019
2020 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
2021 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
2022 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
2023 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
2024 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
2025 main server.</li>
2026 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
2027 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
2028 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
2029 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
2030 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
2031
2032 </ul>
2033
2034 <p>Where to get it:</p>
2035
2036 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2037
2038 <ul>
2039 <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>
2040 <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>
2041 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
2042 </ul>
2043
2044 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
2045
2046 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
2047 <ul>
2048 <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>
2049 <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>
2050 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
2051 </ul>
2052
2053 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
2054
2055 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
2056 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
2057 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
2058 as the other isos.</p>
2059
2060 <p>How to report bugs</p>
2061
2062 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
2063 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2064
2065
2066 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
2067
2068 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
2069 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2070 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2071 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2072 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2073 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2074 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2075 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
2076 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2077 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2078 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2079 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
2080 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2081
2082 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2083 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2084 Squeeze release.</p>
2085
2086 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
2087
2088 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2089 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2090 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2091 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2092 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
2093 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
2094 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
2095 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
2096 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
2097 directory.</p>
2098
2099
2100 <p>cheers,
2101 <br>        Holger</p>
2102 </blockquote>
2103
2104       </div>
2105       <div class="tags">
2106
2107
2108         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2109
2110
2111       </div>
2112     </div>
2113     <div class="padding"></div>
2114
2115     <div class="entry">
2116       <div class="title">
2117         <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>
2118       </div>
2119       <div class="date">
2120         10th September 2013
2121       </div>
2122       <div class="body">
2123         <p>I was introduced to the
2124 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
2125 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2126 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2127 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2128 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2129 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2130 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2131 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
2132
2133 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2134 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2135 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2136 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2137 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
2138
2139 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2140 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2141 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2142 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2143 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2144 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
2145 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2146 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2147 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2148 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
2149 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2150 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2151 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2152 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2153 missing in Debian).</p>
2154
2155 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2156 scripts
2157 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
2158 and a administrative web interface
2159 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
2160 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2161 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
2162 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2163 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
2164 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2165 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
2166 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2167 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2168 this is really working yet, see
2169 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2170 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2171 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2172 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2173 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2174 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2175 with lots of half baked features.</p>
2176
2177 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2178 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2179 at.</p>
2180
2181 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
2182
2183 <ol>
2184
2185 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
2186 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
2187 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2188 to the Debian installer:<p>
2189 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
2190
2191 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2192 install on.</li>
2193
2194 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2195 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
2196
2197 </ol>
2198
2199 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
2200
2201 <ol>
2202
2203 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
2204 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
2205 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
2206 <pre>
2207 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
2208 </pre></li>
2209 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
2210 <pre>
2211 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2212    apt-key add -
2213 apt-get update
2214 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2215 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2216 </pre></li>
2217 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
2218
2219 </ol>
2220
2221 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2222 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2223 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2224 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
2225 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
2226
2227 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2228 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2229 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2230 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
2231
2232 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2233 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
2234 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
2235 irc.debian.org and the
2236 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
2237 mailing list</a>.</p>
2238
2239 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2240 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
2241 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2242 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
2243 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
2244 default password is 'secret'.</p>
2245
2246       </div>
2247       <div class="tags">
2248
2249
2250         Tags: <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>.
2251
2252
2253       </div>
2254     </div>
2255     <div class="padding"></div>
2256
2257     <div class="entry">
2258       <div class="title">
2259         <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>
2260       </div>
2261       <div class="date">
2262         22nd August 2013
2263       </div>
2264       <div class="body">
2265         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2266 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
2267 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
2268
2269 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
2270
2271 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2272 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2273
2274 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2275
2276 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2277 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2278 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2279 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2280 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2281 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2282 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2283 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
2284 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2285 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2286 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2287 desktop contains
2288 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2289 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2290 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2291 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2292
2293 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
2294 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
2295 release.</p>
2296
2297 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2298 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2299 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2300 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2301 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
2302 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
2303 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
2304 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
2305 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
2306 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
2307 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
2308
2309 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2310
2311 <ul>
2312
2313 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
2314     work also without a attached tty.</li>
2315 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
2316     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
2317     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
2318     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
2319     required).</li>
2320
2321 </ul>
2322
2323 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2324
2325 <ul>
2326
2327 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
2328 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
2329 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
2330 stick ISO image.</li>
2331 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
2332 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
2333 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
2334     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
2335     cope with this.</li>
2336 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
2337 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
2338     empty password hashes.</li>
2339 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
2340     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
2341     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
2342
2343 </ul>
2344
2345 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2346
2347 <ul>
2348
2349 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2350     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2351 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
2352     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
2353
2354 </ul>
2355
2356 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2357
2358 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2359
2360 <ul>
2361
2362 <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>
2363
2364 <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>
2365
2366 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
2367
2368 </ul>
2369
2370 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
2371 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
2372
2373 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2374
2375 <ul>
2376
2377 <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>
2378 <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>
2379 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
2380
2381 </ul>
2382
2383 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
2384 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
2385
2386
2387 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2388
2389 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2390
2391       </div>
2392       <div class="tags">
2393
2394
2395         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2396
2397
2398       </div>
2399     </div>
2400     <div class="padding"></div>
2401
2402     <div class="entry">
2403       <div class="title">
2404         <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>
2405       </div>
2406       <div class="date">
2407         18th August 2013
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="body">
2410         <p>Earlier, I reported about
2411 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
2412 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
2413 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2414 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2415 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2416 currently on the disk.</p>
2417
2418 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2419 <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>
2420 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2421 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2422 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2423 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2424 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2425 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2426 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2427 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2428 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2429 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2430 the broken disks.</p>
2431
2432       </div>
2433       <div class="tags">
2434
2435
2436         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2437
2438
2439       </div>
2440     </div>
2441     <div class="padding"></div>
2442
2443     <div class="entry">
2444       <div class="title">
2445         <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>
2446       </div>
2447       <div class="date">
2448          2nd August 2013
2449       </div>
2450       <div class="body">
2451         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
2452 have worked on a Norwegian
2453 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2454 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2455 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
2456 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
2457 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
2458 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
2459 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
2460 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
2461 progress of the translation:</p>
2462
2463 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
2464
2465 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
2466 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
2467 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
2468 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
2469 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
2470 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
2471 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
2472 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
2473 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
2474 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
2475 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
2476
2477 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2478 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2479 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2480 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
2481 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
2482 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
2483 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
2484 project files currently available from
2485 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2486
2487 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2488 the updated
2489 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2490 and
2491 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2492 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2493 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2494 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2495
2496       </div>
2497       <div class="tags">
2498
2499
2500         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>.
2501
2502
2503       </div>
2504     </div>
2505     <div class="padding"></div>
2506
2507     <div class="entry">
2508       <div class="title">
2509         <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>
2510       </div>
2511       <div class="date">
2512         27th July 2013
2513       </div>
2514       <div class="body">
2515         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2516 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2517
2518 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
2519 2013-07-27</strong></p>
2520
2521 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2522 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2523
2524 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2525
2526 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2527 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2528 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2529 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2530 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2531 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2532 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2533 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2534 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2535 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2536 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2537 desktop contains
2538 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2539 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2540 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2541 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2542
2543 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2544 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2545 Squeeze release.</p>
2546
2547 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2548 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2549 release.</p>
2550
2551 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2552
2553 <ul>
2554
2555 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
2556    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
2557 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
2558    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
2559    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
2560    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
2561    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
2562 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
2563 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
2564 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
2565    crash bugs.</li>
2566
2567 </ul>
2568
2569 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2570
2571 <ul>
2572
2573 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
2574    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
2575 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
2576    netinst CD.</li>
2577 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
2578    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
2579 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
2580    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
2581    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
2582 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
2583    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
2584    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
2585 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
2586    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
2587    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
2588 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
2589    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
2590 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
2591
2592 </ul>
2593
2594 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2595
2596 <ul>
2597
2598 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
2599 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2600     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2601 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
2602
2603 </ul>
2604
2605 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2606
2607 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2608
2609 <ul>
2610
2611 <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>
2612
2613 <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>
2614
2615 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
2616
2617 </ul>
2618
2619 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
2620 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
2621
2622 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2623
2624 <ul>
2625
2626 <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>
2627 <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>
2628 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
2629
2630 </ul>
2631
2632 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
2633 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
2634
2635
2636 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2637
2638 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2639
2640       </div>
2641       <div class="tags">
2642
2643
2644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2645
2646
2647       </div>
2648     </div>
2649     <div class="padding"></div>
2650
2651     <div class="entry">
2652       <div class="title">
2653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
2654       </div>
2655       <div class="date">
2656         17th July 2013
2657       </div>
2658       <div class="body">
2659         <p>Today I switched to
2660 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
2661 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
2662 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2663 <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
2664 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
2665 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2666 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2667 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2668 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
2669 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2670 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2671 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2672 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2673 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2674 station from now on.</p>
2675
2676 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2677 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2678 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
2679 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2680 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2681 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
2682 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
2683 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
2684 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2685 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2686 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2687 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
2688
2689 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2690 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2691 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2692 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2693 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2694 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2695 parameters are tuned:</p>
2696
2697 <ul>
2698
2699 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2700     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2701
2702 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2703     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2704     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2705
2706 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2707     systems.</li>
2708
2709 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2710     /etc/fstab.</li>
2711
2712 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2713
2714 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2715     cron.daily).</li>
2716
2717 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2718     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2719
2720 </ul>
2721
2722 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2723 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2724 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2725 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2726 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2727 from getting the data on the disk (see
2728 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2729 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2730 right thing to do.</p>
2731
2732 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2733 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2734 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2735
2736 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2737 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2738 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2739 instead of during my work.</p>
2740
2741 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2742 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2743
2744 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2745 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2746 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2747
2748 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2749 there.</p>
2750
2751 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2752 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2753 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2754 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2755 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2756 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2757 back.</p>
2758
2759       </div>
2760       <div class="tags">
2761
2762
2763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2764
2765
2766       </div>
2767     </div>
2768     <div class="padding"></div>
2769
2770     <div class="entry">
2771       <div class="title">
2772         <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>
2773       </div>
2774       <div class="date">
2775         10th July 2013
2776       </div>
2777       <div class="body">
2778         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
2779 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
2780 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
2781 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2782 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
2783 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
2784 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
2785 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
2786
2787 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2788 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
2789 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
2790 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2791 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2792 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
2793 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
2794 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
2795 lock up when I download a new
2796 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
2797 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2798 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
2799
2800 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2801 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2802 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2803 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2804 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2805 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2806
2807 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2808 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
2809 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2810 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2811 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2812 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2813
2814 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2815 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
2816 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2817 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2818 exist).</p>
2819
2820       </div>
2821       <div class="tags">
2822
2823
2824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2825
2826
2827       </div>
2828     </div>
2829     <div class="padding"></div>
2830
2831     <div class="entry">
2832       <div class="title">
2833         <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>
2834       </div>
2835       <div class="date">
2836          9th July 2013
2837       </div>
2838       <div class="body">
2839         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2840 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2841 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2842 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
2843 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2844 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2845 Bitraf</a>.</p>
2846
2847 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2848 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2849 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2850 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2851 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
2852
2853       </div>
2854       <div class="tags">
2855
2856
2857         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>.
2858
2859
2860       </div>
2861     </div>
2862     <div class="padding"></div>
2863
2864     <div class="entry">
2865       <div class="title">
2866         <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>
2867       </div>
2868       <div class="date">
2869          5th July 2013
2870       </div>
2871       <div class="body">
2872         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
2873 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
2874 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
2875 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
2876 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
2877 ended up picking a
2878 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
2879 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
2880 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
2881 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
2882 on that below.</p>
2883
2884 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2885 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2886 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2887 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2888 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2889 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2890 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2891 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
2892 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
2893
2894 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2895 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2896 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2897 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
2898 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2899 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2900 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
2901
2902 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
2903 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
2904
2905 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
2906 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2907 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2908 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2909 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2910 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
2911 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
2912 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2913 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
2914 kernel developers as
2915 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
2916 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
2917 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2918 Lenovo forums, both for
2919 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
2920 2012-11-10</a> and for
2921 <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
2922 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
2923 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
2924 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
2925 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
2926 There is even a
2927 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
2928 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
2929 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
2930
2931 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
2932 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
2933 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
2934 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
2935 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
2936 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
2937 fixed. :)</p>
2938
2939       </div>
2940       <div class="tags">
2941
2942
2943         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2944
2945
2946       </div>
2947     </div>
2948     <div class="padding"></div>
2949
2950     <div class="entry">
2951       <div class="title">
2952         <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>
2953       </div>
2954       <div class="date">
2955          4th July 2013
2956       </div>
2957       <div class="body">
2958         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
2959 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
2960 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
2961 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
2962 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
2963 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
2964 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
2965 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
2966 with an expencive door stop.</p>
2967
2968 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2969 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2970 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2971 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2972 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2973 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
2974 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
2975
2976 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
2977 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
2978 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
2979 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
2980 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
2981 new laptop now. :)</p>
2982
2983 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
2984
2985       </div>
2986       <div class="tags">
2987
2988
2989         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2990
2991
2992       </div>
2993     </div>
2994     <div class="padding"></div>
2995
2996     <div class="entry">
2997       <div class="title">
2998         <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>
2999       </div>
3000       <div class="date">
3001          3rd July 2013
3002       </div>
3003       <div class="body">
3004         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3005 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3006
3007 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
3008 2013-07-03</strong></p>
3009
3010 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3011 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3012
3013 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3014
3015 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3016 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3017 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3018 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3019 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3020 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3021 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3022 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3023 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3024 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3025 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3026 desktop contains
3027 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3028 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3029 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3030 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3031
3032 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3033 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3034 Squeeze release.</p>
3035
3036 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3037 <ul>
3038   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
3039   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
3040     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
3041     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
3042   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
3043     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
3044     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
3045   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
3046     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
3047     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
3048     too.</li>
3049   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
3050     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
3051 </ul>
3052 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3053 <ul>
3054   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
3055   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
3056   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
3057     up for some language options.</li>
3058   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
3059   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
3060   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
3061     d-i is doing it.</li>
3062   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
3063     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
3064   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
3065     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
3066     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
3067   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
3068     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
3069   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
3070   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
3071     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
3072   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
3073     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
3074 </ul>
3075 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3076 <ul>
3077   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3078     available yet (698840).</li>
3079   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
3080 </ul>
3081 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3082
3083 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3084 <ul>
3085   <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>
3086   <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>
3087   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
3088 </ul>
3089
3090 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
3091 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
3092
3093 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3094 <ul>
3095   <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>
3096   <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>
3097   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
3098 </ul>
3099
3100 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
3101 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
3102
3103 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3104
3105 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3106
3107       </div>
3108       <div class="tags">
3109
3110
3111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3112
3113
3114       </div>
3115     </div>
3116     <div class="padding"></div>
3117
3118     <div class="entry">
3119       <div class="title">
3120         <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>
3121       </div>
3122       <div class="date">
3123         25th June 2013
3124       </div>
3125       <div class="body">
3126         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3127 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3128 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3129 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3130 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3131 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3132 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3133 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3134 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3135 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3136 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3137
3138 <p><pre>
3139 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3140 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3141 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3142 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3143 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3144 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3145 firmware-ipw2x00
3146 firmware-ipw2x00
3147 Preconfiguring packages ...
3148 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3149 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3150 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3151 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3152 #
3153 </pre></p>
3154
3155 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3156 printed instead:</p>
3157
3158 <p><pre>
3159 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3160 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3161 #
3162 </pre></p>
3163
3164 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3165 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3166
3167 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3168 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3169 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3170 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3171 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3172 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3173 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3174 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3175 machine.</p>
3176
3177 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3178 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3179 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3180 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3181 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3182 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3183
3184       </div>
3185       <div class="tags">
3186
3187
3188         Tags: <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>.
3189
3190
3191       </div>
3192     </div>
3193     <div class="padding"></div>
3194
3195     <div class="entry">
3196       <div class="title">
3197         <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>
3198       </div>
3199       <div class="date">
3200         22nd June 2013
3201       </div>
3202       <div class="body">
3203         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3204 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
3205 which check that services are running, working, and return the
3206 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
3207 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
3208 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
3209 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
3210 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
3211 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
3212
3213 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
3214 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
3215 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
3216 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
3217 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
3218 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
3219 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
3220 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
3221 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
3222 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
3223 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
3224 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
3225 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
3226 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
3227
3228 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
3229 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
3230 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
3231 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
3232 the problem.</p>
3233
3234 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
3235 please join us on
3236 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3237 irc.debian.org</a> and the
3238 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
3239 list.</p>
3240
3241       </div>
3242       <div class="tags">
3243
3244
3245         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3246
3247
3248       </div>
3249     </div>
3250     <div class="padding"></div>
3251
3252     <div class="entry">
3253       <div class="title">
3254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
3255       </div>
3256       <div class="date">
3257         17th June 2013
3258       </div>
3259       <div class="body">
3260         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
3261 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
3262 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
3263 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
3264 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
3265 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
3266 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
3267 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
3268
3269 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3270
3271 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
3272 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
3273 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
3274 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
3275 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
3276 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
3277 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
3278 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
3279 field.</p>
3280
3281 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
3282 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
3283 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
3284 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
3285 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
3286 the only one we have in our country.</p>
3287
3288 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3289 project?</strong></p>
3290
3291 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
3292 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
3293 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
3294 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
3295 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
3296 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
3297 ways to contribute.</p>
3298
3299 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
3300 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
3301 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
3302 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
3303 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
3304 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
3305 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
3306 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
3307 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
3308 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
3309
3310 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3311 Edu?</strong></p>
3312
3313 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
3314 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
3315 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
3316 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
3317 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
3318 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
3319 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
3320 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
3321
3322 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
3323 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
3324 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
3325 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
3326 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
3327 project.</p>
3328
3329 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3330 Edu?</strong></p>
3331
3332 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
3333 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
3334 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
3335 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
3336 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
3337 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
3338 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
3339 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
3340 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
3341
3342 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
3343 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
3344 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
3345 on.</p>
3346
3347 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3348
3349 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
3350 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
3351 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
3352 Enlightenment project a lot!),
3353 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
3354 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
3355 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
3356 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
3357 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
3358
3359 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3360 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3361
3362 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
3363 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
3364 that:</p>
3365
3366 <ul>
3367
3368 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
3369
3370 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
3371     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
3372     of teenagers more?</li>
3373
3374 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
3375     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
3376     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
3377     them!)</li>
3378
3379 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
3380     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
3381     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
3382
3383 </ul>
3384
3385 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
3386 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
3387 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
3388 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
3389 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
3390
3391       </div>
3392       <div class="tags">
3393
3394
3395         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3396
3397
3398       </div>
3399     </div>
3400     <div class="padding"></div>
3401
3402     <div class="entry">
3403       <div class="title">
3404         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
3405       </div>
3406       <div class="date">
3407         12th June 2013
3408       </div>
3409       <div class="body">
3410         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
3411 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3412 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
3413 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
3414 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
3415 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
3416
3417 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3418
3419 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
3420 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
3421 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
3422
3423 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
3424 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
3425 each other.</p>
3426
3427 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3428 project?</strong></p>
3429
3430 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
3431 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
3432 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
3433 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
3434 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
3435 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
3436 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
3437 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
3438 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
3439 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
3440 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
3441 we'll get there one day.</p>
3442
3443 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3444 Edu?</strong></p>
3445
3446 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
3447 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
3448 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
3449 very high quality work.</p>
3450
3451 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
3452 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
3453 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
3454 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
3455 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
3456
3457 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3458 Edu?</strong></p>
3459
3460 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
3461 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
3462 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
3463
3464 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
3465 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
3466 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
3467 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
3468 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
3469 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
3470 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
3471 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
3472 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
3473 currently.</p>
3474
3475 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
3476 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
3477 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
3478 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
3479 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
3480 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
3481 autonomous.</p>
3482
3483 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3484
3485 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
3486 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
3487 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
3488 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
3489 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
3490
3491 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
3492 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
3493 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
3494 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
3495 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
3496 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
3497 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
3498 X.</p>
3499
3500 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
3501 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
3502 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
3503 it :p)
3504
3505 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3506 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3507
3508 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
3509 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
3510 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
3511 that.</p>
3512
3513 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
3514 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
3515 advantage of that.</p>
3516
3517 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
3518 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
3519 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
3520 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
3521 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
3522 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
3523 best solution for them.</p>
3524
3525 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
3526 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
3527 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
3528
3529       </div>
3530       <div class="tags">
3531
3532
3533         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3534
3535
3536       </div>
3537     </div>
3538     <div class="padding"></div>
3539
3540     <div class="entry">
3541       <div class="title">
3542         <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>
3543       </div>
3544       <div class="date">
3545         11th June 2013
3546       </div>
3547       <div class="body">
3548         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3549 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3550 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3551 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3552 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3553 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3554 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3555 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3556 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3557 i915 driver used by the
3558 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3559 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3560
3561 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3562 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3563 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3564 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3565 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3566
3567 <pre>
3568 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3569 update-initramfs -u -k all
3570 </pre>
3571
3572 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3573 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3574 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3575 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3576 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3577 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3578 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3579 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3580 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3581 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3582 number.</p>
3583
3584 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
3585 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
3586
3587 <p><pre>
3588 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3589     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3590     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3591  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3592  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3593     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3594  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
3595     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
3596  Latency: 0
3597  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3598  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3599  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3600  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3601  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
3602  Capabilities: <access denied>
3603  Kernel driver in use: i915
3604 </pre></p>
3605
3606 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
3607
3608 <p><pre>
3609 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3610        ...
3611         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3612         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3613        ...
3614 }
3615 </pre></p>
3616
3617 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3618 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
3619 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3620 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
3621 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
3622 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3623 yet shown up in
3624 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
3625 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
3626 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3627 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3628 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
3629 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
3630
3631 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3632 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
3633 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
3634 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3635 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
3636 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
3637 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3638 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3639 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3640 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3641 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3642 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
3643
3644 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3645 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3646 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3647 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3648 backlight.</p>
3649
3650       </div>
3651       <div class="tags">
3652
3653
3654         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3655
3656
3657       </div>
3658     </div>
3659     <div class="padding"></div>
3660
3661     <div class="entry">
3662       <div class="title">
3663         <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>
3664       </div>
3665       <div class="date">
3666         10th June 2013
3667       </div>
3668       <div class="body">
3669         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3670 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3671
3672 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
3673 2013-06-10</strong></p>
3674
3675 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
3676 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3677
3678 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3679
3680 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3681 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3682 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3683 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3684 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3685 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3686 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3687 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3688 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3689 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3690 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3691 desktop contains
3692 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3693 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3694 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3695 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3696
3697 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3698 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3699 Squeeze release.</p>
3700
3701 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3702
3703 <ul>
3704
3705 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
3706 <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).
3707 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
3708 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
3709 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
3710
3711 </ul>
3712
3713 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3714
3715 <ul>
3716
3717 <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.
3718 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
3719 <li>New Romanian translation.
3720 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
3721 <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).
3722 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
3723 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
3724 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
3725 <li>More testsuite tests.
3726 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
3727 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
3728
3729 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
3730 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
3731
3732 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
3733 them up with GOsa².</li>
3734
3735 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
3736
3737 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
3738 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
3739 entered password). </li>
3740
3741 </ul>
3742
3743 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3744
3745 <ul>
3746
3747 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
3748
3749 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3750 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
3751 missing import feature).</li>
3752
3753 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
3754
3755 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
3756 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
3757 unfixed.</li>
3758
3759 </ul>
3760
3761 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3762
3763 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3764
3765 <ul>
3766
3767 <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>
3768
3769 <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>
3770
3771 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
3772
3773 </ul>
3774
3775 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
3776 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
3777
3778 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3779
3780 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3781
3782       </div>
3783       <div class="tags">
3784
3785
3786         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3787
3788
3789       </div>
3790     </div>
3791     <div class="padding"></div>
3792
3793     <div class="entry">
3794       <div class="title">
3795         <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>
3796       </div>
3797       <div class="date">
3798          5th June 2013
3799       </div>
3800       <div class="body">
3801         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
3802 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
3803 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
3804 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
3805 the project:
3806
3807 <ol>
3808
3809 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
3810   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
3811   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
3812   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
3813   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
3814
3815 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
3816   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
3817   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
3818   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
3819   #698840</a>.</li>
3820
3821 </ol>
3822
3823 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
3824 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3825 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
3826
3827       </div>
3828       <div class="tags">
3829
3830
3831         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3832
3833
3834       </div>
3835     </div>
3836     <div class="padding"></div>
3837
3838     <div class="entry">
3839       <div class="title">
3840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
3841       </div>
3842       <div class="date">
3843          4th June 2013
3844       </div>
3845       <div class="body">
3846         <p>It has been a while since my last English
3847 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3848 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
3849 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
3850 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
3851 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
3852
3853 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3854
3855 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
3856 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
3857 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
3858 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
3859
3860 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
3861 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
3862 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
3863
3864 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3865 project?</strong></p>
3866
3867 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
3868 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
3869 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
3870 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
3871 manual.
3872
3873 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
3874 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
3875 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
3876 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
3877
3878 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
3879 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
3880 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
3881 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
3882 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
3883 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
3884 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
3885 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
3886 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
3887 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
3888
3889 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
3890 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
3891 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
3892 beautiful project.</p>
3893
3894 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3895 Edu?</strong></p>
3896
3897 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
3898 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
3899 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
3900
3901 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
3902 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
3903 of educational free software.</p>
3904
3905 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3906 Edu?</strong></p>
3907
3908 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
3909 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
3910 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
3911 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
3912 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
3913
3914 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
3915 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
3916 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
3917 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
3918 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
3919 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
3920 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
3921 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
3922
3923 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3924
3925 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
3926 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
3927 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
3928 also using the mathematical software
3929 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
3930 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
3931 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
3932
3933 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
3934 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
3935 statistics?</strong></p>
3936
3937 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
3938 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
3939 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
3940 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
3941
3942 <ul>
3943
3944 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
3945 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
3946 constructions in planar geometry
3947
3948 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
3949 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
3950 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
3951
3952 </ul>
3953
3954 <p>I like also
3955 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
3956 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
3957 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
3958
3959 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3960 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3961
3962 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
3963
3964 <ul>
3965
3966 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
3967
3968 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
3969     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
3970     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
3971
3972 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
3973
3974 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
3975     system.</li>
3976
3977 </ul>
3978
3979       </div>
3980       <div class="tags">
3981
3982
3983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3984
3985
3986       </div>
3987     </div>
3988     <div class="padding"></div>
3989
3990     <div class="entry">
3991       <div class="title">
3992         <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>
3993       </div>
3994       <div class="date">
3995          1st June 2013
3996       </div>
3997       <div class="body">
3998         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3999 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
4000 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
4001 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
4002 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
4003 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
4004 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
4005 program.</p>
4006
4007 <!-- 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 -->
4008
4009 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
4010 <p>
4011 <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>
4012 <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>
4013 <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>
4014 <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>
4015 <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>
4016 <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>
4017 <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>
4018 <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>
4019 <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>
4020 <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>
4021 <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>
4022 <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>
4023 <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>
4024 <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>
4025 </p>
4026
4027 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
4028 <p>
4029 <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>
4030 <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>
4031 <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>
4032 <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>
4033 <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>
4034 <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>
4035 </p>
4036
4037 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
4038 <p>
4039 <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>
4040 </p>
4041
4042 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
4043 <p>
4044 <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>
4045 <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>
4046 <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>
4047 <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>
4048 <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>
4049 <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>
4050 <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>
4051 <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>
4052 <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>
4053 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
4054 <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>
4055 </p>
4056
4057 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
4058 <p>
4059 <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>
4060 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
4061 </p>
4062
4063 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
4064 <p>
4065 <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>
4066 <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>
4067 <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>
4068 </p>
4069
4070 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
4071 <p>
4072 <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>
4073 <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>
4074 <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>
4075 <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>
4076 <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>
4077 </p>
4078
4079 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
4080 <p>
4081 <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>
4082 <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>
4083 <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>
4084 <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>
4085 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
4086 <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>
4087 <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>
4088 <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>
4089 <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>
4090 <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>
4091 <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>
4092 <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>
4093 <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>
4094 <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>
4095 <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>
4096 <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>
4097 <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>
4098 </p>
4099
4100 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
4101 <p>
4102 <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>
4103 <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>
4104 </p>
4105
4106 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
4107 <p>
4108 <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>
4109 <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>
4110 <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>
4111 <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>
4112 <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>
4113 <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>
4114 <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>
4115 <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>
4116 <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>
4117 <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>
4118 </p>
4119
4120 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
4121 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
4122 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
4123 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
4124 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
4125 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
4126 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
4127
4128       </div>
4129       <div class="tags">
4130
4131
4132         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4133
4134
4135       </div>
4136     </div>
4137     <div class="padding"></div>
4138
4139     <div class="entry">
4140       <div class="title">
4141         <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>
4142       </div>
4143       <div class="date">
4144         27th May 2013
4145       </div>
4146       <div class="body">
4147         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4148 <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
4149 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4150 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4151 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4152 and Windows 8.</p>
4153
4154 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4155 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4156 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4157 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4158 enough to tell.</p>
4159
4160 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4161 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4162 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4163 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4164 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4165 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4166 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4167 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4168 to follow.</p>
4169
4170 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4171 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4172 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4173 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4174 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4175 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4176 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4177 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4178
4179 <p>I've updated the
4180 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4181 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4182 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4183 machine.</p>
4184
4185 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4186 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4187
4188       </div>
4189       <div class="tags">
4190
4191
4192         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4193
4194
4195       </div>
4196     </div>
4197     <div class="padding"></div>
4198
4199     <div class="entry">
4200       <div class="title">
4201         <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>
4202       </div>
4203       <div class="date">
4204         25th May 2013
4205       </div>
4206       <div class="body">
4207         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4208 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4209 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4210 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4211 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4212 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4213
4214 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4215 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4216 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4217 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4218 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4219 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4220 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4221 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4222 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4223 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4224
4225 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4226 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4227 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4228 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4229 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4230 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4231
4232 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4233 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4234 on new Laptops?</p>
4235
4236       </div>
4237       <div class="tags">
4238
4239
4240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4241
4242
4243       </div>
4244     </div>
4245     <div class="padding"></div>
4246
4247     <div class="entry">
4248       <div class="title">
4249         <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>
4250       </div>
4251       <div class="date">
4252         17th May 2013
4253       </div>
4254       <div class="body">
4255         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4256 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4257 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4258 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4259 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4260 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4261 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4262 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4263 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4264 donate some money</a>.
4265
4266 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4267 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4268 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4269 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4270 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4271
4272 <p>The script,
4273 <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/>
4274 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4275 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4276 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4277
4278 <ol>
4279
4280 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4281 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4282 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4283     our configuration.</li>
4284 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4285     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4286     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4287     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4288 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4289     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4290 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4291
4292 </ol>
4293
4294 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4295 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4296 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4297 the needed packages.</p>
4298
4299 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4300 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4301 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4302 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4303 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4304 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4305
4306 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4307 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4308 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4309
4310 <p><pre>
4311 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4312 DESKTOP="lxde"
4313 </pre></p>
4314
4315 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4316 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4317 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4318 boot.</p>
4319
4320       </div>
4321       <div class="tags">
4322
4323
4324         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>.
4325
4326
4327       </div>
4328     </div>
4329     <div class="padding"></div>
4330
4331     <div class="entry">
4332       <div class="title">
4333         <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>
4334       </div>
4335       <div class="date">
4336         14th May 2013
4337       </div>
4338       <div class="body">
4339         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4340 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
4341 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4342
4343 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
4344 2013-05-14</strong></p>
4345
4346 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
4347 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
4348 codename "Wheezy".</p>
4349
4350 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4351
4352 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
4353 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4354 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
4355 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4356 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4357 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4358 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
4359 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
4360
4361 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4362 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4363 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4364
4365 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4366 <ul>
4367   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
4368     default.</li>
4369   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
4370   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
4371   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
4372     ibus-anthy.</li>
4373 </ul>
4374
4375 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4376 <ul>
4377
4378   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
4379     reliability improvements.</li>
4380   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
4381     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
4382   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
4383     problems.</li>
4384   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
4385     direct:// URL.</li>
4386   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
4387   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
4388   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
4389   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
4390     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
4391   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
4392     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
4393 </ul>
4394
4395 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4396 <ul>
4397
4398   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
4399     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
4400     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
4401   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
4402   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4403     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
4404   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
4405   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
4406   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
4407     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
4408   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
4409     password submission problem
4410     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
4411
4412 </ul>
4413
4414 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4415
4416 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4417 <ul>
4418
4419   <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>
4420   <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>
4421   <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>
4422
4423 </ul>
4424
4425 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
4426
4427 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
4428
4429 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4430
4431 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4432
4433       </div>
4434       <div class="tags">
4435
4436
4437         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4438
4439
4440       </div>
4441     </div>
4442     <div class="padding"></div>
4443
4444     <div class="entry">
4445       <div class="title">
4446         <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>
4447       </div>
4448       <div class="date">
4449         11th May 2013
4450       </div>
4451       <div class="body">
4452         <P>In January,
4453 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4454 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4455 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4456 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4457 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4458 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4459 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4460 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4461 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4462 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4463 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4464 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4465
4466 <p><table>
4467 <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>
4468 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4469 <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>
4470 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4471 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4472 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4473 <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>
4474 <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>
4475 <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>
4476 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4477 </table></p>
4478
4479 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4480 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4481 available in experimental.</p>
4482
4483 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4484 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4485 for LEGO designers.</p>
4486
4487       </div>
4488       <div class="tags">
4489
4490
4491         Tags: <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>.
4492
4493
4494       </div>
4495     </div>
4496     <div class="padding"></div>
4497
4498     <div class="entry">
4499       <div class="title">
4500         <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>
4501       </div>
4502       <div class="date">
4503          5th May 2013
4504       </div>
4505       <div class="body">
4506         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4507 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4508 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4509 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4510 soon.</p>
4511
4512 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4513 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4514 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4515 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4516 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4517 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4518 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4519 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4520 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4521 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4522 Edu.</a>
4523
4524 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4525 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4526 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4527 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4528 follow.<p>
4529
4530       </div>
4531       <div class="tags">
4532
4533
4534         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>.
4535
4536
4537       </div>
4538     </div>
4539     <div class="padding"></div>
4540
4541     <div class="entry">
4542       <div class="title">
4543         <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>
4544       </div>
4545       <div class="date">
4546         26th April 2013
4547       </div>
4548       <div class="body">
4549         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
4550 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
4551 announcement:</p>
4552
4553 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
4554 2013-04-26</strong></p>
4555
4556 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
4557 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4558
4559 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4560
4561 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4562 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4563 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4564 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
4565 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4566 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4567 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4568 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4569 installed via the network.</p>
4570
4571 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4572 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4573 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4574
4575 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4576
4577 <ul>
4578 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
4579   <ul>
4580      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
4581      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
4582          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
4583          manual.)</li>
4584      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
4585      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
4586      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
4587      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
4588      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
4589      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
4590      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
4591      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
4592      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
4593      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
4594      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
4595      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
4596          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
4597          manual</a> for more details.</li>
4598      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
4599          installation.</li>
4600      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
4601          <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>
4602   </ul></li>
4603 </ul>
4604
4605 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
4606 <ul>
4607 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
4608     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
4609     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
4610 </ul>
4611
4612 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
4613 <ul>
4614 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
4615     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
4616     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
4617 </ul>
4618
4619 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4620 <ul>
4621 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
4622     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
4623     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
4624 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
4625     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
4626     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
4627 </ul>
4628
4629 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
4630 <ul>
4631 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
4632     yet.</li>
4633 </ul>
4634
4635 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
4636
4637 <ul>
4638 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
4639     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
4640     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
4641 </ul>
4642
4643 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4644
4645 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
4646 <ul>
4647 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
4648 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
4649 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
4650 </ul>
4651
4652 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
4653
4654 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
4655
4656 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4657
4658 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4659
4660       </div>
4661       <div class="tags">
4662
4663
4664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4665
4666
4667       </div>
4668     </div>
4669     <div class="padding"></div>
4670
4671     <div class="entry">
4672       <div class="title">
4673         <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>
4674       </div>
4675       <div class="date">
4676         16th April 2013
4677       </div>
4678       <div class="body">
4679         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
4680 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
4681 Details about the gathering can be found
4682 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
4683 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
4684 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
4685 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
4686 weekend.</p>
4687
4688 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
4689 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
4690 Edu release.</p>
4691
4692 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
4693
4694       </div>
4695       <div class="tags">
4696
4697
4698         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4699
4700
4701       </div>
4702     </div>
4703     <div class="padding"></div>
4704
4705     <div class="entry">
4706       <div class="title">
4707         <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>
4708       </div>
4709       <div class="date">
4710          3rd April 2013
4711       </div>
4712       <div class="body">
4713         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4714 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4715 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4716 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4717
4718 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4719 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4720 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4721 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4722 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4723 BTS. :)</p>
4724
4725       </div>
4726       <div class="tags">
4727
4728
4729         Tags: <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>.
4730
4731
4732       </div>
4733     </div>
4734     <div class="padding"></div>
4735
4736     <div class="entry">
4737       <div class="title">
4738         <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>
4739       </div>
4740       <div class="date">
4741         26th March 2013
4742       </div>
4743       <div class="body">
4744         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
4745 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
4746 font you use when printing.</p>
4747
4748 <p>Three years ago,
4749 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
4750 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
4751 changed their default front from
4752 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
4753 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
4754 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
4755 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
4756 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
4757 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
4758 prints.</p>
4759
4760 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
4761 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
4762 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
4763 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
4764 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
4765 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
4766 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
4767 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
4768 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
4769 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
4770 depend on the documents printed.</p>
4771
4772 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
4773 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
4774 and save some money in the process.</p>
4775
4776 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
4777 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
4778 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
4779 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
4780 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
4781 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
4782 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
4783 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
4784 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
4785
4786       </div>
4787       <div class="tags">
4788
4789
4790         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4791
4792
4793       </div>
4794     </div>
4795     <div class="padding"></div>
4796
4797     <div class="entry">
4798       <div class="title">
4799         <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>
4800       </div>
4801       <div class="date">
4802         24th March 2013
4803       </div>
4804       <div class="body">
4805         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
4806 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
4807 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
4808 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
4809 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
4810 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
4811 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
4812 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
4813 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
4814 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
4815 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
4816 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
4817
4818 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
4819 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
4820 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
4821 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
4822 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
4823 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
4824 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
4825 all I had to do was to use the
4826 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
4827 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
4828 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
4829 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
4830 xsltproc/fop (aka
4831 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
4832 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
4833 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
4834 technical detail.</p>
4835
4836 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
4837 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
4838 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
4839 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
4840 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
4841 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
4842
4843 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
4844 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
4845 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
4846 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
4847 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
4848 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
4849 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
4850 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
4851 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
4852
4853 <p><blockquote><pre>
4854 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4855 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4856   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4857     &lt;hr/&gt;
4858   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4859 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4860 </pre></blockquote></p>
4861
4862 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
4863
4864 <p><blockquote><pre>
4865 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4866 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4867   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4868     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
4869       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
4870     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
4871   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4872 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4873 </pre></blockquote></p>
4874
4875 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
4876 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
4877 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
4878 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
4879 enough.</p>
4880
4881 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
4882 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
4883 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
4884 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
4885 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
4886 look like this:</p>
4887
4888 <p><blockquote><pre>
4889 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4890 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4891   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
4892     &lt;br/&gt;
4893   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4894 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4895 </pre></blockquote></p>
4896
4897 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
4898
4899 <p><blockquote><pre>
4900 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4901 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
4902   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
4903   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
4904     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
4905   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4906 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4907 </pre></blockquote></p>
4908
4909 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
4910 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
4911 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
4912 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
4913 page.</p>
4914
4915 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
4916 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
4917 github</a>
4918 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
4919 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
4920 days.</p>
4921
4922       </div>
4923       <div class="tags">
4924
4925
4926         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>.
4927
4928
4929       </div>
4930     </div>
4931     <div class="padding"></div>
4932
4933     <div class="entry">
4934       <div class="title">
4935         <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>
4936       </div>
4937       <div class="date">
4938         17th March 2013
4939       </div>
4940       <div class="body">
4941         <p>Via
4942 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
4943 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
4944 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
4945 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
4946 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
4947 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
4948 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
4949
4950 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
4951 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
4952
4953 <blockquote>
4954 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
4955 </blockquote>
4956
4957 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
4958
4959 <blockquote>
4960 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
4961 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
4962 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
4963 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
4964 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
4965 </blockquote>
4966
4967 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
4968 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
4969 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
4970 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
4971
4972 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
4973 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
4974
4975 <blockquote>
4976 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
4977 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
4978 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
4979 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
4980 </blockquote>
4981
4982 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
4983 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
4984 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
4985 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
4986 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
4987
4988 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
4989 embedding:</p>
4990
4991 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
4992
4993       </div>
4994       <div class="tags">
4995
4996
4997         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4998
4999
5000       </div>
5001     </div>
5002     <div class="padding"></div>
5003
5004     <div class="entry">
5005       <div class="title">
5006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
5007       </div>
5008       <div class="date">
5009          8th March 2013
5010       </div>
5011       <div class="body">
5012         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
5013 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5014 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
5015 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
5016 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
5017 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
5018 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
5019
5020 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
5021
5022 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
5023 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
5024
5025 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
5026 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
5027 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
5028 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
5029 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
5030 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
5031
5032 <p>Images are available for download at
5033 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
5034
5035 <p>md5sums:
5036 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5037 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5038 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5039
5040 <p>sha1sums:
5041 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5042 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5043 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5044
5045 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
5046
5047 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
5048 2013-03-03:</p>
5049
5050 <ul>
5051   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
5052   <ul>
5053         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
5054         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
5055   </ul></li>
5056   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
5057   <ul>
5058         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
5059         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
5060   </ul></li>
5061   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
5062      <ul>
5063         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
5064         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
5065         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
5066                 Closes: #664596</li>
5067         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
5068                 Closes: #664976</li>
5069         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
5070            <ul>
5071                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
5072                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
5073            </ul></li>
5074         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
5075            <ul>
5076                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
5077                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
5078                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
5079                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
5080                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
5081            </ul></li>
5082         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
5083     </ul>
5084   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
5085     <ul>
5086         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
5087     </ul></li>
5088 </ul>
5089
5090 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
5091 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
5092 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
5093 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
5094
5095 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
5096 mailinglist
5097 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
5098 </p></blockquote>
5099
5100 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
5101
5102       </div>
5103       <div class="tags">
5104
5105
5106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</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___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
5116       </div>
5117       <div class="date">
5118          3rd March 2013
5119       </div>
5120       <div class="body">
5121         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
5122 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
5123 support using
5124 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
5125 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
5126 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
5127 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
5128 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
5129 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
5130 using the GNU LGPL, and
5131 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
5132
5133 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
5134 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
5135 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
5136 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
5137 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
5138 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
5139
5140 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
5141 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
5142 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
5143 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
5144 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
5145 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
5146 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
5147 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
5148 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
5149 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
5150 signal distribution is handled using
5151 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
5152 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
5153 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
5154 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
5155 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
5156 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
5157 them up a bit more first.</p>
5158
5159 <p>The development is coordinated on the
5160 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
5161 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
5162 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
5163 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
5164 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
5165 development.</p>
5166
5167       </div>
5168       <div class="tags">
5169
5170
5171         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>.
5172
5173
5174       </div>
5175     </div>
5176     <div class="padding"></div>
5177
5178     <div class="entry">
5179       <div class="title">
5180         <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>
5181       </div>
5182       <div class="date">
5183         27th February 2013
5184       </div>
5185       <div class="body">
5186         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
5187 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
5188 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
5189 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
5190 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
5191 (where I am the chair of the board) and
5192 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
5193 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
5194 GNU», with this description:
5195
5196 <p><blockquote>
5197 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
5198 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
5199 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
5200 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
5201 </blockquote></p>
5202
5203 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
5204 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
5205 am really curious how many will show up.  See
5206 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
5207 page</a> for the location details.</p>
5208
5209       </div>
5210       <div class="tags">
5211
5212
5213         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>.
5214
5215
5216       </div>
5217     </div>
5218     <div class="padding"></div>
5219
5220     <div class="entry">
5221       <div class="title">
5222         <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>
5223       </div>
5224       <div class="date">
5225         15th February 2013
5226       </div>
5227       <div class="body">
5228         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
5229 now a great source of free maps available from
5230 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
5231 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
5232 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
5233 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
5234 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
5235 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
5236 page for descriptions).</p>
5237
5238 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
5239 map you can just edit the
5240 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
5241 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
5242
5243       </div>
5244       <div class="tags">
5245
5246
5247         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>.
5248
5249
5250       </div>
5251     </div>
5252     <div class="padding"></div>
5253
5254     <div class="entry">
5255       <div class="title">
5256         <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>
5257       </div>
5258       <div class="date">
5259         12th February 2013
5260       </div>
5261       <div class="body">
5262         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
5263 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
5264 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
5265 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
5266 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
5267 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
5268 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
5269 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
5270 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
5271 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
5272 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
5273 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
5274 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
5275 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
5276 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
5277 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
5278
5279 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
5280 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
5281 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
5282 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
5283 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
5284 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
5285 fields:</p>
5286
5287 <p><pre>
5288 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
5289 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
5290 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
5291 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
5292 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
5293 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
5294 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
5295 </pre></p>
5296
5297 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
5298 answer regarding
5299 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
5300 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
5301 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
5302 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
5303
5304 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
5305
5306 <p><pre>
5307 BEGIN:VCARD
5308 VERSION:2.1
5309 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
5310 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
5311 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
5312 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
5313 REV:20130212T095000Z
5314 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
5315 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
5316 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
5317 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
5318 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
5319 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
5320 END:VCARD
5321 </pre></p>
5322
5323 <p>The resulting QR code created using
5324 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
5325 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
5326 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
5327 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
5328 system.</p>
5329
5330 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
5331
5332 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
5333 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
5334 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
5335 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
5336
5337 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
5338 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
5339
5340       </div>
5341       <div class="tags">
5342
5343
5344         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>.
5345
5346
5347       </div>
5348     </div>
5349     <div class="padding"></div>
5350
5351     <div class="entry">
5352       <div class="title">
5353         <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>
5354       </div>
5355       <div class="date">
5356         10th February 2013
5357       </div>
5358       <div class="body">
5359         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
5360
5361 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
5362 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
5363 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
5364 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
5365 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
5366 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
5367 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
5368 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
5369 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
5370 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
5371 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
5372
5373 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
5374 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
5375 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
5376 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
5377 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
5378 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
5379 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
5380 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
5381 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
5382 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
5383 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
5384 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
5385 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
5386 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
5387 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
5388 ones own
5389 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
5390 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
5391 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
5392 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
5393 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
5394 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
5395 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
5396 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
5397 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
5398 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
5399 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
5400
5401 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
5402 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
5403 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
5404 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
5405 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
5406 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
5407
5408 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
5409 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
5410 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
5411
5412       </div>
5413       <div class="tags">
5414
5415
5416         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5417
5418
5419       </div>
5420     </div>
5421     <div class="padding"></div>
5422
5423     <div class="entry">
5424       <div class="title">
5425         <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>
5426       </div>
5427       <div class="date">
5428          2nd February 2013
5429       </div>
5430       <div class="body">
5431         <p>My
5432 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
5433 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
5434 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
5435 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
5436 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
5437 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
5438 version too.</p>
5439
5440 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
5441 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
5442 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
5443 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
5444 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
5445 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
5446 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
5447 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
5448
5449 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
5450 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
5451 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
5452 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
5453 it. :)</p>
5454
5455 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5456 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5457 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5458
5459       </div>
5460       <div class="tags">
5461
5462
5463         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>.
5464
5465
5466       </div>
5467     </div>
5468     <div class="padding"></div>
5469
5470     <div class="entry">
5471       <div class="title">
5472         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
5473       </div>
5474       <div class="date">
5475         22nd January 2013
5476       </div>
5477       <div class="body">
5478         <p>Yesterday, I
5479 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
5480 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
5481 pluggable hardware devices, which I
5482 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
5483 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
5484 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
5485 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
5486 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
5487 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
5488 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
5489 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
5490 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
5491 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
5492
5493 <pre>
5494 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
5495 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
5496 </pre>
5497
5498 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
5499 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
5500 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
5501 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
5502
5503 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
5504 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
5505 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
5506 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
5507 word.</p>
5508
5509 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
5510 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
5511 process.</p>
5512
5513 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
5514 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
5515
5516       </div>
5517       <div class="tags">
5518
5519
5520         Tags: <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>.
5521
5522
5523       </div>
5524     </div>
5525     <div class="padding"></div>
5526
5527     <div class="entry">
5528       <div class="title">
5529         <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>
5530       </div>
5531       <div class="date">
5532         21st January 2013
5533       </div>
5534       <div class="body">
5535         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
5536 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
5537 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
5538 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
5539 it, fetch the
5540 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
5541 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
5542 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
5543 autostart script.</p>
5544
5545 <p>The design is simple:</p>
5546
5547 <ul>
5548
5549 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
5550 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
5551
5552 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
5553 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
5554 initially did.</li>
5555
5556 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
5557 the APT database, a database
5558 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
5559 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
5560
5561 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
5562 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
5563 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
5564 package or packages.</li>
5565
5566 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
5567 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
5568
5569 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
5570 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
5571
5572 </ul>
5573
5574 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
5575 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
5576 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
5577 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
5578
5579 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
5580 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
5581 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
5582 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
5583 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
5584
5585 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
5586 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
5587 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
5588 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
5589 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
5590 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
5591 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
5592 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
5593
5594 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
5595 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
5596 '<tt>svn checkout
5597 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
5598 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
5599 devscripts package.</p>
5600
5601 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
5602 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
5603 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
5604 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
5605 instructions</a> for details.</p>
5606
5607       </div>
5608       <div class="tags">
5609
5610
5611         Tags: <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>.
5612
5613
5614       </div>
5615     </div>
5616     <div class="padding"></div>
5617
5618     <div class="entry">
5619       <div class="title">
5620         <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>
5621       </div>
5622       <div class="date">
5623         19th January 2013
5624       </div>
5625       <div class="body">
5626         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
5627 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
5628 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
5629 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
5630 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
5631 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
5632 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
5633 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
5634 not a durable solution.
5635
5636 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
5637 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
5638
5639 <ul>
5640
5641 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
5642   than A4).</li>
5643 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
5644 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
5645 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
5646 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
5647 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
5648 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
5649 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
5650 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
5651 size).</li>
5652 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
5653   X.org packages.</li>
5654 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
5655   the time).
5656
5657 </ul>
5658
5659 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
5660 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
5661 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
5662 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
5663 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
5664 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
5665 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
5666 still be useful.</p>
5667
5668 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
5669 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
5670 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
5671 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
5672 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
5673 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
5674
5675       </div>
5676       <div class="tags">
5677
5678
5679         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5680
5681
5682       </div>
5683     </div>
5684     <div class="padding"></div>
5685
5686     <div class="entry">
5687       <div class="title">
5688         <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>
5689       </div>
5690       <div class="date">
5691         18th January 2013
5692       </div>
5693       <div class="body">
5694         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
5695 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
5696 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
5697 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
5698 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
5699 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
5700 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
5701
5702 <pre>
5703 #!/usr/bin/python
5704 import sys
5705 import apt
5706 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5707     cache = apt.Cache()
5708     cache.open(None)
5709     thepkgs = []
5710     for pkg in cache:
5711         version = pkg.candidate
5712         if version is None:
5713             version = pkg.installed
5714         if version is None:
5715             continue
5716         record = version.record
5717         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
5718             continue
5719         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
5720         for t in mime_types:
5721             t = t.rstrip().strip()
5722             if t == mimetype:
5723                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
5724     return thepkgs
5725 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
5726 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
5727     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
5728 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
5729 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5730     print "  %s" %pkg
5731 </pre>
5732
5733 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
5734
5735 <pre>
5736 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
5737 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
5738   gecko-mediaplayer
5739 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
5740 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
5741   browser-plugin-gnash
5742 %
5743 </pre>
5744
5745 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
5746 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
5747 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
5748 anyone working on adding it?</p>
5749
5750 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
5751 request for icweasel support for this feature is
5752 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
5753 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
5754 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
5755 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
5756
5757       </div>
5758       <div class="tags">
5759
5760
5761         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5762
5763
5764       </div>
5765     </div>
5766     <div class="padding"></div>
5767
5768     <div class="entry">
5769       <div class="title">
5770         <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>
5771       </div>
5772       <div class="date">
5773         16th January 2013
5774       </div>
5775       <div class="body">
5776         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
5777 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
5778 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
5779 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
5780 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
5781 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
5782 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
5783 downloaded by the browser.</p>
5784
5785 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
5786 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
5787 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
5788 can be found on the
5789 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
5790 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
5791 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
5792 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
5793 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
5794
5795 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
5796
5797 <pre>
5798   count MIME type
5799   ----- -----------------------
5800      32 text/plain
5801      30 audio/mpeg
5802      29 image/png
5803      28 image/jpeg
5804      27 application/ogg
5805      26 audio/x-mp3
5806      25 image/tiff
5807      25 image/gif
5808      22 image/bmp
5809      22 audio/x-wav
5810      20 audio/x-flac
5811      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5812      18 video/x-ms-asf
5813      18 audio/x-musepack
5814      18 audio/x-mpeg
5815      18 application/x-ogg
5816      17 video/mpeg
5817      17 audio/x-scpls
5818      17 audio/ogg
5819      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5820 </pre>
5821
5822 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
5823
5824 <pre>
5825   count MIME type
5826   ----- -----------------------
5827      33 text/plain
5828      32 image/png
5829      32 image/jpeg
5830      29 audio/mpeg
5831      27 image/gif
5832      26 image/tiff
5833      26 application/ogg
5834      25 audio/x-mp3
5835      22 image/bmp
5836      21 audio/x-wav
5837      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5838      19 audio/x-mpeg
5839      18 video/mpeg
5840      18 audio/x-scpls
5841      18 audio/x-flac
5842      18 application/x-ogg
5843      17 video/x-ms-asf
5844      17 text/html
5845      17 audio/x-musepack
5846      16 image/x-xbitmap
5847 </pre>
5848
5849 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
5850
5851 <pre>
5852   count MIME type
5853   ----- -----------------------
5854      31 text/plain
5855      31 image/png
5856      31 image/jpeg
5857      29 audio/mpeg
5858      28 application/ogg
5859      27 image/gif
5860      26 image/tiff
5861      26 audio/x-mp3
5862      23 audio/x-wav
5863      22 image/bmp
5864      21 audio/x-flac
5865      20 audio/x-mpegurl
5866      19 audio/x-mpeg
5867      18 video/x-ms-asf
5868      18 video/mpeg
5869      18 audio/x-scpls
5870      18 application/x-ogg
5871      17 audio/x-musepack
5872      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5873      16 video/x-msvideo
5874 </pre>
5875
5876 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
5877 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
5878 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
5879 issues.</p>
5880
5881 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
5882 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
5883
5884       </div>
5885       <div class="tags">
5886
5887
5888         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5889
5890
5891       </div>
5892     </div>
5893     <div class="padding"></div>
5894
5895     <div class="entry">
5896       <div class="title">
5897         <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>
5898       </div>
5899       <div class="date">
5900         15th January 2013
5901       </div>
5902       <div class="body">
5903         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5904 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5905 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
5906 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5907 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5908 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5909 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5910 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5911 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5912 packages.</p>
5913
5914 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5915 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5916 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5917 modalias.</p>
5918
5919 <p><blockquote>
5920 Package: package-name
5921 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
5922 </blockquote></p>
5923
5924 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5925 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
5926
5927 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5928 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
5929
5930 <p><blockquote>
5931 Package: cheese
5932 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
5933 </blockquote></p>
5934
5935 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5936 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
5937
5938 <p><blockquote>
5939 Package: pcmciautils
5940 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5941 </blockquote></p>
5942
5943 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5944 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
5945
5946 <p><blockquote>
5947 Package: colorhug-client
5948 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
5949 </blockquote></p>
5950
5951 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5952 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5953 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
5954
5955 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5956 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5957 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5958 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5959 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
5960 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5961 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
5962 Raring.</p>
5963
5964 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5965 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5966 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
5967 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
5968 try the
5969 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
5970 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5971 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5972 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
5973
5974 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5975 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
5976
5977 <p><blockquote>
5978 % ./hw-support-lookup
5979 <br>yubikey-personalization
5980 <br>%
5981 </blockquote></p>
5982
5983 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5984 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
5985
5986 <p><blockquote>
5987 % ./hw-support-lookup
5988 <br>pcmciautils
5989 <br>%
5990 </blockquote></p>
5991
5992 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5993 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5994 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5995
5996 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5997 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5998 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5999 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
6000 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
6001 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
6002 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
6003 see if it work.</p>
6004
6005 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6006 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6007 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6008 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6009
6010       </div>
6011       <div class="tags">
6012
6013
6014         Tags: <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>.
6015
6016
6017       </div>
6018     </div>
6019     <div class="padding"></div>
6020
6021     <div class="entry">
6022       <div class="title">
6023         <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>
6024       </div>
6025       <div class="date">
6026         14th January 2013
6027       </div>
6028       <div class="body">
6029         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
6030 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
6031 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
6032 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
6033 in
6034 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6035 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
6036
6037 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
6038
6039 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
6040 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
6041 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
6042 &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;,
6043 &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
6044 &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;.
6045
6046 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
6047 this shell script:</p>
6048
6049 <pre>
6050 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
6051 </pre>
6052
6053 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
6054 using modinfo:</p>
6055
6056 <pre>
6057 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
6058 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
6059 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
6060 %
6061 </pre>
6062
6063 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
6064
6065 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
6066 Bridge memory controller:</p>
6067
6068 <p><blockquote>
6069 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
6070 </blockquote></p>
6071
6072 <p>This represent these values:</p>
6073
6074 <pre>
6075  v   00008086  (vendor)
6076  d   00002770  (device)
6077  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
6078  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
6079  bc  06        (bus class)
6080  sc  00        (bus subclass)
6081  i   00        (interface)
6082 </pre>
6083
6084 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
6085 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
6086 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
6087 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
6088
6089 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
6090 means.</p>
6091
6092 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
6093
6094 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
6095 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
6096
6097 <p><blockquote>
6098 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
6099 </blockquote></p>
6100
6101 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
6102
6103 <pre>
6104  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
6105  p    0001  (device product)
6106  d    0206  (bcddevice)
6107  dc     09  (device class)
6108  dsc    00  (device subclass)
6109  dp     00  (device protocol)
6110  ic     09  (interface class)
6111  isc    00  (interface subclass)
6112  ip     00  (interface protocol)
6113 </pre>
6114
6115 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
6116 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
6117 these alias entries show up:</p>
6118
6119 <p><blockquote>
6120 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
6121 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
6122 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
6123 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
6124 </blockquote></p>
6125
6126 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
6127 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
6128 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
6129
6130 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
6131
6132 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
6133 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
6134
6135 <p><blockquote>
6136 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6137 </blockquote></p>
6138
6139 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
6140
6141 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
6142
6143 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
6144 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
6145 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
6146
6147 <p><blockquote>
6148 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
6149 </blockquote></p>
6150
6151 <p>The values present are</p>
6152
6153 <pre>
6154  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
6155  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
6156  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
6157  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
6158  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
6159  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
6160  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
6161  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
6162  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
6163  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
6164  ct   10             (chassis type)
6165  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
6166 </pre>
6167
6168 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
6169 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
6170
6171 <pre>
6172   3 Desktop
6173   4 Low Profile Desktop
6174   5 Pizza Box
6175   6 Mini Tower
6176   7 Tower
6177   8 Portable
6178   9 Laptop
6179  10 Notebook
6180  11 Hand Held
6181  12 Docking Station
6182  13 All In One
6183  14 Sub Notebook
6184  15 Space-saving
6185  16 Lunch Box
6186  17 Main Server Chassis
6187  18 Expansion Chassis
6188  19 Sub Chassis
6189  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
6190  21 Peripheral Chassis
6191  22 RAID Chassis
6192  23 Rack Mount Chassis
6193  24 Sealed-case PC
6194  25 Multi-system
6195  26 CompactPCI
6196  27 AdvancedTCA
6197  28 Blade
6198  29 Blade Enclosing
6199 </pre>
6200
6201 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
6202 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
6203 claim it is a desktop.</p>
6204
6205 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
6206
6207 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
6208 test machine:</p>
6209
6210 <p><blockquote>
6211 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
6212 </blockquote></p>
6213
6214 <p>The values present are</p>
6215
6216 <pre>
6217   ty  01  (type)
6218   pr  00  (prototype)
6219   id  00  (id)
6220   ex  00  (extra)
6221 </pre>
6222
6223 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
6224 the valid values are.</p>
6225
6226 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
6227
6228 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
6229 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
6230 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
6231 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
6232 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
6233 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
6234 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
6235
6236 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
6237
6238 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
6239 one can use the following shell script:</p>
6240
6241 <pre>
6242   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
6243     echo "$id" ; \
6244     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
6245   done
6246 </pre>
6247
6248 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
6249 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
6250
6251 <pre>
6252   acpi:ACPI0003:
6253     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
6254   acpi:device:
6255   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
6256   acpi:IBM0068:
6257     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
6258     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
6259     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
6260     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
6261   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6262     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
6263     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
6264     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
6265   [...]
6266 </pre>
6267
6268 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6269 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6270 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6271 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6272
6273 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
6274 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
6275 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
6276
6277       </div>
6278       <div class="tags">
6279
6280
6281         Tags: <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>.
6282
6283
6284       </div>
6285     </div>
6286     <div class="padding"></div>
6287
6288     <div class="entry">
6289       <div class="title">
6290         <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>
6291       </div>
6292       <div class="date">
6293         10th January 2013
6294       </div>
6295       <div class="body">
6296         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
6297 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
6298 Launcher and updated the Debian package
6299 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
6300 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
6301 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
6302 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
6303 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
6304 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
6305 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
6306 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
6307 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
6308 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
6309 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
6310 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
6311 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
6312 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
6313 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
6314
6315       </div>
6316       <div class="tags">
6317
6318
6319         Tags: <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>.
6320
6321
6322       </div>
6323     </div>
6324     <div class="padding"></div>
6325
6326     <div class="entry">
6327       <div class="title">
6328         <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>
6329       </div>
6330       <div class="date">
6331          9th January 2013
6332       </div>
6333       <div class="body">
6334         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
6335 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
6336 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
6337 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
6338 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
6339 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
6340 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
6341 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
6342 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
6343 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
6344 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
6345
6346 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
6347 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
6348 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
6349 simple:
6350
6351 <ul>
6352
6353 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
6354   starting when a user log in.</li>
6355
6356 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
6357   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
6358
6359 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
6360   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
6361   packages.</li>
6362
6363 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
6364   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
6365
6366 </ul>
6367
6368 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
6369 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
6370 discover database to find packages and
6371 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
6372 packages.</p>
6373
6374 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
6375 draft package is now checked into
6376 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6377 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
6378 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
6379 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
6380 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
6381 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
6382 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
6383 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
6384 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
6385 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
6386 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
6387 because of the freeze).</p>
6388
6389 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
6390 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
6391 inserted):</p>
6392
6393 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
6394
6395 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
6396 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
6397 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
6398
6399 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
6400 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
6401 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
6402 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
6403 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
6404 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
6405 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
6406
6407 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
6408 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
6409 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
6410 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
6411 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
6412 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
6413 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
6414 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
6415 not be installed?</p>
6416
6417 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
6418 please send me an email. :)</p>
6419
6420       </div>
6421       <div class="tags">
6422
6423
6424         Tags: <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>.
6425
6426
6427       </div>
6428     </div>
6429     <div class="padding"></div>
6430
6431     <div class="entry">
6432       <div class="title">
6433         <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>
6434       </div>
6435       <div class="date">
6436          2nd January 2013
6437       </div>
6438       <div class="body">
6439         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
6440 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
6441 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
6442 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
6443 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
6444 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
6445 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
6446 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
6447 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
6448 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
6449
6450 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
6451 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
6452 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
6453
6454       </div>
6455       <div class="tags">
6456
6457
6458         Tags: <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>.
6459
6460
6461       </div>
6462     </div>
6463     <div class="padding"></div>
6464
6465     <div class="entry">
6466       <div class="title">
6467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6468       </div>
6469       <div class="date">
6470         28th December 2012
6471       </div>
6472       <div class="body">
6473         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
6474 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6475 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
6476 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
6477 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
6478 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
6479 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
6480 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
6481 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
6482 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
6483 followed by many others. :)</p>
6484
6485 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
6486 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
6487 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
6488 you want to donate to the project.</p>
6489
6490       </div>
6491       <div class="tags">
6492
6493
6494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6495
6496
6497       </div>
6498     </div>
6499     <div class="padding"></div>
6500
6501     <div class="entry">
6502       <div class="title">
6503         <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>
6504       </div>
6505       <div class="date">
6506         25th December 2012
6507       </div>
6508       <div class="body">
6509         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
6510 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
6511
6512 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
6513 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
6514 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
6515 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
6516 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
6517 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
6518 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
6519 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
6520 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
6521 name.</p>
6522
6523 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
6524 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
6525 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
6526
6527 <blockquote><pre>
6528 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
6529 cd bitcoin
6530 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
6531 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
6532 </pre></blockquote>
6533
6534 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
6535 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
6536 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
6537 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
6538 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
6539 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
6540 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
6541 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
6542 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
6543
6544 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6545 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6546 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6547
6548       </div>
6549       <div class="tags">
6550
6551
6552         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>.
6553
6554
6555       </div>
6556     </div>
6557     <div class="padding"></div>
6558
6559     <div class="entry">
6560       <div class="title">
6561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
6562       </div>
6563       <div class="date">
6564         21st December 2012
6565       </div>
6566       <div class="body">
6567         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
6568 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
6569 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
6570 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
6571 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
6572 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
6573 is now maintained by a
6574 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
6575 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
6576 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
6577 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
6578 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
6579 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
6580 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
6581 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
6582 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
6583 Corallo in a
6584 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
6585 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
6586 Debian package.</p>
6587
6588 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
6589 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
6590 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
6591 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
6592 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
6593 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
6594 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
6595 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
6596 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
6597 new version to unstable.
6598
6599 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
6600 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
6601 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
6602 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
6603 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
6604 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
6605 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
6606 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
6607 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
6608 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
6609 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
6610 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
6611 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
6612 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
6613 have not tested them.</p>
6614
6615 <p>My
6616 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
6617 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
6618 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
6619 years ago, as can be
6620 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
6621 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
6622 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
6623 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
6624 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
6625 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
6626 the same address as last time,
6627 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6628
6629       </div>
6630       <div class="tags">
6631
6632
6633         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>.
6634
6635
6636       </div>
6637     </div>
6638     <div class="padding"></div>
6639
6640     <div class="entry">
6641       <div class="title">
6642         <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>
6643       </div>
6644       <div class="date">
6645         18th December 2012
6646       </div>
6647       <div class="body">
6648         <p>A few days ago I came across
6649 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
6650 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
6651 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
6652 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
6653 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
6654 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
6655 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
6656 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
6657 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
6658
6659 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
6660 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
6661 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
6662 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
6663
6664 <blockquote><pre>
6665 2004-05-27 Book Store
6666       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
6667       Liabilities:Visa
6668 </pre></blockquote>
6669
6670 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
6671 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
6672 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
6673 Spang</a>,
6674 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
6675 Keen</a>,
6676 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
6677 Cantino</a> and
6678 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
6679 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
6680 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
6681 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
6682 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
6683
6684 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
6685 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
6686 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
6687 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
6688 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
6689
6690 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
6691 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
6692 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
6693 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
6694 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
6695 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
6696 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
6697 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
6698 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
6699
6700       </div>
6701       <div class="tags">
6702
6703
6704         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
6705
6706
6707       </div>
6708     </div>
6709     <div class="padding"></div>
6710
6711     <div class="entry">
6712       <div class="title">
6713         <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>
6714       </div>
6715       <div class="date">
6716          6th December 2012
6717       </div>
6718       <div class="body">
6719         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
6720 Oslo</a>, we use the
6721 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
6722 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
6723 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
6724 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
6725 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
6726 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
6727 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
6728 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
6729 Python.</p>
6730
6731 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
6732 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
6733 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
6734 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
6735 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
6736 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
6737
6738 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
6739 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
6740 user currently logged in:</p>
6741
6742 <blockquote><pre>
6743 #!/usr/bin/env python
6744 import getpass
6745 import xmlrpclib
6746 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
6747 username = getpass.getuser()
6748 password = getpass.getpass()
6749 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
6750 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
6751 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
6752 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
6753 result = server.logout(sessionid)
6754 print result
6755 </pre></blockquote>
6756
6757 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
6758 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
6759
6760       </div>
6761       <div class="tags">
6762
6763
6764         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>.
6765
6766
6767       </div>
6768     </div>
6769     <div class="padding"></div>
6770
6771     <div class="entry">
6772       <div class="title">
6773         <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>
6774       </div>
6775       <div class="date">
6776         17th November 2012
6777       </div>
6778       <div class="body">
6779         <p>While working on a
6780 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
6781 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
6782 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
6783 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
6784 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
6785 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
6786
6787 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
6788 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
6789 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
6790 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
6791 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
6792 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
6793 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
6794 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
6795 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
6796 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
6797 arguments.</p>
6798
6799 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
6800 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
6801 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
6802 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
6803 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
6804 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
6805 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
6806 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
6807
6808 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
6809 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
6810 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
6811 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
6812 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
6813 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
6814 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
6815 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
6816 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
6817 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
6818 correct right holder.</p>
6819
6820 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
6821 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
6822 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
6823 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
6824 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
6825 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
6826 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
6827 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
6828 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
6829 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
6830 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
6831 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
6832 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
6833 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
6834
6835 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
6836 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
6837 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
6838
6839 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
6840 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
6841
6842       </div>
6843       <div class="tags">
6844
6845
6846         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>.
6847
6848
6849       </div>
6850     </div>
6851     <div class="padding"></div>
6852
6853     <div class="entry">
6854       <div class="title">
6855         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
6856       </div>
6857       <div class="date">
6858         14th November 2012
6859       </div>
6860       <div class="body">
6861         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
6862 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6863 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
6864 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
6865 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
6866 the people behind the German
6867 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
6868 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
6869 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
6870
6871 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6872
6873 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
6874 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
6875 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
6876
6877 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
6878 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
6879 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
6880 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
6881 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
6882 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
6883
6884 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
6885 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
6886 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
6887 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
6888 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
6889 relationship management and the communication processes in the
6890 project.</p>
6891
6892 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
6893 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
6894 and a yoga teacher.</p>
6895
6896 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6897 project?</strong></p>
6898
6899 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
6900
6901 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
6902 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
6903 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
6904 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
6905 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
6906 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
6907 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
6908 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
6909 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
6910 parents.</p>
6911
6912 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
6913 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
6914 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
6915 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
6916 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
6917 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
6918 Germany.</p>
6919
6920 <p>For information about our school project you can read
6921 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
6922 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
6923
6924 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6925 Edu?</strong></p>
6926
6927 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
6928 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
6929
6930 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
6931 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
6932 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
6933 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
6934 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
6935 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
6936 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
6937 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
6938 teachers, parents...</p>
6939
6940 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6941 Edu?</strong></p>
6942
6943 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
6944 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6945
6946 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
6947 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
6948 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
6949 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
6950 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6951
6952 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
6953 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
6954 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
6955 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
6956 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
6957 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
6958 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6959
6960 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6961
6962 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
6963 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
6964 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
6965 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
6966
6967 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6968 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6969
6970 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
6971 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
6972 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
6973 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
6974 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
6975
6976 <ul>
6977
6978 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
6979 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
6980 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
6981
6982 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
6983 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
6984 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
6985 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
6986 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
6987 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
6988 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
6989
6990 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
6991 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
6992 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
6993 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
6994
6995 </ul>
6996
6997       </div>
6998       <div class="tags">
6999
7000
7001         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7002
7003
7004       </div>
7005     </div>
7006     <div class="padding"></div>
7007
7008     <div class="entry">
7009       <div class="title">
7010         <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>
7011       </div>
7012       <div class="date">
7013          4th November 2012
7014       </div>
7015       <div class="body">
7016         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
7017 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
7018 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
7019 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
7020 see how a member of the bitcoin community
7021 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
7022 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
7023 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
7024 competition.  My thoughts go to the
7025 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
7026 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
7027 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
7028 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
7029 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
7030
7031 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
7032 that the community already seem to have
7033 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
7034 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
7035 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
7036 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
7037 wealth is available.</p>
7038
7039       </div>
7040       <div class="tags">
7041
7042
7043         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>.
7044
7045
7046       </div>
7047     </div>
7048     <div class="padding"></div>
7049
7050     <div class="entry">
7051       <div class="title">
7052         <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>
7053       </div>
7054       <div class="date">
7055         26th October 2012
7056       </div>
7057       <div class="body">
7058         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
7059 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
7060 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
7061 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
7062 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
7063 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
7064 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
7065 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
7066 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
7067 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
7068 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
7069 it every time.</p>
7070
7071 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
7072 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
7073 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
7074 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
7075 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
7076 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
7077 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
7078 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
7079 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
7080 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
7081 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
7082 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
7083
7084 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
7085 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
7086 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
7087 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
7088 article: First the unplanned outage:
7089
7090 <blockquote><pre>
7091 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
7092 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
7093 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
7094 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
7095 Duration:    40 minutes
7096 Scope:       Exchange 2003
7097 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
7098              a cluster failover.
7099
7100 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
7101              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
7102 Technician:  [xxx]
7103 </pre></blockquote>
7104
7105 Next the planned outage:
7106
7107 <blockquote><pre>
7108 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
7109 Severity:    Major (Planned)
7110 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
7111 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
7112 Duration:    10 hours
7113 Scope:       H2 Transport
7114 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
7115              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
7116              4510s.
7117 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
7118              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
7119              connectivity.
7120 Technician:  [xxx]
7121 </pre></blockquote>
7122
7123 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
7124 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
7125 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
7126 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
7127 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
7128 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
7129 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
7130
7131 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
7132 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
7133 university too.  We do register
7134 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
7135 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
7136 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
7137 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
7138 for other sites to consider too?</p>
7139
7140       </div>
7141       <div class="tags">
7142
7143
7144         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>.
7145
7146
7147       </div>
7148     </div>
7149     <div class="padding"></div>
7150
7151     <div class="entry">
7152       <div class="title">
7153         <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>
7154       </div>
7155       <div class="date">
7156         22nd October 2012
7157       </div>
7158       <div class="body">
7159         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
7160 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
7161 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
7162 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
7163 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
7164 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
7165 background information is available in Norwegian from
7166 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
7167 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
7168 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
7169 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
7170 willing to
7171 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
7172 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
7173 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
7174 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
7175 sounded like
7176 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
7177 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
7178 later.</p>
7179
7180 <p>And thought this action is
7181 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
7182 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
7183 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
7184 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
7185 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
7186 rights.</p>
7187
7188 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
7189 unacceptable terms.  For example
7190 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
7191 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
7192 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
7193 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
7194 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
7195
7196 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
7197 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
7198 restored the account of the user, as reported by
7199 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
7200 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
7201 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
7202 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
7203 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
7204 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
7205 reading two opinions from
7206 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
7207 Phipps</a> and
7208 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
7209 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
7210 details about the original story.</p>
7211
7212       </div>
7213       <div class="tags">
7214
7215
7216         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>.
7217
7218
7219       </div>
7220     </div>
7221     <div class="padding"></div>
7222
7223     <div class="entry">
7224       <div class="title">
7225         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
7226       </div>
7227       <div class="date">
7228         18th October 2012
7229       </div>
7230       <div class="body">
7231         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
7232 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
7233 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
7234 across a marvellous drawing by
7235 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
7236 visualising some of what is going on.
7237
7238 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
7239 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
7240
7241 <blockquote>
7242 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
7243 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
7244 </blockquote>
7245
7246 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
7247 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
7248 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
7249 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
7250 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
7251 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
7252
7253       </div>
7254       <div class="tags">
7255
7256
7257         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>.
7258
7259
7260       </div>
7261     </div>
7262     <div class="padding"></div>
7263
7264     <div class="entry">
7265       <div class="title">
7266         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
7267       </div>
7268       <div class="date">
7269         12th October 2012
7270       </div>
7271       <div class="body">
7272         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
7273 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
7274 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
7275 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
7276 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
7277 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
7278 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
7279 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
7280 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
7281 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
7282 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
7283 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
7284 matter".</p>
7285
7286 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
7287 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
7288 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
7289 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
7290 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
7291 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
7292 to argue its side.</p>
7293
7294 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
7295 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
7296 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
7297 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
7298
7299 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
7300 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
7301 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
7302
7303       </div>
7304       <div class="tags">
7305
7306
7307         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>.
7308
7309
7310       </div>
7311     </div>
7312     <div class="padding"></div>
7313
7314     <div class="entry">
7315       <div class="title">
7316         <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>
7317       </div>
7318       <div class="date">
7319          3rd October 2012
7320       </div>
7321       <div class="body">
7322         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
7323 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
7324 the computer science book collection available in his local
7325 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
7326 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
7327 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
7328 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
7329 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
7330 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
7331 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
7332 recently published books.</p>
7333
7334 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
7335 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
7336 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
7337 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
7338 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
7339 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
7340 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
7341 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
7342 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
7343 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
7344 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
7345 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
7346 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
7347 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
7348 for the library that evening.</p>
7349
7350 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
7351 going to know that for example
7352 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
7353 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
7354 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
7355 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
7356 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
7357 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
7358 book right away.</p>
7359
7360       </div>
7361       <div class="tags">
7362
7363
7364         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7365
7366
7367       </div>
7368     </div>
7369     <div class="padding"></div>
7370
7371     <div class="entry">
7372       <div class="title">
7373         <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>
7374       </div>
7375       <div class="date">
7376         23rd September 2012
7377       </div>
7378       <div class="body">
7379         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
7380 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
7381 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7382 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
7383 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
7384 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
7385
7386 When I started, I
7387 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7388 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
7389 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
7390 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
7391 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
7392 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
7393 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
7394
7395 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7396
7397 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
7398 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
7399 the project files currently available from
7400 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7401
7402 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7403 the updated
7404 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7405 and
7406 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7407 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7408 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7409 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7410
7411       </div>
7412       <div class="tags">
7413
7414
7415         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>.
7416
7417
7418       </div>
7419     </div>
7420     <div class="padding"></div>
7421
7422     <div class="entry">
7423       <div class="title">
7424         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
7425       </div>
7426       <div class="date">
7427         17th September 2012
7428       </div>
7429       <div class="body">
7430         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
7431 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7432 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
7433 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
7434 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
7435 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
7436 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
7437
7438 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7439
7440 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
7441 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
7442 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
7443 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
7444 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
7445 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
7446 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
7447 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
7448 training is anyway very important</p>
7449
7450 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
7451 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
7452 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
7453 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
7454 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
7455
7456 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7457 project?</strong></p>
7458
7459 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
7460 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
7461 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
7462 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
7463 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
7464 hole.</p>
7465
7466 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7467 Edu?</strong></p>
7468
7469 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
7470 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
7471 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
7472 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
7473 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
7474 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
7475 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
7476 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
7477 hassle.</p>
7478
7479 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7480 Edu?</strong></p>
7481
7482 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
7483 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
7484 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
7485 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
7486 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
7487 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
7488 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
7489 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
7490
7491 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7492
7493 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
7494 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
7495 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
7496 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
7497 has the same...</p>
7498
7499 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
7500 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
7501 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
7502 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
7503
7504 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7505 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7506
7507 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
7508 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
7509 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
7510
7511 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
7512 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
7513 don't.</p>
7514
7515 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
7516 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
7517 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
7518 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
7519 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
7520 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
7521 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
7522
7523       </div>
7524       <div class="tags">
7525
7526
7527         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7528
7529
7530       </div>
7531     </div>
7532     <div class="padding"></div>
7533
7534     <div class="entry">
7535       <div class="title">
7536         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
7537       </div>
7538       <div class="date">
7539         15th September 2012
7540       </div>
7541       <div class="body">
7542         <p>After the
7543 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
7544 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
7545 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
7546 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
7547 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
7548 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
7549 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
7550 was
7551 <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
7552 formal working group should be formed.</p>
7553
7554 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
7555 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
7556 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
7557 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
7558 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
7559 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
7560 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
7561 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
7562
7563 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
7564 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
7565 IETF.</p>
7566
7567       </div>
7568       <div class="tags">
7569
7570
7571         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>.
7572
7573
7574       </div>
7575     </div>
7576     <div class="padding"></div>
7577
7578     <div class="entry">
7579       <div class="title">
7580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
7581       </div>
7582       <div class="date">
7583         12th September 2012
7584       </div>
7585       <div class="body">
7586         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
7587 publication of of
7588 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
7589 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
7590 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
7591 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
7592 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
7593 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
7594 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
7595 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
7596 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
7597 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
7598
7599 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
7600 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
7601 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
7602 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
7603
7604 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
7605 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
7606
7607       </div>
7608       <div class="tags">
7609
7610
7611         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>.
7612
7613
7614       </div>
7615     </div>
7616     <div class="padding"></div>
7617
7618     <div class="entry">
7619       <div class="title">
7620         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
7621       </div>
7622       <div class="date">
7623          7th September 2012
7624       </div>
7625       <div class="body">
7626         <p>As I
7627 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
7628 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
7629 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
7630 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
7631 repository for the project</a>.</p>
7632
7633 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
7634 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
7635 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
7636 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
7637
7638 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
7639 PostScript formats at
7640 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
7641 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
7642
7643       </div>
7644       <div class="tags">
7645
7646
7647         Tags: <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>.
7648
7649
7650       </div>
7651     </div>
7652     <div class="padding"></div>
7653
7654     <div class="entry">
7655       <div class="title">
7656         <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>
7657       </div>
7658       <div class="date">
7659         23rd August 2012
7660       </div>
7661       <div class="body">
7662         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
7663 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
7664 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
7665 revisit the great site
7666 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
7667 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
7668 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
7669
7670       </div>
7671       <div class="tags">
7672
7673
7674         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>.
7675
7676
7677       </div>
7678     </div>
7679     <div class="padding"></div>
7680
7681     <div class="entry">
7682       <div class="title">
7683         <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>
7684       </div>
7685       <div class="date">
7686         17th August 2012
7687       </div>
7688       <div class="body">
7689         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
7690 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7691 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7692 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
7693 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
7694 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
7695 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
7696 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
7697 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
7698 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
7699 summer I
7700 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7701 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
7702 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
7703
7704 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
7705 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
7706 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
7707 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
7708 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
7709 progress:</p>
7710
7711 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7712
7713 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
7714 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
7715 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
7716 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
7717 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
7718 english version of the docbook source.</p>
7719
7720 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7721 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7722 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7723 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7724 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7725 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
7726 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
7727 project files currently available from <a
7728 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7729
7730 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7731 the updated
7732 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7733 and
7734 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7735 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7736 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7737 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7738
7739       </div>
7740       <div class="tags">
7741
7742
7743         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>.
7744
7745
7746       </div>
7747     </div>
7748     <div class="padding"></div>
7749
7750     <div class="entry">
7751       <div class="title">
7752         <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>
7753       </div>
7754       <div class="date">
7755         10th August 2012
7756       </div>
7757       <div class="body">
7758         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
7759 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
7760 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
7761 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
7762 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
7763 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
7764 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
7765 case for the language
7766 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
7767 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
7768
7769 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
7770 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
7771 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
7772 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
7773 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
7774
7775 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
7776 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
7777 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
7778 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
7779 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
7780 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
7781 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
7782 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
7783 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
7784 alias for 'nb'.</p>
7785
7786 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
7787 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
7788 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
7789 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
7790 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
7791 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
7792 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
7793 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
7794 at the same time. :(</p>
7795
7796 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
7797 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
7798 processors. :(</p>
7799
7800 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
7801
7802       </div>
7803       <div class="tags">
7804
7805
7806         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>.
7807
7808
7809       </div>
7810     </div>
7811     <div class="padding"></div>
7812
7813     <div class="entry">
7814       <div class="title">
7815         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
7816       </div>
7817       <div class="date">
7818         31st July 2012
7819       </div>
7820       <div class="body">
7821         <p>I tried to send this text to the
7822 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
7823 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
7824 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
7825 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
7826 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
7827 out.</p>
7828
7829 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
7830 learning curve at the moment.</p>
7831
7832 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
7833 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
7834 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
7835 available from
7836 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
7837 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
7838 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
7839 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
7840 Squeeze.</p>
7841
7842 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
7843 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
7844 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
7845 problems.</p>
7846
7847 <ul>
7848
7849 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
7850    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
7851    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
7852    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
7853    index references spanning several pages (See
7854    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
7855    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
7856    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
7857
7858 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
7859    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
7860    #683163</a>).</li>
7861
7862 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
7863    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
7864    footnote and text body, see
7865    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
7866    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
7867    refs listed are not right).</li>
7868
7869 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
7870
7871 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
7872    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
7873
7874 </ul>
7875
7876 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
7877 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
7878 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
7879
7880 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
7881
7882       </div>
7883       <div class="tags">
7884
7885
7886         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>.
7887
7888
7889       </div>
7890     </div>
7891     <div class="padding"></div>
7892
7893     <div class="entry">
7894       <div class="title">
7895         <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>
7896       </div>
7897       <div class="date">
7898         21st July 2012
7899       </div>
7900       <div class="body">
7901         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
7902 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
7903 norwegian version</a> of the book
7904 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7905 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
7906 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
7907 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
7908 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7909
7910 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
7911 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
7912 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
7913 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
7914 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
7915 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
7916 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
7917 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
7918 print. :)</p>
7919
7920 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
7921 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
7922 language.</p>
7923
7924       </div>
7925       <div class="tags">
7926
7927
7928         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>.
7929
7930
7931       </div>
7932     </div>
7933     <div class="padding"></div>
7934
7935     <div class="entry">
7936       <div class="title">
7937         <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>
7938       </div>
7939       <div class="date">
7940         16th July 2012
7941       </div>
7942       <div class="body">
7943         <p>I am currently working on a
7944 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
7945 to translate</a> the book
7946 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
7947 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
7948 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
7949 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
7950 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
7951 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
7952 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7953
7954 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
7955 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
7956 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
7957 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
7958 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
7959 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
7960 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
7961 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
7962 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
7963
7964       </div>
7965       <div class="tags">
7966
7967
7968         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>.
7969
7970
7971       </div>
7972     </div>
7973     <div class="padding"></div>
7974
7975     <div class="entry">
7976       <div class="title">
7977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
7978       </div>
7979       <div class="date">
7980          9th July 2012
7981       </div>
7982       <div class="body">
7983         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7984 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
7985 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
7986 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
7987 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
7988 to adjust and scale the just released
7989 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7990 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
7991 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
7992
7993 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7994
7995 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
7996 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
7997 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
7998 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
7999 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
8000 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
8001 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
8002 perspective when working with IT.</p>
8003
8004 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8005 project?</strong></p>
8006
8007 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
8008 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
8009 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
8010 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
8011 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
8012 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
8013
8014 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8015 Edu?</strong></p>
8016
8017 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
8018 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
8019 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
8020 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
8021 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
8022 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
8023 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
8024 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
8025 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
8026 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
8027 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
8028 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
8029 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
8030 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
8031 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
8032 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
8033 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
8034 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
8035 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
8036 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
8037 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
8038 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
8039 quicker to update.
8040
8041 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8042 Edu?</strong></p>
8043
8044 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
8045 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
8046 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
8047 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
8048 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
8049 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
8050
8051 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
8052 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
8053 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
8054 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
8055 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
8056 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
8057 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
8058 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
8059 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
8060 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
8061 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
8062 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
8063 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
8064 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
8065 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
8066
8067 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
8068 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
8069 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
8070 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
8071 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
8072 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
8073 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
8074 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
8075
8076 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
8077 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
8078 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
8079 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
8080 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
8081 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
8082 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
8083 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
8084 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
8085 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
8086 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
8087 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
8088 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
8089 sound file.</p>
8090
8091 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
8092 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
8093 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
8094 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
8095 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
8096 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
8097 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
8098 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
8099 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
8100
8101 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8102
8103 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
8104 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
8105 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
8106 )</p>
8107
8108 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8109 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8110
8111 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
8112 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
8113 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
8114 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
8115 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
8116 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
8117 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
8118 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
8119 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
8120 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
8121 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
8122 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
8123 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
8124 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
8125 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
8126
8127 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
8128 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
8129 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
8130 management with Airtime</a>,
8131 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
8132 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
8133 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
8134 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
8135 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
8136
8137       </div>
8138       <div class="tags">
8139
8140
8141         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8142
8143
8144       </div>
8145     </div>
8146     <div class="padding"></div>
8147
8148     <div class="entry">
8149       <div class="title">
8150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
8151       </div>
8152       <div class="date">
8153          8th July 2012
8154       </div>
8155       <div class="body">
8156         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
8157 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
8158 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
8159 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
8160 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
8161 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
8162 Steinberg in his blog post
8163 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
8164 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
8165 spending of your tax money.</p>
8166
8167 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
8168 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
8169 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
8170 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
8171 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
8172 purchases.</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>.
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/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
8188       </div>
8189       <div class="date">
8190          7th July 2012
8191       </div>
8192       <div class="body">
8193         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8194 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
8195 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
8196 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
8197 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
8198 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
8199 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
8200 receive.  The software is
8201
8202 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
8203 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
8204 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
8205 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
8206 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
8207 Windows</a>.</p>
8208
8209 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
8210 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
8211
8212 <p><ul>
8213
8214   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
8215     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
8216
8217   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
8218     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
8219     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
8220     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
8221     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
8222     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
8223     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
8224     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
8225     </li>
8226
8227   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
8228     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
8229
8230   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
8231     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
8232
8233   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
8234     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
8235
8236   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
8237
8238   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
8239     formats </li>
8240
8241   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
8242     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
8243     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
8244     (as separate sets)</li>
8245
8246   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
8247     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
8248     percentage)</li>
8249
8250   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
8251     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
8252     memory):
8253     <ul>
8254       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
8255       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
8256       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
8257       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
8258       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
8259       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
8260       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
8261       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
8262       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
8263       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
8264           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
8265           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
8266           activity)</li>
8267       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
8268       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
8269     </ul></li>
8270
8271   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
8272     <ul>
8273       <li>Break periods</li>
8274       <li>For teacher(s):
8275         <ul>
8276           <li>Not available periods</li>
8277           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
8278           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
8279           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
8280           <li>Min hours daily</li>
8281           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
8282
8283           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
8284             days per week</li>
8285         </ul></li>
8286       <li>For students (sets):
8287         <ul>
8288           <li>Not available periods</li>
8289           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
8290           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
8291           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
8292           <li>Min hours daily</li>
8293           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
8294
8295           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
8296             days per week</li>
8297         </ul></li>
8298       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
8299         <ul>
8300           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
8301           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
8302           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
8303           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
8304           <li>End(s) students day</li>
8305           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
8306           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
8307             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
8308           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
8309           <li>Not overlapping</li>
8310           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
8311           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
8312         </ul></li>
8313     </ul></li>
8314
8315   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
8316     <ul>
8317       <li>Room not available periods</li>
8318       <li>For teacher(s):
8319         <ul>
8320           <li>Home room(s)</li>
8321           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
8322           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
8323         </ul>
8324       </li>
8325
8326       <li>For students (sets):
8327         <ul>
8328           <li>Home room(s)</li>
8329           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
8330           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
8331         </ul>
8332       </li>
8333       <li>Preferred room(s):
8334         <ul>
8335           <li>For a subject</li>
8336           <li>For an activity tag</li>
8337           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
8338           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
8339         </ul>
8340       </li>
8341
8342       <li>For a set of activities:
8343         <ul>
8344           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
8345         </ul>
8346       </li>
8347     </ul>
8348   </li>
8349 </ul></p>
8350
8351 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
8352 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
8353 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
8354 manually, check it out.
8355
8356 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
8357 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
8358 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
8359 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
8360 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
8361 section</a>.</p>
8362
8363       </div>
8364       <div class="tags">
8365
8366
8367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8368
8369
8370       </div>
8371     </div>
8372     <div class="padding"></div>
8373
8374     <div class="entry">
8375       <div class="title">
8376         <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>
8377       </div>
8378       <div class="date">
8379          3rd July 2012
8380       </div>
8381       <div class="body">
8382         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
8383 project (Norwegian version of
8384 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
8385 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
8386 a problem with the municipalities using
8387 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
8388 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
8389 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
8390 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
8391 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
8392 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
8393 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
8394 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
8395 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
8396 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
8397 the From: header.</p>
8398
8399 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
8400 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
8401 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
8402 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
8403 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
8404 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
8405 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
8406 behaviour.</p>
8407
8408 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
8409 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
8410 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
8411 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
8412 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
8413 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
8414 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
8415
8416       </div>
8417       <div class="tags">
8418
8419
8420         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>.
8421
8422
8423       </div>
8424     </div>
8425     <div class="padding"></div>
8426
8427     <div class="entry">
8428       <div class="title">
8429         <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>
8430       </div>
8431       <div class="date">
8432         26th June 2012
8433       </div>
8434       <div class="body">
8435         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
8436 another interview with the people behind
8437 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
8438 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
8439 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
8440 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
8441 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
8442 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8443 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8444
8445 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8446
8447 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
8448 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
8449 ICT in schools</p>
8450
8451 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8452 project?</strong></p>
8453
8454 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
8455 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
8456 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
8457 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
8458
8459 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8460 Edu?</strong></p>
8461
8462 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
8463 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
8464 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
8465 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
8466
8467 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8468 Edu?</strong></p>
8469
8470 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
8471 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
8472 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
8473 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
8474 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
8475 technologies in school.</p>
8476
8477 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8478
8479 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
8480 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
8481 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
8482
8483 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8484 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8485
8486 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
8487 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
8488 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
8489 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
8490
8491 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
8492 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
8493 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
8494
8495 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
8496 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
8497 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
8498 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
8499 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
8500 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
8501 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
8502 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
8503 working there.</p>
8504
8505       </div>
8506       <div class="tags">
8507
8508
8509         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8510
8511
8512       </div>
8513     </div>
8514     <div class="padding"></div>
8515
8516     <div class="entry">
8517       <div class="title">
8518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
8519       </div>
8520       <div class="date">
8521         24th June 2012
8522       </div>
8523       <div class="body">
8524         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
8525 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
8526 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
8527 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
8528 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
8529 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
8530 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
8531 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
8532 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
8533 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
8534 missing in my book.</p>
8535
8536 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
8537 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
8538 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
8539 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
8540 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
8541 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
8542 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
8543
8544       </div>
8545       <div class="tags">
8546
8547
8548         Tags: <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>.
8549
8550
8551       </div>
8552     </div>
8553     <div class="padding"></div>
8554
8555     <div class="entry">
8556       <div class="title">
8557         <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>
8558       </div>
8559       <div class="date">
8560         11th June 2012
8561       </div>
8562       <div class="body">
8563         <p>During my work on
8564 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
8565 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
8566 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
8567 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
8568 explanation.</p>
8569
8570 <p><ul>
8571
8572 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
8573 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
8574 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
8575 system depend on tasksel tasks in
8576 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
8577 installation.</li>
8578
8579 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
8580 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
8581 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
8582 at least try to enable it for these services:
8583 <ul>
8584
8585   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
8586     quotas.</li>
8587   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
8588   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
8589   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
8590   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
8591   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
8592
8593 </ul></li>
8594
8595 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
8596 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
8597 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
8598 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
8599
8600 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
8601 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
8602 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
8603
8604 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
8605 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
8606 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
8607 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
8608 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
8609 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
8610
8611 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
8612 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
8613 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
8614 in Wheezy.
8615
8616 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
8617 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
8618 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
8619
8620 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
8621 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
8622 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
8623 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
8624
8625 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
8626 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
8627 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
8628 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
8629
8630 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
8631 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
8632 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
8633
8634 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
8635 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
8636 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
8637
8638 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
8639 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
8640 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
8641 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
8642 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
8643
8644 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
8645 <ul>
8646
8647 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
8648 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
8649 <li>and probably more?</li>
8650 </ul></li>
8651
8652 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
8653 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
8654 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
8655 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
8656 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
8657 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
8658 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
8659 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
8660
8661
8662 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
8663 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
8664 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
8665 use.</li>
8666
8667 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
8668 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
8669 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
8670 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
8671 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
8672
8673 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
8674 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
8675 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
8676 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
8677 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
8678 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
8679
8680 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
8681 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
8682 There are at least three implementations,
8683 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
8684 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
8685 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
8686 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
8687 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
8688 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
8689 given room.</li>
8690
8691 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
8692 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
8693 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
8694 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
8695 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
8696 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
8697 investigated.</li>
8698
8699 </ul></p>
8700
8701 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
8702 version.</p>
8703
8704       </div>
8705       <div class="tags">
8706
8707
8708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8709
8710
8711       </div>
8712     </div>
8713     <div class="padding"></div>
8714
8715     <div class="entry">
8716       <div class="title">
8717         <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>
8718       </div>
8719       <div class="date">
8720          9th June 2012
8721       </div>
8722       <div class="body">
8723         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
8724 <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
8725 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
8726 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
8727 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
8728 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
8729 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
8730 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
8731 be willing to pay for.</p>
8732
8733 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
8734 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
8735 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
8736 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
8737 Orwell</a>.</p>
8738
8739       </div>
8740       <div class="tags">
8741
8742
8743         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>.
8744
8745
8746       </div>
8747     </div>
8748     <div class="padding"></div>
8749
8750     <div class="entry">
8751       <div class="title">
8752         <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>
8753       </div>
8754       <div class="date">
8755          6th June 2012
8756       </div>
8757       <div class="body">
8758         <p>A few days ago
8759 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
8760 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
8761 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
8762 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
8763 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
8764 code for HP, Dell and IBM
8765 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
8766 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
8767 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
8768 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
8769 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
8770
8771 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
8772 output:
8773
8774 <blockquote><pre>
8775 % 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>
8776 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": ""})
8777 %
8778 </pre></blockquote>
8779
8780 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
8781 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
8782 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
8783
8784       </div>
8785       <div class="tags">
8786
8787
8788         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>.
8789
8790
8791       </div>
8792     </div>
8793     <div class="padding"></div>
8794
8795     <div class="entry">
8796       <div class="title">
8797         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
8798       </div>
8799       <div class="date">
8800          2nd June 2012
8801       </div>
8802       <div class="body">
8803         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
8804 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8805 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
8806 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
8807 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8808 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8809
8810 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8811
8812 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
8813 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
8814 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
8815 by Angela).</p>
8816
8817 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
8818 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
8819 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
8820 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
8821 becoming an osteopath.</p>
8822
8823 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
8824 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
8825 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
8826 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
8827 skills with communication skills.</p>
8828
8829 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8830 project?</strong></p>
8831
8832 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
8833 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
8834 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
8835 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
8836 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
8837
8838 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
8839 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
8840 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
8841 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
8842 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
8843 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
8844 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
8845 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
8846 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
8847
8848 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
8849 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
8850 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
8851
8852 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
8853
8854 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
8855 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
8856 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
8857 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
8858 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
8859 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
8860 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
8861 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
8862 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
8863 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
8864 point.</p>
8865
8866 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
8867 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
8868 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
8869 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
8870 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
8871 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
8872
8873 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
8874 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
8875 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
8876 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
8877 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
8878 spare time.</p>
8879
8880 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
8881 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
8882 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
8883 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
8884 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
8885
8886 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
8887 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
8888 avoidance do exist.</p>
8889
8890 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
8891 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
8892 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
8893 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
8894 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
8895 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
8896 and probably a gain for all.</p>
8897
8898 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8899 Edu?</strong></p>
8900
8901 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
8902 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
8903 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
8904 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
8905 project communication, honest communication within the group of
8906 developers, etc.</p>
8907
8908 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8909 Edu?</strong></p>
8910
8911 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
8912
8913 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
8914 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
8915 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
8916 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
8917 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
8918 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
8919 contribute).</p>
8920
8921 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
8922 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
8923 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
8924 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
8925 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
8926 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
8927 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
8928 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
8929 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
8930 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
8931
8932 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8933
8934 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
8935
8936 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
8937 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
8938 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
8939
8940 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
8941 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
8942 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
8943 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
8944
8945 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
8946 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
8947 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
8948 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
8949 whiteboard.</p>
8950
8951 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
8952
8953 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8954 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8955
8956 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
8957 enrol people.</p>
8958
8959       </div>
8960       <div class="tags">
8961
8962
8963         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8964
8965
8966       </div>
8967     </div>
8968     <div class="padding"></div>
8969
8970     <div class="entry">
8971       <div class="title">
8972         <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>
8973       </div>
8974       <div class="date">
8975          1st June 2012
8976       </div>
8977       <div class="body">
8978         <p>A few years ago I wrote
8979 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
8980 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
8981 I have learned from colleges here at the
8982 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
8983 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
8984 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
8985 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
8986 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
8987
8988 <p><pre>
8989 use strict;
8990 use warnings;
8991 use SOAP::Lite;
8992 use Data::Dumper;
8993 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
8994 my $App = 'test';
8995 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
8996 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
8997 my $s = SOAP::Lite
8998     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
8999     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
9000     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
9001     ;
9002 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
9003     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
9004     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
9005     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
9006 );
9007 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
9008 </pre></p>
9009
9010 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
9011
9012 <p><pre>
9013 $VAR1 = {
9014           'Asset' => {
9015                      'Entitlements' => {
9016                                        'EntitlementData' => [
9017                                                             {
9018                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9019                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9020                                                               'Provider' => '',
9021                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9022                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9023                                                             },
9024                                                             {
9025                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9026                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9027                                                               'Provider' => '',
9028                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9029                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9030                                                             },
9031                                                             {
9032                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9033                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
9034                                                               'Provider' => '',
9035                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9036                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9037                                                             }
9038                                                           ]
9039                                      },
9040                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
9041                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
9042                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
9043                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
9044                                           'Buid' => '2323',
9045                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
9046                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
9047                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
9048                                         }
9049                    }
9050         };
9051 </pre></p>
9052
9053 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
9054 service outside the
9055 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
9056 documentation</a>, and according to
9057 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
9058 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
9059 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
9060
9061 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
9062 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
9063
9064       </div>
9065       <div class="tags">
9066
9067
9068         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>.
9069
9070
9071       </div>
9072     </div>
9073     <div class="padding"></div>
9074
9075     <div class="entry">
9076       <div class="title">
9077         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
9078       </div>
9079       <div class="date">
9080         31st May 2012
9081       </div>
9082       <div class="body">
9083         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
9084 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
9085 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
9086 running Debian Squeeze, where
9087 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
9088 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
9089 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
9090 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
9091 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
9092 another day.</p>
9093
9094 <p>After calibration, I get a
9095 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
9096 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
9097 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
9098 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
9099 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
9100 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
9101 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
9102 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
9103 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
9104 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
9105 and a simple</p>
9106
9107 <p><pre>
9108 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
9109 </pre></p>
9110
9111 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
9112 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
9113 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
9114 enough for now.</p>
9115
9116       </div>
9117       <div class="tags">
9118
9119
9120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9121
9122
9123       </div>
9124     </div>
9125     <div class="padding"></div>
9126
9127     <div class="entry">
9128       <div class="title">
9129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
9130       </div>
9131       <div class="date">
9132         27th May 2012
9133       </div>
9134       <div class="body">
9135         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
9136 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9137 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
9138 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
9139 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
9140 since then, helping to make sure the
9141 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9142 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
9143
9144 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9145
9146 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
9147 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
9148 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
9149 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
9150 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
9151 our computer network.</p>
9152
9153 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
9154 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
9155 (4 months).</p>
9156
9157 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9158 project?</strong></p>
9159
9160 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
9161 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
9162 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
9163 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
9164 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
9165 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
9166 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
9167 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
9168 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
9169 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
9170 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
9171 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
9172 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
9173 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
9174
9175 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9176 Edu?</strong></p>
9177
9178 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
9179 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
9180 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
9181 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
9182 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
9183 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
9184 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
9185 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
9186
9187 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9188 Edu?</strong></p>
9189
9190 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
9191 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
9192 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
9193 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
9194 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
9195 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
9196 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
9197 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
9198 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
9199 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
9200 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
9201 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
9202
9203 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9204
9205 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
9206 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
9207 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
9208
9209 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9210 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9211
9212 <p><ol>
9213
9214 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
9215 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
9216 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
9217 developing.</li>
9218
9219 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
9220 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
9221 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
9222 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
9223 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
9224
9225 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
9226 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
9227 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
9228
9229 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
9230 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
9231 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
9232 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
9233
9234 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
9235 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
9236 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
9237
9238 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
9239
9240 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
9241 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
9242 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
9243 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
9244
9245 </ol></p>
9246
9247       </div>
9248       <div class="tags">
9249
9250
9251         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9252
9253
9254       </div>
9255     </div>
9256     <div class="padding"></div>
9257
9258     <div class="entry">
9259       <div class="title">
9260         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
9261       </div>
9262       <div class="date">
9263         26th May 2012
9264       </div>
9265       <div class="body">
9266         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
9267 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
9268 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
9269 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
9270 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
9271
9272 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
9273 <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>
9274 comment:</p>
9275
9276 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
9277 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
9278 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
9279 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
9280 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
9281 </blockquote></p>
9282
9283 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
9284 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
9285 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
9286 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
9287 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
9288 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
9289 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
9290 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
9291 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
9292 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
9293 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
9294 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
9295 of wasted effort.</p>
9296
9297 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
9298 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
9299 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
9300
9301 <p>See
9302 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
9303 and
9304 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
9305 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
9306 </blockquote></p>
9307
9308       </div>
9309       <div class="tags">
9310
9311
9312         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>.
9313
9314
9315       </div>
9316     </div>
9317     <div class="padding"></div>
9318
9319     <div class="entry">
9320       <div class="title">
9321         <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>
9322       </div>
9323       <div class="date">
9324         18th May 2012
9325       </div>
9326       <div class="body">
9327         <p>In january, I
9328 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
9329 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
9330 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
9331 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
9332 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
9333 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
9334 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
9335 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
9336 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
9337 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
9338
9339 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
9340 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
9341 drivers. :)</p>
9342
9343       </div>
9344       <div class="tags">
9345
9346
9347         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9348
9349
9350       </div>
9351     </div>
9352     <div class="padding"></div>
9353
9354     <div class="entry">
9355       <div class="title">
9356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
9357       </div>
9358       <div class="date">
9359         13th May 2012
9360       </div>
9361       <div class="body">
9362         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
9363 publish another interview with the people behind
9364 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
9365 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
9366 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
9367 details get right before release.
9368
9369 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9370
9371 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
9372 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
9373 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
9374 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
9375 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
9376 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
9377 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
9378 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
9379
9380 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
9381 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
9382 home since 2006.</p>
9383
9384 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9385 project?</strong></p>
9386
9387 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
9388 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
9389 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
9390 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
9391 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
9392 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
9393
9394 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
9395 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
9396 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
9397 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
9398 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
9399 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
9400 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
9401 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
9402 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
9403 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
9404 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
9405 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
9406 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
9407 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
9408 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
9409 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
9410
9411 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9412 Edu?</strong></p>
9413
9414 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
9415 for me as today.</p>
9416
9417 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
9418
9419 <p><ul>
9420
9421 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
9422 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
9423
9424 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
9425 cost.</li>
9426
9427 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
9428 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
9429 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
9430 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
9431 server</li>
9432
9433 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
9434 school.</li>
9435
9436 </ul></p>
9437
9438 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
9439 came up in this way:</p>
9440
9441 <p><ul>
9442
9443 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
9444 now.</li>
9445
9446 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
9447 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
9448 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
9449
9450 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
9451 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
9452 interfaces used in the past.</li>
9453
9454 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
9455 different needs.</li>
9456
9457 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
9458
9459 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
9460 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
9461 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
9462
9463 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
9464 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
9465
9466 </ul></p>
9467
9468 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9469 Edu?</strong></p>
9470
9471 <p><ul>
9472
9473 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
9474 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
9475 whole municipality areas.</li>
9476
9477 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
9478 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
9479 politicians.</li>
9480
9481 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
9482
9483 </ul></p>
9484
9485 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9486
9487 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
9488 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
9489 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
9490 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
9491 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
9492 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
9493
9494 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
9495 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
9496 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
9497 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
9498 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
9499
9500 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9501 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9502
9503 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
9504 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
9505 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
9506
9507       </div>
9508       <div class="tags">
9509
9510
9511         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9512
9513
9514       </div>
9515     </div>
9516     <div class="padding"></div>
9517
9518     <div class="entry">
9519       <div class="title">
9520         <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>
9521       </div>
9522       <div class="date">
9523         30th April 2012
9524       </div>
9525       <div class="body">
9526         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
9527 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
9528
9529 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
9530 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
9531 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
9532 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
9533 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
9534 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
9535 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
9536 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
9537 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
9538 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
9539 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
9540 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
9541 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
9542 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
9543 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
9544 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
9545
9546 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
9547 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
9548 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
9549 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
9550 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
9551 finally found a Danish supplier
9552 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
9553 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
9554 days ago.</p>
9555
9556 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
9557 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
9558 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
9559 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
9560 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
9561 toys.</p>
9562
9563       </div>
9564       <div class="tags">
9565
9566
9567         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9568
9569
9570       </div>
9571     </div>
9572     <div class="padding"></div>
9573
9574     <div class="entry">
9575       <div class="title">
9576         <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>
9577       </div>
9578       <div class="date">
9579         26th April 2012
9580       </div>
9581       <div class="body">
9582         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
9583 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
9584 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
9585 that the video editor application included with
9586 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
9587 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
9588 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
9589
9590 <p><blockquote>
9591 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
9592 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
9593 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
9594 </blockquote></p>
9595
9596 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
9597
9598 <p><blockquote>
9599 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
9600 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
9601 </blockquote></p>
9602
9603 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
9604 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
9605 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
9606 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
9607 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
9608 video.  AMR is
9609 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
9610 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
9611 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
9612 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
9613 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
9614 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
9615 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
9616
9617 <p>I know why I prefer
9618 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
9619 standards</a> also for video.</p>
9620
9621       </div>
9622       <div class="tags">
9623
9624
9625         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9626
9627
9628       </div>
9629     </div>
9630     <div class="padding"></div>
9631
9632     <div class="entry">
9633       <div class="title">
9634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
9635       </div>
9636       <div class="date">
9637         19th April 2012
9638       </div>
9639       <div class="body">
9640         <p>Here in Norway, the
9641 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
9642 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
9643 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
9644 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
9645 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
9646 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
9647 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
9648 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
9649 on the same level.</p>
9650
9651 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
9652 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
9653 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
9654 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
9655 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
9656 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
9657 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
9658 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
9659 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
9660 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
9661 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
9662 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
9663 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
9664 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
9665 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
9666 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
9667 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
9668 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
9669
9670 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
9671 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
9672 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
9673 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
9674 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
9675 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
9676 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
9677 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
9678
9679 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
9680 from Simon Phipps
9681 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
9682 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
9683
9684 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
9685 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
9686 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
9687 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
9688 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
9689 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
9690 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
9691 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
9692 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
9693
9694       </div>
9695       <div class="tags">
9696
9697
9698         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>.
9699
9700
9701       </div>
9702     </div>
9703     <div class="padding"></div>
9704
9705     <div class="entry">
9706       <div class="title">
9707         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
9708       </div>
9709       <div class="date">
9710         15th April 2012
9711       </div>
9712       <div class="body">
9713         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
9714 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
9715 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
9716 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
9717 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
9718 up in the recently released
9719 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9720 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
9721
9722 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9723
9724 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
9725 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
9726 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
9727 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
9728 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
9729 information technology and science/technology.</p>
9730
9731 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9732 project?</strong></p>
9733
9734 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
9735 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
9736 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
9737 contributing.</p>
9738
9739 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9740 Edu?</strong></p>
9741
9742 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
9743 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
9744 Debian Project!</p>
9745
9746 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9747 Edu?</strong></p>
9748
9749 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
9750 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
9751 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
9752 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
9753 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
9754 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
9755 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
9756
9757 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
9758 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
9759
9760 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9761
9762 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
9763 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
9764 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
9765 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
9766
9767 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9768 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9769
9770 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
9771 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
9772 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
9773 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
9774 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
9775 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
9776 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
9777
9778 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
9779 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
9780 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
9781 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
9782 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
9783 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
9784 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
9785 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
9786
9787       </div>
9788       <div class="tags">
9789
9790
9791         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9792
9793
9794       </div>
9795     </div>
9796     <div class="padding"></div>
9797
9798     <div class="entry">
9799       <div class="title">
9800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
9801       </div>
9802       <div class="date">
9803          8th April 2012
9804       </div>
9805       <div class="body">
9806         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
9807 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
9808 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
9809 contributor to the
9810 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9811 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
9812
9813 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9814
9815 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
9816 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
9817
9818 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9819 project?</strong></p>
9820
9821 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
9822 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
9823 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
9824 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
9825 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
9826 "localisation".</p>
9827
9828 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9829 Edu?</strong></p>
9830
9831 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9832 Edu?</strong></p>
9833
9834 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
9835 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
9836 education system.</p>
9837
9838 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
9839 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
9840 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
9841 money on the latest hardware.</p>
9842
9843 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9844
9845 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
9846 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
9847 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
9848
9849 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9850 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9851
9852 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
9853 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
9854 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
9855
9856       </div>
9857       <div class="tags">
9858
9859
9860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9861
9862
9863       </div>
9864     </div>
9865     <div class="padding"></div>
9866
9867     <div class="entry">
9868       <div class="title">
9869         <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>
9870       </div>
9871       <div class="date">
9872          6th April 2012
9873       </div>
9874       <div class="body">
9875         <p>Recently I have spent time with
9876 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
9877 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9878 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
9879 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
9880 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
9881 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
9882 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
9883 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
9884
9885 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
9886 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
9887 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
9888 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
9889 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
9890 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
9891 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
9892 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
9893
9894 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
9895 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
9896 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
9897 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
9898 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
9899 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
9900 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
9901 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
9902
9903 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
9904 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
9905 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
9906 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
9907 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
9908 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
9909 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
9910 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
9911 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
9912 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
9913
9914 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
9915 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
9916 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
9917 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
9918
9919 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
9920 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
9921
9922       </div>
9923       <div class="tags">
9924
9925
9926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9927
9928
9929       </div>
9930     </div>
9931     <div class="padding"></div>
9932
9933     <div class="entry">
9934       <div class="title">
9935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
9936       </div>
9937       <div class="date">
9938          5th April 2012
9939       </div>
9940       <div class="body">
9941         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
9942 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
9943 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
9944 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
9945 for schools.  Check out his article
9946 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
9947 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
9948
9949       </div>
9950       <div class="tags">
9951
9952
9953         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9954
9955
9956       </div>
9957     </div>
9958     <div class="padding"></div>
9959
9960     <div class="entry">
9961       <div class="title">
9962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
9963       </div>
9964       <div class="date">
9965          1st April 2012
9966       </div>
9967       <div class="body">
9968         <p>Germany is a core area for the
9969 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9970 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
9971 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
9972
9973 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9974
9975 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
9976 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
9977 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
9978 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
9979 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
9980 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
9981 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
9982 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
9983
9984 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
9985 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
9986 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
9987 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
9988 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
9989 the end of April this year.</p>
9990
9991 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9992 project?</strong></p>
9993
9994 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
9995 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
9996 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
9997 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
9998 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
9999 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
10000 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
10001 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
10002 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
10003 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
10004 Skolelinux.</p>
10005
10006 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
10007 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
10008 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
10009 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
10010 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
10011 the admin teachers.</p>
10012
10013 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10014 Edu?</strong></p>
10015
10016 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
10017 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
10018 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
10019
10020 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
10021 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
10022 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
10023 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
10024 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
10025
10026 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10027 Edu?</strong></p>
10028
10029 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
10030
10031 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10032
10033 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
10034 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
10035 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
10036 LibreOffice.</p>
10037
10038 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10039 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10040
10041 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
10042 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
10043 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
10044
10045       </div>
10046       <div class="tags">
10047
10048
10049         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10050
10051
10052       </div>
10053     </div>
10054     <div class="padding"></div>
10055
10056     <div class="entry">
10057       <div class="title">
10058         <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>
10059       </div>
10060       <div class="date">
10061         25th March 2012
10062       </div>
10063       <div class="body">
10064         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10065
10066 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
10067 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
10068 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
10069 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
10070 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
10071 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
10072 and download as a
10073 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
10074 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10075
10076 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10077   <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"' />
10078     <p>Download video as
10079       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10080 </video></p>
10081
10082       </div>
10083       <div class="tags">
10084
10085
10086         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10087
10088
10089       </div>
10090     </div>
10091     <div class="padding"></div>
10092
10093     <div class="entry">
10094       <div class="title">
10095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
10096       </div>
10097       <div class="date">
10098         19th March 2012
10099       </div>
10100       <div class="body">
10101         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10102 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
10103 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
10104 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
10105 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
10106
10107 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10108
10109 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
10110 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
10111 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
10112 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
10113 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
10114 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
10115 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
10116 installations.</p>
10117
10118 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10119 project?</strong></p>
10120
10121 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
10122 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
10123 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
10124 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
10125 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
10126 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
10127 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
10128 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
10129 these things we decided to try it.</p>
10130
10131 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10132 Edu?</strong></p>
10133
10134 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
10135 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
10136 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
10137 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
10138 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
10139 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
10140 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
10141 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
10142
10143 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10144 Edu?</strong></p>
10145
10146 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
10147 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
10148 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
10149 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
10150 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
10151
10152 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10153
10154 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
10155 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
10156 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
10157 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
10158 that counts...)</p>
10159
10160 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10161 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10162
10163 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
10164 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
10165 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
10166 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
10167 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
10168 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
10169 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
10170 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
10171 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
10172 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
10173 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
10174
10175 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
10176 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
10177 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
10178
10179       </div>
10180       <div class="tags">
10181
10182
10183         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10184
10185
10186       </div>
10187     </div>
10188     <div class="padding"></div>
10189
10190     <div class="entry">
10191       <div class="title">
10192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
10193       </div>
10194       <div class="date">
10195         16th March 2012
10196       </div>
10197       <div class="body">
10198         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
10199 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
10200 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
10201 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
10202
10203 <ol>
10204
10205 <li>The documentation is written in a
10206 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
10207 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
10208 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
10209 docbook XML.</li>
10210
10211 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
10212 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
10213 with the translated text.</li>
10214
10215 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
10216 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
10217 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
10218 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
10219 images.</li>
10220
10221 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
10222 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
10223
10224 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
10225 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
10226
10227 </ol>
10228
10229 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
10230 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
10231 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
10232 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
10233 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
10234
10235 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
10236 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
10237 package</a>.</p>
10238
10239       </div>
10240       <div class="tags">
10241
10242
10243         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10244
10245
10246       </div>
10247     </div>
10248     <div class="padding"></div>
10249
10250     <div class="entry">
10251       <div class="title">
10252         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
10253       </div>
10254       <div class="date">
10255         11th March 2012
10256       </div>
10257       <div class="body">
10258         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
10259 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
10260 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10261 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
10262 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
10263 you have not done so already.</p>
10264
10265 <p>I plan to present the new version at
10266 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
10267 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
10268 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
10269
10270       </div>
10271       <div class="tags">
10272
10273
10274         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10275
10276
10277       </div>
10278     </div>
10279     <div class="padding"></div>
10280
10281     <div class="entry">
10282       <div class="title">
10283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
10284       </div>
10285       <div class="date">
10286          9th March 2012
10287       </div>
10288       <div class="body">
10289         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
10290 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
10291 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10292 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
10293 more international audience.</p>
10294
10295 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
10296 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
10297 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
10298 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
10299 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
10300 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
10301 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
10302
10303
10304 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10305
10306 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
10307 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
10308 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
10309 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
10310 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
10311 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
10312 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
10313 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
10314 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
10315 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
10316 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
10317
10318 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10319 project?</strong></p>
10320
10321 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
10322 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
10323 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
10324 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
10325 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
10326 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
10327 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
10328 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
10329 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
10330 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
10331 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
10332 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
10333 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
10334
10335 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10336 Edu?</strong></p>
10337
10338 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
10339 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
10340 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
10341 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
10342 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
10343 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
10344 Japan.</p>
10345
10346 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10347 Edu?</strong></p>
10348
10349 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
10350 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
10351 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
10352 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
10353 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
10354 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
10355 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
10356 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
10357 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
10358 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
10359 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
10360 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
10361 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
10362 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
10363 help.</p>
10364
10365 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10366
10367 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
10368 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
10369 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
10370 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
10371 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
10372 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
10373 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
10374 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
10375 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
10376 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
10377 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
10378
10379 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10380 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10381
10382 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
10383 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
10384 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
10385 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
10386 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
10387 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
10388 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
10389 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
10390 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
10391 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
10392 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
10393 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
10394
10395       </div>
10396       <div class="tags">
10397
10398
10399         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10400
10401
10402       </div>
10403     </div>
10404     <div class="padding"></div>
10405
10406     <div class="entry">
10407       <div class="title">
10408         <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>
10409       </div>
10410       <div class="date">
10411          7th March 2012
10412       </div>
10413       <div class="body">
10414         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10415
10416 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
10417 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
10418 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
10419 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
10420 download as a
10421 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
10422 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10423
10424 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10425   <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"' />
10426     <p>Download video as
10427       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10428 </video></p>
10429
10430       </div>
10431       <div class="tags">
10432
10433
10434         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10435
10436
10437       </div>
10438     </div>
10439     <div class="padding"></div>
10440
10441     <div class="entry">
10442       <div class="title">
10443         <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>
10444       </div>
10445       <div class="date">
10446          4th March 2012
10447       </div>
10448       <div class="body">
10449         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
10450 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10451 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10452 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
10453 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
10454 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10455
10456       </div>
10457       <div class="tags">
10458
10459
10460         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10461
10462
10463       </div>
10464     </div>
10465     <div class="padding"></div>
10466
10467     <div class="entry">
10468       <div class="title">
10469         <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>
10470       </div>
10471       <div class="date">
10472          3rd March 2012
10473       </div>
10474       <div class="body">
10475         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
10476 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
10477 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
10478 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
10479 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
10480 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
10481 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
10482 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
10483 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
10484 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
10485 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
10486 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
10487 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
10488 year...</p>
10489
10490 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
10491 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
10492 name,
10493 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
10494 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
10495 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
10496 mean). I've been following
10497 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
10498 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
10499 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
10500 Check it out. :)</p>
10501
10502       </div>
10503       <div class="tags">
10504
10505
10506         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10507
10508
10509       </div>
10510     </div>
10511     <div class="padding"></div>
10512
10513     <div class="entry">
10514       <div class="title">
10515         <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>
10516       </div>
10517       <div class="date">
10518         27th February 2012
10519       </div>
10520       <div class="body">
10521         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
10522 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10523 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
10524 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
10525 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
10526 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
10527 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10528
10529       </div>
10530       <div class="tags">
10531
10532
10533         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10534
10535
10536       </div>
10537     </div>
10538     <div class="padding"></div>
10539
10540     <div class="entry">
10541       <div class="title">
10542         <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>
10543       </div>
10544       <div class="date">
10545         19th February 2012
10546       </div>
10547       <div class="body">
10548         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
10549 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
10550 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10551 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10552 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
10553 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
10554 solution for your school.</p>
10555
10556       </div>
10557       <div class="tags">
10558
10559
10560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10561
10562
10563       </div>
10564     </div>
10565     <div class="padding"></div>
10566
10567     <div class="entry">
10568       <div class="title">
10569         <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>
10570       </div>
10571       <div class="date">
10572         14th February 2012
10573       </div>
10574       <div class="body">
10575         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
10576 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
10577 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
10578 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
10579 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
10580 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
10581 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
10582 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
10583 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
10584
10585 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
10586 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
10587 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
10588 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
10589 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
10590
10591 <blockquote><pre>
10592 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
10593 do
10594     printf "Failed disk $d: "
10595     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
10596 done
10597 </blockquote></pre>
10598
10599 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
10600 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
10601
10602 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
10603
10604 <blockquote><pre>
10605 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
10606 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
10607 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
10608 </blockquote></pre>
10609
10610 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
10611 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
10612 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
10613 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
10614 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
10615 mounted inside my box.</p>
10616
10617 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
10618 Software RAID in the
10619 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
10620 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
10621 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
10622 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
10623 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
10624 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
10625
10626       </div>
10627       <div class="tags">
10628
10629
10630         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>.
10631
10632
10633       </div>
10634     </div>
10635     <div class="padding"></div>
10636
10637     <div class="entry">
10638       <div class="title">
10639         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10640       </div>
10641       <div class="date">
10642         13th February 2012
10643       </div>
10644       <div class="body">
10645         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
10646 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
10647 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
10648 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
10649 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
10650 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
10651 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
10652 change the global proxy setting by editing
10653 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
10654 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
10655
10656 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
10657 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
10658 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
10659
10660 <blockquote><pre>
10661 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
10662 {
10663    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
10664        isPlainHostName(host) ||
10665        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
10666       return "DIRECT";
10667    else
10668       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
10669 }
10670 </pre></blockquote>
10671
10672 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
10673
10674 <blockquote><pre>
10675 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
10676 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
10677 </pre></blockquote>
10678
10679 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
10680 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
10681 would be used for
10682 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
10683 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
10684 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
10685 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
10686 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
10687 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
10688 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
10689 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
10690 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
10691 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
10692
10693 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
10694 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
10695 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
10696 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
10697 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
10698 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
10699
10700 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
10701 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
10702 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
10703 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
10704 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
10705 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
10706 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
10707 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
10708 the network setup changes.</p>
10709
10710 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
10711 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
10712 draft</a> and a
10713 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
10714 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
10715
10716       </div>
10717       <div class="tags">
10718
10719
10720         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10721
10722
10723       </div>
10724     </div>
10725     <div class="padding"></div>
10726
10727     <div class="entry">
10728       <div class="title">
10729         <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>
10730       </div>
10731       <div class="date">
10732          5th February 2012
10733       </div>
10734       <div class="body">
10735         <p>Since the Lenny version of
10736 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
10737 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
10738 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
10739 in the morning.  This is done using the
10740 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
10741
10742 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
10743 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
10744 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
10745 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
10746 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
10747 the
10748 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
10749 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
10750 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
10751 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
10752 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
10753
10754 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
10755 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
10756 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
10757 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
10758 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
10759 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
10760 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
10761
10762 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
10763 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
10764 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
10765 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
10766 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
10767
10768       </div>
10769       <div class="tags">
10770
10771
10772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10773
10774
10775       </div>
10776     </div>
10777     <div class="padding"></div>
10778
10779     <div class="entry">
10780       <div class="title">
10781         <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>
10782       </div>
10783       <div class="date">
10784          4th February 2012
10785       </div>
10786       <div class="body">
10787         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
10788 publish the third beta version of
10789 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10790 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
10791 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
10792 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
10793 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
10794 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
10795 on the project announcement list.</p>
10796
10797 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
10798 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
10799
10800 <ul>
10801
10802 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
10803   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
10804   the installation.</li>
10805
10806 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
10807   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
10808
10809 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
10810   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
10811   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
10812
10813 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
10814   for the local system administrator is created during installation
10815   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
10816   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
10817   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
10818   up to date on the system.</li>
10819
10820 </ul>
10821
10822 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
10823 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
10824 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
10825 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
10826
10827 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
10828 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
10829 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
10830 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
10831 will see you there?</p>
10832
10833       </div>
10834       <div class="tags">
10835
10836
10837         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10838
10839
10840       </div>
10841     </div>
10842     <div class="padding"></div>
10843
10844     <div class="entry">
10845       <div class="title">
10846         <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>
10847       </div>
10848       <div class="date">
10849         27th January 2012
10850       </div>
10851       <div class="body">
10852         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
10853 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
10854 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10855 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
10856 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
10857 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
10858 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
10859
10860 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
10861 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
10862 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
10863 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
10864 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
10865 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
10866 not taken care of by this.</p>
10867
10868 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
10869 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
10870 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
10871 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
10872 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
10873 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
10874 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
10875 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
10876 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
10877 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
10878 firmware packages.</p>
10879
10880 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
10881 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
10882 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
10883 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
10884 initrd with extra firmware, the
10885 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
10886 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
10887 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
10888
10889 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
10890 network cards working.  For this,
10891 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
10892 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
10893 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
10894
10895 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
10896 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
10897 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
10898
10899 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
10900 try.</p>
10901
10902       </div>
10903       <div class="tags">
10904
10905
10906         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10907
10908
10909       </div>
10910     </div>
10911     <div class="padding"></div>
10912
10913     <div class="entry">
10914       <div class="title">
10915         <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>
10916       </div>
10917       <div class="date">
10918         25th January 2012
10919       </div>
10920       <div class="body">
10921         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
10922 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
10923 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
10924 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
10925 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
10926
10927 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
10928 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
10929 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
10930 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
10931 this is done, log on to the central server and run
10932 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
10933 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
10934 will look similar to this:</p>
10935
10936 <p><blockquote><pre>
10937 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
10938 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
10939 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.
10940
10941 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
10942
10943 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10944 enter password: *******
10945 %
10946 </pre></blockquote></p>
10947
10948 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
10949 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
10950 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
10951 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
10952 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
10953 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
10954 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
10955 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
10956 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
10957 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
10958 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
10959 automatically.</p>
10960
10961 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
10962 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
10963
10964 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
10965 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
10966 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
10967
10968       </div>
10969       <div class="tags">
10970
10971
10972         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10973
10974
10975       </div>
10976     </div>
10977     <div class="padding"></div>
10978
10979     <div class="entry">
10980       <div class="title">
10981         <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>
10982       </div>
10983       <div class="date">
10984         10th January 2012
10985       </div>
10986       <div class="body">
10987         <p>In the Squeeze version of
10988 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
10989 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
10990 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
10991 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
10992 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
10993 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
10994 first time.</p>
10995
10996 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
10997 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
10998 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
10999 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
11000
11001 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
11002 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
11003 new setting.</p>
11004
11005 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
11006 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
11007 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
11008
11009       </div>
11010       <div class="tags">
11011
11012
11013         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11014
11015
11016       </div>
11017     </div>
11018     <div class="padding"></div>
11019
11020     <div class="entry">
11021       <div class="title">
11022         <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>
11023       </div>
11024       <div class="date">
11025          7th January 2012
11026       </div>
11027       <div class="body">
11028         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
11029 the second beta version of
11030 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
11031 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
11032 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
11033 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
11034 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11035 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
11036 on the project announcement list.</p>
11037
11038       </div>
11039       <div class="tags">
11040
11041
11042         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11043
11044
11045       </div>
11046     </div>
11047     <div class="padding"></div>
11048
11049     <div class="entry">
11050       <div class="title">
11051         <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>
11052       </div>
11053       <div class="date">
11054          3rd January 2012
11055       </div>
11056       <div class="body">
11057         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
11058 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
11059 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
11060 interesting.</p>
11061
11062 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
11063 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
11064 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
11065 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
11066 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
11067 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
11068 wrap up its tasks.</p>
11069
11070 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
11071 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
11072 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
11073 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
11074 because I was typing.</P>
11075
11076 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
11077 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
11078 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
11079 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
11080 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
11081 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
11082 generate entropy.</p>
11083
11084 <p>The fix is in
11085 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
11086 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
11087 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
11088 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
11089
11090       </div>
11091       <div class="tags">
11092
11093
11094         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11095
11096
11097       </div>
11098     </div>
11099     <div class="padding"></div>
11100
11101     <div class="entry">
11102       <div class="title">
11103         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
11104       </div>
11105       <div class="date">
11106         21st November 2011
11107       </div>
11108       <div class="body">
11109         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
11110 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
11111 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
11112 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
11113 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
11114 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
11115 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
11116 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
11117 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
11118 the tools to do so.</p>
11119
11120 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
11121 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
11122 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
11123 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
11124
11125 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
11126 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
11127 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
11128 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
11129 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
11130 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
11131 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
11132 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
11133
11134 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
11135 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
11136 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
11137
11138 <p><pre>
11139 #!/usr/bin/perl
11140 use strict;
11141 use warnings;
11142 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
11143 BEGIN {
11144     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
11145     my %rhelmodules = (
11146         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
11147         );
11148     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
11149         eval "use $module;";
11150         if ($@) {
11151             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
11152             system("yum install -y $pkg");
11153             eval "use $module;";
11154         }
11155     }
11156 }
11157 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
11158
11159 upgrade_dell();
11160
11161 exit 0;
11162
11163 sub run_firmware_script {
11164     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
11165     unless ($script) {
11166         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
11167         exit 1
11168     }
11169     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
11170
11171     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
11172         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
11173     } else {
11174         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
11175     }
11176 }
11177
11178 sub run_firmware_scripts {
11179     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
11180     # Run firmware packages
11181     for my $dir (@dirs) {
11182         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
11183         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
11184         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
11185             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
11186             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
11187         }
11188         closedir $dh;
11189     }
11190 }
11191
11192 sub download {
11193     my $url = shift;
11194     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
11195     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
11196 }
11197
11198 sub upgrade_dell {
11199     my @dirs;
11200     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11201     chomp $product;
11202
11203     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
11204
11205         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
11206         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
11207
11208         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
11209             CLEANUP => 1
11210             );
11211         chdir($tmpdir);
11212         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
11213         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
11214         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
11215         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
11216         my $fwopts = "-q";
11217         if (@paths) {
11218             for my $url (@paths) {
11219                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
11220             }
11221             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
11222         } else {
11223             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
11224             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
11225         }
11226         chdir('/');
11227     } else {
11228         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
11229         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
11230     }
11231 }
11232
11233 sub fetch_dell_fw {
11234     my $path = shift;
11235     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
11236     download($url);
11237 }
11238
11239 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
11240 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
11241 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
11242 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
11243     my $filename = shift;
11244
11245     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11246     chomp $product;
11247     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
11248
11249     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
11250
11251     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
11252     my @paths;
11253     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
11254         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
11255         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
11256         my $oscode;
11257         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
11258             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
11259         } else {
11260             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
11261         }
11262         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
11263         {
11264             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
11265         }
11266     }
11267     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
11268         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
11269
11270         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
11271         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
11272
11273         my $cpath = $component->{path};
11274         for my $path (@paths) {
11275             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
11276                 push(@paths, $cpath);
11277             }
11278         }
11279     }
11280     return @paths;
11281 }
11282 </pre>
11283
11284 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
11285 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
11286 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
11287 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
11288 outdated.</p>
11289
11290       </div>
11291       <div class="tags">
11292
11293
11294         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11295
11296
11297       </div>
11298     </div>
11299     <div class="padding"></div>
11300
11301     <div class="entry">
11302       <div class="title">
11303         <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>
11304       </div>
11305       <div class="date">
11306          7th October 2011
11307       </div>
11308       <div class="body">
11309         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
11310 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
11311 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
11312 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
11313 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
11314 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
11315 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
11316 models.</p>
11317
11318 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
11319 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
11320 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
11321 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
11322
11323 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
11324 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
11325 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
11326 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
11327 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
11328 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
11329 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
11330 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
11331 distributed.</p>
11332
11333 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
11334
11335 <ul>
11336
11337 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
11338   other relevant equipment.</li>
11339
11340 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
11341
11342 </ul>
11343
11344 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
11345 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
11346 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
11347 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
11348 books available.</p>
11349
11350 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
11351 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
11352 libraries. :)</p>
11353
11354       </div>
11355       <div class="tags">
11356
11357
11358         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>.
11359
11360
11361       </div>
11362     </div>
11363     <div class="padding"></div>
11364
11365     <div class="entry">
11366       <div class="title">
11367         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
11368       </div>
11369       <div class="date">
11370         17th September 2011
11371       </div>
11372       <div class="body">
11373         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
11374 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
11375 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
11376 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
11377 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
11378 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
11379 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
11380 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
11381
11382 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
11383
11384 <blockquote><pre>
11385 #!/bin/sh
11386 # apt-get install lsdvd
11387 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11388 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
11389 </pre></blockquote>
11390
11391 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
11392 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
11393 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
11394 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
11395
11396 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
11397 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
11398 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
11399 back as an ISO.
11400
11401 <blockquote><pre>
11402 #!/bin/sh
11403 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
11404 set -e
11405 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
11406 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11407 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
11408 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
11409 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
11410 </pre></blockquote>
11411
11412 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
11413
11414 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
11415 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
11416 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
11417 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
11418 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
11419
11420 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
11421 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
11422 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
11423 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
11424 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
11425 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
11426
11427       </div>
11428       <div class="tags">
11429
11430
11431         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>.
11432
11433
11434       </div>
11435     </div>
11436     <div class="padding"></div>
11437
11438     <div class="entry">
11439       <div class="title">
11440         <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>
11441       </div>
11442       <div class="date">
11443          4th August 2011
11444       </div>
11445       <div class="body">
11446         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
11447 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
11448 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
11449 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
11450 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
11451 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
11452 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
11453 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
11454 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
11455
11456 <p><blockquote>
11457 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
11458 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
11459 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
11460 </blockquote></p>
11461
11462 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
11463 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
11464 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
11465 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
11466 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
11467 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
11468 hard to explain.</p>
11469
11470 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
11471 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
11472 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
11473 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
11474 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
11475 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
11476 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
11477 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
11478 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
11479 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
11480 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
11481 mode).</p>
11482
11483 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
11484 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
11485 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
11486 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
11487 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
11488 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
11489 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
11490 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
11491 after visiting single user mode.</p>
11492
11493 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
11494 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
11495 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
11496 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
11497 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
11498 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
11499 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
11500 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
11501
11502 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
11503 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
11504 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
11505
11506       </div>
11507       <div class="tags">
11508
11509
11510         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>.
11511
11512
11513       </div>
11514     </div>
11515     <div class="padding"></div>
11516
11517     <div class="entry">
11518       <div class="title">
11519         <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>
11520       </div>
11521       <div class="date">
11522         30th July 2011
11523       </div>
11524       <div class="body">
11525         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
11526 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
11527 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
11528 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
11529 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
11530 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
11531 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
11532 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
11533 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
11534 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
11535 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
11536 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
11537 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
11538
11539 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
11540 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
11541 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
11542 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
11543 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
11544 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
11545 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
11546 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
11547 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
11548
11549 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
11550 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
11551 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
11552 is presented.</p>
11553
11554 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
11555 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
11556 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
11557 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
11558 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
11559 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
11560 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
11561 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
11562 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
11563 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
11564 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
11565 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
11566 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
11567 find time to push this forward.</p>
11568
11569       </div>
11570       <div class="tags">
11571
11572
11573         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>.
11574
11575
11576       </div>
11577     </div>
11578     <div class="padding"></div>
11579
11580     <div class="entry">
11581       <div class="title">
11582         <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>
11583       </div>
11584       <div class="date">
11585         29th July 2011
11586       </div>
11587       <div class="body">
11588         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
11589 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
11590 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
11591 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
11592 issues.</p>
11593
11594 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
11595 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
11596 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
11597
11598 <ol>
11599
11600 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
11601 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
11602 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
11603 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
11604 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
11605 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
11606 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
11607 Debian.</li>
11608
11609 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
11610 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
11611 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
11612 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
11613 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
11614 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
11615 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
11616 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
11617 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
11618 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
11619 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
11620 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
11621 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
11622
11623 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
11624 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
11625 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
11626 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
11627 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
11628 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
11629 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
11630 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
11631 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
11632 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
11633
11634 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
11635 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
11636 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
11637 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
11638 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
11639 latter behaviour.</li>
11640
11641 </ol>
11642
11643 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
11644 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
11645 it do not matter much.</p>
11646
11647 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
11648 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
11649 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
11650
11651       </div>
11652       <div class="tags">
11653
11654
11655         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11656
11657
11658       </div>
11659     </div>
11660     <div class="padding"></div>
11661
11662     <div class="entry">
11663       <div class="title">
11664         <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>
11665       </div>
11666       <div class="date">
11667         26th July 2011
11668       </div>
11669       <div class="body">
11670         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
11671 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
11672 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
11673 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
11674 security support for a few years.</p>
11675
11676 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
11677 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
11678 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
11679 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
11680 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
11681 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
11682 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
11683 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
11684 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
11685 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
11686 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
11687 easier in the future.</p>
11688
11689 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
11690 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
11691 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
11692 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
11693 do not have time for.</p>
11694
11695       </div>
11696       <div class="tags">
11697
11698
11699         Tags: <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>.
11700
11701
11702       </div>
11703     </div>
11704     <div class="padding"></div>
11705
11706     <div class="entry">
11707       <div class="title">
11708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
11709       </div>
11710       <div class="date">
11711         20th June 2011
11712       </div>
11713       <div class="body">
11714         <p>Reading
11715 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
11716 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
11717 parts of the
11718 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
11719 and
11720 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
11721 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
11722 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
11723 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
11724
11725       </div>
11726       <div class="tags">
11727
11728
11729         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>.
11730
11731
11732       </div>
11733     </div>
11734     <div class="padding"></div>
11735
11736     <div class="entry">
11737       <div class="title">
11738         <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>
11739       </div>
11740       <div class="date">
11741         30th April 2011
11742       </div>
11743       <div class="body">
11744         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
11745 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
11746 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
11747 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
11748 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
11749 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
11750 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
11751 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
11752 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
11753 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
11754
11755 <p>Where is it?  Visit
11756 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
11757 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
11758 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
11759 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
11760
11761       </div>
11762       <div class="tags">
11763
11764
11765         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>.
11766
11767
11768       </div>
11769     </div>
11770     <div class="padding"></div>
11771
11772     <div class="entry">
11773       <div class="title">
11774         <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>
11775       </div>
11776       <div class="date">
11777         29th April 2011
11778       </div>
11779       <div class="body">
11780         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
11781 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
11782 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
11783 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
11784 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
11785 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
11786 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
11787 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
11788 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
11789 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
11790 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
11791 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
11792 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
11793
11794 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
11795 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
11796 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
11797 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
11798 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
11799 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
11800 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
11801 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
11802 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
11803 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
11804 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
11805 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
11806 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
11807
11808 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
11809 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
11810 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
11811 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
11812 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
11813 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
11814 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
11815 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
11816 it.</p>
11817
11818 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
11819 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
11820 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
11821 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
11822 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
11823 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
11824 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
11825
11826 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
11827 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
11828 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
11829 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
11830 and range= options.</p>
11831
11832 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
11833 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
11834 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
11835 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
11836 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
11837 to best handle this.  I've noticed
11838 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
11839 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
11840 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
11841 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
11842
11843 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
11844 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
11845 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
11846 discussions instead of only
11847 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
11848 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
11849 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
11850 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
11851 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
11852 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
11853
11854       </div>
11855       <div class="tags">
11856
11857
11858         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>.
11859
11860
11861       </div>
11862     </div>
11863     <div class="padding"></div>
11864
11865     <div class="entry">
11866       <div class="title">
11867         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
11868       </div>
11869       <div class="date">
11870          6th April 2011
11871       </div>
11872       <div class="body">
11873         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
11874 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
11875 A few days ago the project
11876 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
11877 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
11878 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
11879 into Gnash.</p>
11880
11881       </div>
11882       <div class="tags">
11883
11884
11885         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>.
11886
11887
11888       </div>
11889     </div>
11890     <div class="padding"></div>
11891
11892     <div class="entry">
11893       <div class="title">
11894         <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>
11895       </div>
11896       <div class="date">
11897          3rd April 2011
11898       </div>
11899       <div class="body">
11900         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
11901 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
11902 update in English.</p>
11903
11904 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
11905 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
11906 of the British service
11907 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
11908 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
11909 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
11910 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
11911 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
11912 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
11913 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
11914 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
11915 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
11916 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
11917 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
11918 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
11919 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
11920
11921 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
11922 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
11923 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
11924 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
11925 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
11926 public infrastructure.</p>
11927
11928 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
11929 such service?</p>
11930
11931       </div>
11932       <div class="tags">
11933
11934
11935         Tags: <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>.
11936
11937
11938       </div>
11939     </div>
11940     <div class="padding"></div>
11941
11942     <div class="entry">
11943       <div class="title">
11944         <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>
11945       </div>
11946       <div class="date">
11947         28th January 2011
11948       </div>
11949       <div class="body">
11950         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
11951 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
11952 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
11953 available on the Internet, and check our locally
11954 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
11955 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
11956 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
11957 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
11958 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
11959 out which security holes were present in our free software
11960 collection.</p>
11961
11962 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
11963 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
11964 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
11965 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
11966 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
11967 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
11968 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
11969 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
11970 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
11971 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
11972 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
11973 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
11974 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
11975 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
11976 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
11977 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
11978
11979 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
11980 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
11981 check out, one could look up
11982 <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
11983 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
11984 The most recent one is
11985 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
11986 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
11987 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
11988
11989 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
11990 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
11991 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
11992 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
11993 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
11994 security issues out.</p>
11995
11996 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
11997 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
11998 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
11999 RHEL is providing
12000 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
12001 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
12002 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
12003
12004 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
12005 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
12006 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
12007 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
12008 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
12009 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
12010 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
12011 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
12012 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
12013 established soon.</p>
12014
12015 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
12016 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
12017 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
12018 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
12019 for their packages.</p>
12020
12021       </div>
12022       <div class="tags">
12023
12024
12025         Tags: <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>.
12026
12027
12028       </div>
12029     </div>
12030     <div class="padding"></div>
12031
12032     <div class="entry">
12033       <div class="title">
12034         <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>
12035       </div>
12036       <div class="date">
12037         23rd January 2011
12038       </div>
12039       <div class="body">
12040         <p>In the
12041 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
12042 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
12043 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
12044 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
12045 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
12046 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
12047 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
12048 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
12049 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
12050 one of my machines like this:</p>
12051
12052 <pre>
12053 loaded modules:
12054 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
12055 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
12056 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
12057 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
12058 10de:03ec pata_amd
12059 10de:03f6 sata_nv
12060 1022:1103 k8temp
12061 109e:036e bttv
12062 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
12063 11ab:4364 sky2
12064 </pre>
12065
12066 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
12067 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
12068
12069 <pre>
12070 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
12071     echo loaded pci modules:
12072     (
12073         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
12074         for address in * ; do
12075             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12076                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12077                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12078                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12079                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
12080                     echo "$id $module"
12081                 fi
12082             fi
12083         done
12084     )
12085     echo
12086 fi
12087 </pre>
12088
12089 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
12090 mappings:</p>
12091
12092 <pre>
12093 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
12094     echo loaded usb modules:
12095     (
12096         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
12097         for address in * ; do
12098             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12099                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12100                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12101                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12102                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
12103                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
12104                         echo "$id $module"
12105                     fi
12106                 fi
12107             fi
12108         done
12109     )
12110     echo
12111 fi
12112 </pre>
12113
12114 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
12115 well.</p>
12116
12117       </div>
12118       <div class="tags">
12119
12120
12121         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12122
12123
12124       </div>
12125     </div>
12126     <div class="padding"></div>
12127
12128     <div class="entry">
12129       <div class="title">
12130         <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>
12131       </div>
12132       <div class="date">
12133         16th January 2011
12134       </div>
12135       <div class="body">
12136         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
12137 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
12138 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
12139 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
12140 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
12141 the Wikipedia article on
12142 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
12143 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
12144 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
12145 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
12146 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
12147 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
12148 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
12149 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
12150 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
12151 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
12152 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
12153 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
12154
12155 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
12156 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
12157 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
12158 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
12159 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
12160 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
12161 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
12162 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
12163 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
12164 from last week</a>.</p>
12165
12166 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
12167 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
12168 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
12169 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
12170 was without royalties and license terms, check out
12171 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12172 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
12173
12174 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
12175 available from
12176 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
12177 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
12178 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
12179
12180 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
12181 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
12182 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
12183 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
12184
12185       </div>
12186       <div class="tags">
12187
12188
12189         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12190
12191
12192       </div>
12193     </div>
12194     <div class="padding"></div>
12195
12196     <div class="entry">
12197       <div class="title">
12198         <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>
12199       </div>
12200       <div class="date">
12201         12th January 2011
12202       </div>
12203       <div class="body">
12204         <p>Today I discovered
12205 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
12206 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
12207 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
12208 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
12209 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
12210 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
12211 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
12212 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12213 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
12214 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
12215 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
12216 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
12217 on the Google announcement is available from
12218 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
12219 A good read. :)</p>
12220
12221 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
12222 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
12223 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
12224 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
12225 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
12226 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
12227 browsers support H.264, and others support
12228 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
12229 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
12230 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
12231 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
12232 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
12233 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
12234 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
12235 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
12236
12237 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
12238 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
12239 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
12240 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
12241 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
12242 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
12243 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
12244
12245 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
12246 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
12247 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
12248 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
12249 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
12250 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
12251 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
12252
12253 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
12254 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
12255 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
12256 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
12257 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
12258 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
12259 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
12260
12261 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
12262 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
12263 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
12264 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
12265 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
12266 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
12267 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
12268 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
12269 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
12270 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
12271 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
12272 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
12273 I guess time will tell.</p>
12274
12275 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
12276 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
12277 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
12278
12279       </div>
12280       <div class="tags">
12281
12282
12283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12284
12285
12286       </div>
12287     </div>
12288     <div class="padding"></div>
12289
12290     <div class="entry">
12291       <div class="title">
12292         <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>
12293       </div>
12294       <div class="date">
12295         30th December 2010
12296       </div>
12297       <div class="body">
12298         <p>After trying to
12299 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
12300 Ogg Theora</a> to
12301 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
12302 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
12303 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
12304 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
12305 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
12306 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
12307 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
12308
12309 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
12310 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
12311 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
12312 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
12313 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
12314 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
12315 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
12316
12317 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
12318 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
12319
12320       </div>
12321       <div class="tags">
12322
12323
12324         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>.
12325
12326
12327       </div>
12328     </div>
12329     <div class="padding"></div>
12330
12331     <div class="entry">
12332       <div class="title">
12333         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
12334       </div>
12335       <div class="date">
12336         27th December 2010
12337       </div>
12338       <div class="body">
12339         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
12340 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
12341 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
12342 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
12343 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
12344 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
12345 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
12346 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
12347
12348 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
12349 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
12350 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
12351 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
12352 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
12353 page</a>.</p>
12354
12355 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
12356 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
12357 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
12358 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
12359 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
12360 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
12361 specification on equal terms.</p>
12362
12363 <blockquote>
12364
12365 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
12366 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
12367 open standard:</p>
12368
12369 <ul>
12370
12371 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12372 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12373 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
12374 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
12375
12376 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12377 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
12378 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
12379 nominal fee.</li>
12380
12381 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
12382 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
12383 free basis.</li>
12384
12385 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12386
12387 </ul>
12388 </blockquote>
12389
12390 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
12391 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
12392 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
12393 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
12394 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
12395 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
12396 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
12397
12398 <blockquote>
12399
12400 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
12401
12402 <ol>
12403
12404 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
12405 tilgængelig.</li>
12406
12407 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
12408 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
12409
12410 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
12411 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
12412
12413 </ol>
12414
12415 </blockquote>
12416
12417 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
12418 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
12419
12420 <blockquote>
12421
12422 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
12423
12424 <ol>
12425
12426 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
12427 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
12428
12429 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
12430 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
12431 Standard themselves;</li>
12432
12433 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
12434 any party or in any business model;</li>
12435
12436 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
12437 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
12438 parties;</li>
12439
12440 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
12441 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
12442 parties.</li>
12443
12444 </ol>
12445
12446 </blockquote>
12447
12448 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
12449 its
12450 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
12451 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
12452
12453 <blockquote>
12454 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
12455
12456 <ul>
12457
12458 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
12459   democratic:
12460
12461          <ul>
12462
12463          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
12464             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
12465             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
12466             and managed.</li>
12467
12468          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
12469             method, can be changed through input from all
12470             participants.</li>
12471
12472          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
12473             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
12474
12475          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
12476             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
12477
12478          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
12479             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
12480             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
12481
12482          </ul>
12483
12484 </li>
12485
12486 </ul>
12487
12488 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
12489 <ul>
12490
12491 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
12492   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
12493   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
12494   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
12495   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
12496
12497 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
12498   a technical or economic barriers</li>
12499
12500 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
12501   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
12502   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
12503   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
12504   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
12505   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
12506   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
12507   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
12508   intended to function.</li>
12509
12510 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
12511   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
12512   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
12513
12514 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
12515   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
12516   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
12517   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
12518   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
12519   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
12520   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
12521   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
12522
12523       <ul>
12524
12525       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
12526         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
12527         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
12528
12529       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
12530         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
12531         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
12532         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
12533
12534       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
12535         licensor</li>
12536
12537       </ul>
12538 </li>
12539
12540 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
12541   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
12542   or restricted licensing terms</li>
12543
12544 </ul>
12545
12546 </blockquote>
12547
12548 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
12549 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
12550 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
12551 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
12552 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
12553 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
12554 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
12555 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
12556 Standards.</p>
12557
12558       </div>
12559       <div class="tags">
12560
12561
12562         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>.
12563
12564
12565       </div>
12566     </div>
12567     <div class="padding"></div>
12568
12569     <div class="entry">
12570       <div class="title">
12571         <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>
12572       </div>
12573       <div class="date">
12574         25th December 2010
12575       </div>
12576       <div class="body">
12577         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
12578 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
12579
12580 <blockquote>
12581
12582 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
12583 as follows:</p>
12584
12585 <ol>
12586
12587 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
12588 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
12589 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
12590
12591 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12592 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12593 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
12594 parties.</li>
12595
12596 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12597 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
12598 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
12599
12600 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
12601 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
12602
12603 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12604
12605 </ol>
12606
12607 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
12608 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
12609 products based on the standard.</p>
12610 </blockquote>
12611
12612 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
12613 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
12614 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
12615 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
12616 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
12617 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
12618 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
12619 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
12620
12621 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
12622
12623 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
12624 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
12625 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
12626 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
12627 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
12628 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
12629 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
12630 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
12631 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
12632 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
12633 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
12634 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
12635 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
12636 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
12637
12638 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
12639
12640 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
12641 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
12642 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
12643 documentation indicating this.</p>
12644
12645 <p>According to
12646 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
12647 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
12648 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
12649 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
12650 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
12651 report is correct.</p>
12652
12653 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
12654
12655 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
12656 container format</a> and both the
12657 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
12658 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
12659 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
12660
12661 <blockquote>
12662
12663 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
12664 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
12665 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
12666 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
12667 specification compliance.
12668
12669 </blockquote>
12670
12671 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
12672 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
12673 this is the term:<p>
12674
12675 <blockquote>
12676
12677 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
12678 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
12679 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
12680 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
12681 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
12682 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
12683 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
12684 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
12685 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
12686 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
12687 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
12688 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
12689
12690 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
12691 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
12692 </blockquote>
12693
12694 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
12695 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
12696 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
12697 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
12698 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
12699
12700 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
12701
12702 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
12703 Theora format.
12704 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
12705 and
12706 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
12707 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
12708 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
12709 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
12710 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
12711 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
12712 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
12713 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
12714
12715 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
12716
12717 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
12718
12719 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
12720
12721 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
12722 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
12723 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
12724 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
12725 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
12726 this.</p>
12727
12728 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
12729 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
12730
12731       </div>
12732       <div class="tags">
12733
12734
12735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12736
12737
12738       </div>
12739     </div>
12740     <div class="padding"></div>
12741
12742     <div class="entry">
12743       <div class="title">
12744         <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>
12745       </div>
12746       <div class="date">
12747         25th December 2010
12748       </div>
12749       <div class="body">
12750         <p>A few days ago
12751 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
12752 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
12753 2.0 of
12754 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
12755 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
12756 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
12757 Nothing very surprising there, given
12758 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
12759 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
12760 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
12761 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
12762 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
12763 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
12764 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
12765 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
12766 standard definition from its content.</p>
12767
12768 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
12769 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
12770 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
12771 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
12772 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
12773 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
12774 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
12775 background information about that story is available in
12776 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
12777 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
12778
12779 <blockquote>
12780 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
12781 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
12782 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
12783
12784 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
12785
12786 <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>
12787
12788 <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>
12789
12790 <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>
12791
12792 <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>
12793
12794 <p>
12795 <ul>
12796 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
12797 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
12798 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
12799 </ul>
12800 </p>
12801
12802 <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>
12803
12804 <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>
12805
12806 <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>
12807
12808 <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>
12809
12810 <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>
12811
12812
12813 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
12814 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
12815 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
12816 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
12817 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
12818 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
12819
12820 </p>
12821
12822 <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>
12823
12824 <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>
12825
12826 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
12827
12828 <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>
12829
12830 <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>
12831
12832 <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>
12833
12834 <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>
12835
12836 <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>
12837
12838 <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>
12839
12840 <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>
12841
12842 <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>
12843
12844 <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>
12845
12846 <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>
12847
12848 <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>
12849
12850 <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>
12851
12852 <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>
12853
12854 <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>
12855
12856 <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>
12857
12858 <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>
12859
12860 <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>
12861
12862 <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>
12863
12864 <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>
12865
12866 <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>
12867
12868 <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>
12869
12870 <p>On security:</p>
12871
12872 <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>
12873
12874 <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>
12875
12876 <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>
12877
12878 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
12879
12880 <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>
12881
12882 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
12883
12884 <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>
12885
12886 <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>
12887
12888 <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>
12889
12890 <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>
12891
12892 <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>
12893
12894 <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>
12895
12896 <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>
12897
12898 <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>
12899
12900 <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>
12901
12902 <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>
12903
12904 <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>
12905
12906 <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>
12907
12908 <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>
12909
12910 <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>
12911
12912 <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>
12913
12914 <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>
12915
12916 <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>
12917
12918 <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>
12919
12920 <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>
12921
12922 <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>
12923
12924 <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>
12925
12926 <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>
12927
12928 <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>
12929
12930 <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>
12931
12932 <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>
12933
12934 <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>
12935
12936 <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>
12937
12938 <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>
12939
12940 <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>
12941
12942 <p>Cordially,<br>
12943 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
12944 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
12945 </blockquote>
12946
12947       </div>
12948       <div class="tags">
12949
12950
12951         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>.
12952
12953
12954       </div>
12955     </div>
12956     <div class="padding"></div>
12957
12958     <div class="entry">
12959       <div class="title">
12960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
12961       </div>
12962       <div class="date">
12963         25th December 2010
12964       </div>
12965       <div class="body">
12966         <p>Half a year ago I
12967 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
12968 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
12969 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
12970 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
12971
12972 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
12973 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
12974 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
12975 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
12976 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
12977 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
12978 got such a great test tool available.</p>
12979
12980       </div>
12981       <div class="tags">
12982
12983
12984         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>.
12985
12986
12987       </div>
12988     </div>
12989     <div class="padding"></div>
12990
12991     <div class="entry">
12992       <div class="title">
12993         <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>
12994       </div>
12995       <div class="date">
12996         22nd December 2010
12997       </div>
12998       <div class="body">
12999         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
13000 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
13001 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
13002 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13003 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
13004 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
13005 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13006 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13007 university.</p>
13008
13009 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13010 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
13011 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13012 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
13013 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13014 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13015 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13016 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
13017
13018 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
13019 I perform on a new model.</p>
13020
13021 <ul>
13022
13023 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13024 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
13025 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
13026
13027 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
13028 installation, X.org is working.</li>
13029
13030 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
13031 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13032 reported by the program.</li>
13033
13034 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13035 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
13036 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13037 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
13038 normally test this by playing
13039 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
13040 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
13041
13042 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
13043 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13044
13045 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13046 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13047
13048 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
13049 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
13050
13051 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13052 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
13053 few.</li>
13054
13055 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
13056 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13057 notice this.</li>
13058
13059 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
13060 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13061 resume.</li>
13062
13063 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13064 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13065 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
13066 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13067 not.</li>
13068
13069 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13070 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13071 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13072 existence.</li>
13073
13074 </ul>
13075
13076 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13077 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
13078 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
13079 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13080 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
13081 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
13082 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13083 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
13084
13085       </div>
13086       <div class="tags">
13087
13088
13089         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>.
13090
13091
13092       </div>
13093     </div>
13094     <div class="padding"></div>
13095
13096     <div class="entry">
13097       <div class="title">
13098         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
13099       </div>
13100       <div class="date">
13101         11th December 2010
13102       </div>
13103       <div class="body">
13104         <p>As I continue to explore
13105 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
13106 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13107 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
13108
13109 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13110 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13111 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13112 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13113 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13114 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
13115 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
13116 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
13117 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
13118 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
13119 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
13120 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
13121 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
13122 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13123 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13124 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13125 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
13126 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
13127 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
13128 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
13129
13130 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
13131 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
13132 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
13133 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
13134 If the Skolelinux foundation
13135 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
13136 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
13137 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
13138 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
13139 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
13140 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
13141 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
13142 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
13143
13144 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
13145 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
13146 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
13147 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
13148 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
13149 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
13150 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
13151 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13152 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13153 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13154 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
13155 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13156 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13157 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13158 currencies.</p>
13159
13160 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13161 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13162 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13163 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
13164 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13165 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13166 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13167 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
13168 BitCoins.  Check out
13169 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
13170 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
13171 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13172 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13173 yet.</p>
13174
13175 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
13176 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
13177 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13178 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
13179 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
13180
13181       </div>
13182       <div class="tags">
13183
13184
13185         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>.
13186
13187
13188       </div>
13189     </div>
13190     <div class="padding"></div>
13191
13192     <div class="entry">
13193       <div class="title">
13194         <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>
13195       </div>
13196       <div class="date">
13197         10th December 2010
13198       </div>
13199       <div class="body">
13200         <p>With this weeks lawless
13201 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
13202 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
13203 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
13204 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
13205 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
13206 A blog post from
13207 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
13208 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
13209 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
13210 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
13211 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
13212 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
13213 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
13214
13215 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
13216 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
13217 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
13218 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
13219 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
13220 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
13221 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
13222 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
13223 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
13224 Debian</a> soon.</p>
13225
13226 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
13227 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
13228 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
13229 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
13230 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
13231 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
13232 you can even get
13233 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
13234 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
13235 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
13236 on the current exchange rates.</p>
13237
13238 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
13239 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
13240 donations to the address
13241 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
13242
13243       </div>
13244       <div class="tags">
13245
13246
13247         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>.
13248
13249
13250       </div>
13251     </div>
13252     <div class="padding"></div>
13253
13254     <div class="entry">
13255       <div class="title">
13256         <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>
13257       </div>
13258       <div class="date">
13259          9th December 2010
13260       </div>
13261       <div class="body">
13262         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
13263 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
13264 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
13265 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
13266 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
13267 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
13268 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
13269 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
13270 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
13271 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
13272 operational.</p>
13273
13274 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
13275 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
13276 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
13277 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
13278 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
13279 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
13280 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
13281
13282       </div>
13283       <div class="tags">
13284
13285
13286         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>.
13287
13288
13289       </div>
13290     </div>
13291     <div class="padding"></div>
13292
13293     <div class="entry">
13294       <div class="title">
13295         <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>
13296       </div>
13297       <div class="date">
13298         29th November 2010
13299       </div>
13300       <div class="body">
13301         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13302 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
13303 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
13304 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
13305 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
13306 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13307
13308 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
13309 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
13310 will hold its
13311 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
13312 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
13313 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
13314 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
13315 vote this year.</p>
13316
13317       </div>
13318       <div class="tags">
13319
13320
13321         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13322
13323
13324       </div>
13325     </div>
13326     <div class="padding"></div>
13327
13328     <div class="entry">
13329       <div class="title">
13330         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
13331       </div>
13332       <div class="date">
13333         27th November 2010
13334       </div>
13335       <div class="body">
13336         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
13337 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
13338 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
13339 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
13340 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
13341 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
13342 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
13343 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
13344
13345 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
13346 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13347 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
13348 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
13349 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
13350 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
13351 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
13352 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
13353 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
13354 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
13355 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
13356
13357 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
13358 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
13359 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
13360 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13361 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
13362 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13363 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13364 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13365 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13366 what is going on.</p>
13367
13368       </div>
13369       <div class="tags">
13370
13371
13372         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>.
13373
13374
13375       </div>
13376     </div>
13377     <div class="padding"></div>
13378
13379     <div class="entry">
13380       <div class="title">
13381         <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>
13382       </div>
13383       <div class="date">
13384         22nd November 2010
13385       </div>
13386       <div class="body">
13387         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13388 upgrade testing of the
13389 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13390 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
13391 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13392 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
13393
13394 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13395
13396 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13397
13398 <blockquote><p>
13399   apache2.2-bin
13400   aptdaemon
13401   baobab
13402   binfmt-support
13403   browser-plugin-gnash
13404   cheese-common
13405   cli-common
13406   cups-pk-helper
13407   dmz-cursor-theme
13408   empathy
13409   empathy-common
13410   freedesktop-sound-theme
13411   freeglut3
13412   gconf-defaults-service
13413   gdm-themes
13414   gedit-plugins
13415   geoclue
13416   geoclue-hostip
13417   geoclue-localnet
13418   geoclue-manual
13419   geoclue-yahoo
13420   gnash
13421   gnash-common
13422   gnome
13423   gnome-backgrounds
13424   gnome-cards-data
13425   gnome-codec-install
13426   gnome-core
13427   gnome-desktop-environment
13428   gnome-disk-utility
13429   gnome-screenshot
13430   gnome-search-tool
13431   gnome-session-canberra
13432   gnome-system-log
13433   gnome-themes-extras
13434   gnome-themes-more
13435   gnome-user-share
13436   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13437   gstreamer0.10-tools
13438   gtk2-engines
13439   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13440   gtk2-engines-smooth
13441   hamster-applet
13442   libapache2-mod-dnssd
13443   libapr1
13444   libaprutil1
13445   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
13446   libaprutil1-ldap
13447   libart2.0-cil
13448   libboost-date-time1.42.0
13449   libboost-python1.42.0
13450   libboost-thread1.42.0
13451   libchamplain-0.4-0
13452   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
13453   libcheese-gtk18
13454   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13455   libcryptui0
13456   libdiscid0
13457   libelf1
13458   libepc-1.0-2
13459   libepc-common
13460   libepc-ui-1.0-2
13461   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13462   libfreerdp0
13463   libgconf2.0-cil
13464   libgdata-common
13465   libgdata7
13466   libgdu-gtk0
13467   libgee2
13468   libgeoclue0
13469   libgexiv2-0
13470   libgif4
13471   libglade2.0-cil
13472   libglib2.0-cil
13473   libgmime2.4-cil
13474   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13475   libgnome2.24-cil
13476   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
13477   libgpod-common
13478   libgpod4
13479   libgtk2.0-cil
13480   libgtkglext1
13481   libgtksourceview2.0-common
13482   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13483   libmono-addins0.2-cil
13484   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
13485   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13486   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
13487   libmono-posix2.0-cil
13488   libmono-security2.0-cil
13489   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13490   libmono-system2.0-cil
13491   libmtp8
13492   libmusicbrainz3-6
13493   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
13494   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
13495   libopal3.6.8
13496   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
13497   libpt2.6.7
13498   libpython2.6
13499   librpm1
13500   librpmio1
13501   libsdl1.2debian
13502   libsrtp0
13503   libssh-4
13504   libtelepathy-farsight0
13505   libtelepathy-glib0
13506   libtidy-0.99-0
13507   media-player-info
13508   mesa-utils
13509   mono-2.0-gac
13510   mono-gac
13511   mono-runtime
13512   nautilus-sendto
13513   nautilus-sendto-empathy
13514   p7zip-full
13515   pkg-config
13516   python-aptdaemon
13517   python-aptdaemon-gtk
13518   python-axiom
13519   python-beautifulsoup
13520   python-bugbuddy
13521   python-clientform
13522   python-coherence
13523   python-configobj
13524   python-crypto
13525   python-cupshelpers
13526   python-elementtree
13527   python-epsilon
13528   python-evolution
13529   python-feedparser
13530   python-gdata
13531   python-gdbm
13532   python-gst0.10
13533   python-gtkglext1
13534   python-gtksourceview2
13535   python-httplib2
13536   python-louie
13537   python-mako
13538   python-markupsafe
13539   python-mechanize
13540   python-nevow
13541   python-notify
13542   python-opengl
13543   python-openssl
13544   python-pam
13545   python-pkg-resources
13546   python-pyasn1
13547   python-pysqlite2
13548   python-rdflib
13549   python-serial
13550   python-tagpy
13551   python-twisted-bin
13552   python-twisted-conch
13553   python-twisted-core
13554   python-twisted-web
13555   python-utidylib
13556   python-webkit
13557   python-xdg
13558   python-zope.interface
13559   remmina
13560   remmina-plugin-data
13561   remmina-plugin-rdp
13562   remmina-plugin-vnc
13563   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13564   rhythmbox-plugins
13565   rpm-common
13566   rpm2cpio
13567   seahorse-plugins
13568   shotwell
13569   software-center
13570   system-config-printer-udev
13571   telepathy-gabble
13572   telepathy-mission-control-5
13573   telepathy-salut
13574   tomboy
13575   totem
13576   totem-coherence
13577   totem-mozilla
13578   totem-plugins
13579   transmission-common
13580   xdg-user-dirs
13581   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
13582   xserver-xephyr
13583 </p></blockquote>
13584
13585 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13586
13587 <blockquote><p>
13588   cheese
13589   ekiga
13590   eog
13591   epiphany-extensions
13592   evolution-exchange
13593   fast-user-switch-applet
13594   file-roller
13595   gcalctool
13596   gconf-editor
13597   gdm
13598   gedit
13599   gedit-common
13600   gnome-games
13601   gnome-games-data
13602   gnome-nettool
13603   gnome-system-tools
13604   gnome-themes
13605   gnuchess
13606   gucharmap
13607   guile-1.8-libs
13608   libavahi-ui0
13609   libdmx1
13610   libgalago3
13611   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13612   libgtksourceview2.0-0
13613   liblircclient0
13614   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
13615   libspeexdsp1
13616   libsvga1
13617   rhythmbox
13618   seahorse
13619   sound-juicer
13620   system-config-printer
13621   totem-common
13622   transmission-gtk
13623   vinagre
13624   vino
13625 </p></blockquote>
13626
13627 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13628
13629 <blockquote><p>
13630   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13631 </p></blockquote>
13632
13633 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13634
13635 <blockquote><p>
13636 [nothing]
13637 </p></blockquote>
13638
13639 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13640
13641 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13642
13643 <blockquote><p>
13644   ksmserver
13645 </p></blockquote>
13646
13647 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13648
13649 <blockquote><p>
13650   kwin
13651   network-manager-kde
13652 </p></blockquote>
13653
13654 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13655
13656 <blockquote><p>
13657   arts
13658   dolphin
13659   freespacenotifier
13660   google-gadgets-gst
13661   google-gadgets-xul
13662   kappfinder
13663   kcalc
13664   kcharselect
13665   kde-core
13666   kde-plasma-desktop
13667   kde-standard
13668   kde-window-manager
13669   kdeartwork
13670   kdeartwork-emoticons
13671   kdeartwork-style
13672   kdeartwork-theme-icon
13673   kdebase
13674   kdebase-apps
13675   kdebase-workspace
13676   kdebase-workspace-bin
13677   kdebase-workspace-data
13678   kdeeject
13679   kdelibs
13680   kdeplasma-addons
13681   kdeutils
13682   kdewallpapers
13683   kdf
13684   kfloppy
13685   kgpg
13686   khelpcenter4
13687   kinfocenter
13688   konq-plugins-l10n
13689   konqueror-nsplugins
13690   kscreensaver
13691   kscreensaver-xsavers
13692   ktimer
13693   kwrite
13694   libgle3
13695   libkde4-ruby1.8
13696   libkonq5
13697   libkonq5-templates
13698   libnetpbm10
13699   libplasma-ruby
13700   libplasma-ruby1.8
13701   libqt4-ruby1.8
13702   marble-data
13703   marble-plugins
13704   netpbm
13705   nuvola-icon-theme
13706   plasma-dataengines-workspace
13707   plasma-desktop
13708   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
13709   plasma-runners-addons
13710   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
13711   plasma-scriptengine-python
13712   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
13713   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
13714   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
13715   plasma-scriptengines
13716   plasma-wallpapers-addons
13717   plasma-widget-folderview
13718   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13719   ruby
13720   sweeper
13721   update-notifier-kde
13722   xscreensaver-data-extra
13723   xscreensaver-gl
13724   xscreensaver-gl-extra
13725   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13726 </p></blockquote>
13727
13728 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13729
13730 <blockquote><p>
13731   ark
13732   google-gadgets-common
13733   google-gadgets-qt
13734   htdig
13735   kate
13736   kdebase-bin
13737   kdebase-data
13738   kdepasswd
13739   kfind
13740   klipper
13741   konq-plugins
13742   konqueror
13743   ksysguard
13744   ksysguardd
13745   libarchive1
13746   libcln6
13747   libeet1
13748   libeina-svn-06
13749   libggadget-1.0-0b
13750   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
13751   libgps19
13752   libkdecorations4
13753   libkephal4
13754   libkonq4
13755   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
13756   libkscreensaver5
13757   libksgrd4
13758   libksignalplotter4
13759   libkunitconversion4
13760   libkwineffects1a
13761   libmarblewidget4
13762   libntrack-qt4-1
13763   libntrack0
13764   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
13765   libplasmaclock4a
13766   libplasmagenericshell4
13767   libprocesscore4a
13768   libprocessui4a
13769   libqalculate5
13770   libqedje0a
13771   libqtruby4shared2
13772   libqzion0a
13773   libruby1.8
13774   libscim8c2a
13775   libsmokekdecore4-3
13776   libsmokekdeui4-3
13777   libsmokekfile3
13778   libsmokekhtml3
13779   libsmokekio3
13780   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
13781   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
13782   libsmokekparts3
13783   libsmokektexteditor3
13784   libsmokekutils3
13785   libsmokenepomuk3
13786   libsmokephonon3
13787   libsmokeplasma3
13788   libsmokeqtcore4-3
13789   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
13790   libsmokeqtgui4-3
13791   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
13792   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
13793   libsmokeqtscript4-3
13794   libsmokeqtsql4-3
13795   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
13796   libsmokeqttest4-3
13797   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
13798   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
13799   libsmokeqtxml4-3
13800   libsmokesolid3
13801   libsmokesoprano3
13802   libtaskmanager4a
13803   libtidy-0.99-0
13804   libweather-ion4a
13805   libxklavier16
13806   libxxf86misc1
13807   okteta
13808   oxygencursors
13809   plasma-dataengines-addons
13810   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
13811   plasma-widget-lancelot
13812   plasma-widgets-addons
13813   plasma-widgets-workspace
13814   polkit-kde-1
13815   ruby1.8
13816   systemsettings
13817   update-notifier-common
13818 </p></blockquote>
13819
13820 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
13821 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
13822 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
13823 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
13824
13825       </div>
13826       <div class="tags">
13827
13828
13829         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>.
13830
13831
13832       </div>
13833     </div>
13834     <div class="padding"></div>
13835
13836     <div class="entry">
13837       <div class="title">
13838         <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>
13839       </div>
13840       <div class="date">
13841         22nd November 2010
13842       </div>
13843       <div class="body">
13844         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
13845 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
13846 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
13847 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
13848 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
13849 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
13850 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
13851 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
13852 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
13853
13854 <p>I found
13855 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
13856 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
13857 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
13858 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
13859 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
13860 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
13861
13862 <pre>
13863 #!/bin/sh
13864
13865 # Based on
13866 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
13867
13868 set -e
13869 set -x
13870
13871 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
13872     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
13873     exit 1
13874 else
13875     host="$1"
13876 fi
13877
13878 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
13879     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
13880     exit 1
13881 fi
13882
13883 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
13884 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13885 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13886 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
13887
13888 img=$host.img
13889 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
13890 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
13891
13892 parted $img mklabel msdos
13893 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
13894 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
13895 parted $img set 1 boot on
13896
13897 modprobe dm-mod
13898 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
13899 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
13900
13901 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
13902 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
13903 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
13904
13905 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
13906 losetup -d /dev/loop0
13907 </pre>
13908
13909 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
13910 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
13911
13912 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
13913 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
13914 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
13915 seem to work just fine.</p>
13916
13917       </div>
13918       <div class="tags">
13919
13920
13921         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>.
13922
13923
13924       </div>
13925     </div>
13926     <div class="padding"></div>
13927
13928     <div class="entry">
13929       <div class="title">
13930         <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>
13931       </div>
13932       <div class="date">
13933         20th November 2010
13934       </div>
13935       <div class="body">
13936         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
13937 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13938 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
13939 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
13940
13941 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
13942 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
13943 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
13944
13945 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13946
13947 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13948
13949 <blockquote><p>
13950   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
13951   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
13952   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
13953   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
13954   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
13955   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
13956   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
13957   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
13958   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
13959   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
13960   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13961   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13962   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
13963   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
13964   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
13965   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
13966   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13967   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
13968   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13969   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
13970   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
13971   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13972   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
13973   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
13974   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
13975   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13976   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13977   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
13978   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13979   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
13980   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
13981   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
13982   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
13983   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
13984   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
13985   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
13986   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
13987   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
13988   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
13989   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
13990   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
13991   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
13992   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
13993   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
13994   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
13995   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
13996   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
13997   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
13998   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
13999   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
14000   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
14001   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
14002   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14003   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
14004   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
14005   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
14006   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
14007   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
14008   zip
14009 </p></blockquote>
14010
14011 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
14012
14013 <blockquote><p>
14014   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
14015   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
14016   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
14017   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
14018   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
14019   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
14020   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
14021   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
14022   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
14023   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
14024   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
14025   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14026   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14027   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14028   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14029   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
14030   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14031   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
14032   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14033   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14034   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
14035   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
14036   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14037   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
14038   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14039   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14040   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14041   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14042   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14043 </p></blockquote>
14044
14045 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14046
14047 <blockquote><p>
14048   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14049 </p></blockquote>
14050
14051 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14052
14053 <blockquote><p>
14054 [nothing]
14055 </p></blockquote>
14056
14057 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14058
14059 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14060
14061 <blockquote><p>
14062   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
14063   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14064   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14065   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14066   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14067   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14068   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14069   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14070   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14071   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14072   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14073   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14074   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14075   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14076   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
14077   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14078   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14079   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14080   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14081   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14082   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14083   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14084   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14085   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14086   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14087   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14088   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14089   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14090   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14091   ttf-sazanami-gothic
14092 </p></blockquote>
14093
14094 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14095
14096 <blockquote><p>
14097   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14098   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14099   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14100   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14101   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14102   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14103   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14104   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14105   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14106   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14107   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14108   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14109   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14110   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14111   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14112   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14113   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
14114   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14115   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14116   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
14117   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14118   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14119   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14120   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14121   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14122   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14123   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14124   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
14125   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
14126   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14127   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14128   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14129   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14130 </p></blockquote>
14131
14132 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14133
14134 <blockquote><p>
14135   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14136   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14137   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14138   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14139   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14140   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14141   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14142 </p></blockquote>
14143
14144 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14145
14146 <blockquote><p>
14147   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14148 </p></blockquote>
14149
14150       </div>
14151       <div class="tags">
14152
14153
14154         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>.
14155
14156
14157       </div>
14158     </div>
14159     <div class="padding"></div>
14160
14161     <div class="entry">
14162       <div class="title">
14163         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
14164       </div>
14165       <div class="date">
14166         20th November 2010
14167       </div>
14168       <div class="body">
14169         <p>Answering
14170 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
14171 call from the Gnash project</a> for
14172 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
14173 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14174 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14175 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14176 releases out more often.</p>
14177
14178 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14179 I have considered setting up a <a
14180 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
14181 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14182 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
14183 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
14184 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14185 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14186 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14187 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
14188 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14189 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14190 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
14191 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
14192
14193       </div>
14194       <div class="tags">
14195
14196
14197         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>.
14198
14199
14200       </div>
14201     </div>
14202     <div class="padding"></div>
14203
14204     <div class="entry">
14205       <div class="title">
14206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
14207       </div>
14208       <div class="date">
14209          9th November 2010
14210       </div>
14211       <div class="body">
14212         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
14213
14214 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
14215 3D linked in from
14216 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
14217 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
14218
14219       </div>
14220       <div class="tags">
14221
14222
14223         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>.
14224
14225
14226       </div>
14227     </div>
14228     <div class="padding"></div>
14229
14230     <div class="entry">
14231       <div class="title">
14232         <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>
14233       </div>
14234       <div class="date">
14235          7th November 2010
14236       </div>
14237       <div class="body">
14238         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
14239 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
14240 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
14241 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
14242 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
14243 working using this DVD.</p>
14244
14245 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
14246 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
14247 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
14248 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
14249 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
14250 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
14251 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
14252
14253 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
14254 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
14255 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
14256 Debian archive.</p>
14257
14258 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
14259 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
14260 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
14261 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
14262 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
14263 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
14264 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
14265 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
14266 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
14267 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
14268 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
14269 free X driver should work.</p>
14270
14271 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
14272 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
14273 DVD more useful again.</p>
14274
14275       </div>
14276       <div class="tags">
14277
14278
14279         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
14280
14281
14282       </div>
14283     </div>
14284     <div class="padding"></div>
14285
14286     <div class="entry">
14287       <div class="title">
14288         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
14289       </div>
14290       <div class="date">
14291         24th October 2010
14292       </div>
14293       <div class="body">
14294         <p>Some updates.</p>
14295
14296 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
14297 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
14298 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
14299 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
14300 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
14301 :)</p>
14302
14303 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
14304 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
14305 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
14306 It is called
14307 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
14308 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
14309 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
14310 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
14311 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
14312 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
14313
14314 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
14315 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
14316 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
14317 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
14318 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
14319 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
14320 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
14321 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
14322 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
14323 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
14324
14325       </div>
14326       <div class="tags">
14327
14328
14329         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>.
14330
14331
14332       </div>
14333     </div>
14334     <div class="padding"></div>
14335
14336     <div class="entry">
14337       <div class="title">
14338         <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>
14339       </div>
14340       <div class="date">
14341         19th October 2010
14342       </div>
14343       <div class="body">
14344         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
14345 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
14346 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
14347 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
14348 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
14349 AVM2 flash files.</p>
14350
14351 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
14352 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
14353 following text:</P>
14354
14355 <p><blockquote>
14356
14357   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
14358   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
14359
14360   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
14361
14362   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
14363
14364   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
14365   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
14366   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
14367   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
14368   days. The project web page is available from
14369   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
14370   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
14371   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
14372
14373   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
14374   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
14375   to get this to happen.</p>
14376
14377   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
14378   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
14379
14380 </blockquote></p>
14381
14382 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
14383 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
14384 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
14385 :)</p>
14386
14387       </div>
14388       <div class="tags">
14389
14390
14391         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>.
14392
14393
14394       </div>
14395     </div>
14396     <div class="padding"></div>
14397
14398     <div class="entry">
14399       <div class="title">
14400         <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>
14401       </div>
14402       <div class="date">
14403          9th October 2010
14404       </div>
14405       <div class="body">
14406         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
14407 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
14408 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
14409 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
14410 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
14411 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
14412 robots.</p>
14413
14414 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
14415 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
14416 a few less important features too.</p>
14417
14418 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
14419 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
14420 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
14421 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
14422
14423 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
14424 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
14425 source or binary package:</p>
14426
14427 <p><ul>
14428 <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>
14429 <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>
14430 <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>
14431 </ul></p>
14432
14433 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
14434 please let me know.</p>
14435
14436       </div>
14437       <div class="tags">
14438
14439
14440         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>.
14441
14442
14443       </div>
14444     </div>
14445     <div class="padding"></div>
14446
14447     <div class="entry">
14448       <div class="title">
14449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
14450       </div>
14451       <div class="date">
14452          3rd October 2010
14453       </div>
14454       <div class="body">
14455         <p><ul>
14456
14457 <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
14458 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
14459
14460 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
14461 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
14462 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
14463
14464 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
14465 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
14466 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
14467 simple setup.
14468
14469 </ul></p>
14470
14471       </div>
14472       <div class="tags">
14473
14474
14475         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>.
14476
14477
14478       </div>
14479     </div>
14480     <div class="padding"></div>
14481
14482     <div class="entry">
14483       <div class="title">
14484         <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>
14485       </div>
14486       <div class="date">
14487          9th September 2010
14488       </div>
14489       <div class="body">
14490         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
14491 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
14492 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
14493 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
14494 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
14495 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
14496 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
14497 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
14498 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
14499
14500 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
14501 written:</p>
14502
14503 <blockquote>
14504 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
14505 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
14506 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
14507 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
14508 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
14509
14510 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
14511 standard.</p>
14512 </blockquote>
14513
14514 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
14515 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
14516 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
14517 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
14518
14519 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
14520 read
14521 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
14522 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
14523 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
14524 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
14525 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
14526 the issue.  The solution is to support the
14527 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
14528 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
14529 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
14530
14531       </div>
14532       <div class="tags">
14533
14534
14535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14536
14537
14538       </div>
14539     </div>
14540     <div class="padding"></div>
14541
14542     <div class="entry">
14543       <div class="title">
14544         <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>
14545       </div>
14546       <div class="date">
14547          4th September 2010
14548       </div>
14549       <div class="body">
14550         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
14551 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14552 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
14553 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
14554 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
14555 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14556 installed.</p>
14557
14558 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
14559 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
14560 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14561 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
14562 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14563 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
14564 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14565 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14566 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
14567
14568 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14569 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14570 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
14571 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14572 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14573 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14574 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14575 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14576 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14577 pages they want to visit.</p>
14578
14579 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14580 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14581 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14582 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14583 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
14584 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
14585 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
14586 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
14587 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
14588 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
14589 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
14590
14591       </div>
14592       <div class="tags">
14593
14594
14595         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>.
14596
14597
14598       </div>
14599     </div>
14600     <div class="padding"></div>
14601
14602     <div class="entry">
14603       <div class="title">
14604         <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>
14605       </div>
14606       <div class="date">
14607          1st September 2010
14608       </div>
14609       <div class="body">
14610         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
14611 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
14612 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
14613 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
14614 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
14615 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
14616 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
14617 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
14618 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
14619 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
14620 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
14621 drive around.</p>
14622
14623 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
14624 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
14625
14626 <p><pre>
14627 use Spykee;
14628 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
14629 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
14630 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
14631 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
14632 $spykee->left();
14633 sleep 2;
14634 $spykee->right();
14635 sleep 2;
14636 $spykee->forward();
14637 sleep 2;
14638 $spykee->back();
14639 sleep 2;
14640 $spykee->stop();
14641 </pre></p>
14642
14643 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
14644 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
14645 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
14646 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
14647 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
14648 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
14649 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
14650 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
14651 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
14652 going. :).</p>
14653
14654 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
14655 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
14656 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
14657 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
14658
14659       </div>
14660       <div class="tags">
14661
14662
14663         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>.
14664
14665
14666       </div>
14667     </div>
14668     <div class="padding"></div>
14669
14670     <div class="entry">
14671       <div class="title">
14672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
14673       </div>
14674       <div class="date">
14675         30th August 2010
14676       </div>
14677       <div class="body">
14678         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
14679 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
14680 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
14681 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
14682 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
14683 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
14684 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
14685
14686 <pre>
14687 % ln foo bar
14688 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
14689 %
14690 </pre>
14691
14692 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
14693 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
14694 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
14695 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
14696 nevertheless. :)</p>
14697
14698 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
14699 git from
14700 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
14701
14702       </div>
14703       <div class="tags">
14704
14705
14706         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
14707
14708
14709       </div>
14710     </div>
14711     <div class="padding"></div>
14712
14713     <div class="entry">
14714       <div class="title">
14715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
14716       </div>
14717       <div class="date">
14718         26th August 2010
14719       </div>
14720       <div class="body">
14721         <p>My file system sematics program
14722 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
14723 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
14724 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
14725 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
14726 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
14727 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
14728 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
14729 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
14730 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
14731 script:</p>
14732
14733 <pre>
14734 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
14735   mode_t retval = 0;
14736   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
14737   if (-1 != fd) {
14738     unlink(name);
14739     struct stat statbuf;
14740     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
14741       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
14742     }
14743     close(fd);
14744   }
14745   return retval;
14746 }
14747
14748 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
14749 int test_umask(void) {
14750   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
14751
14752   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
14753   mode_t newmode;
14754   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
14755     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
14756            newmode);
14757   }
14758   umask(007);
14759   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
14760     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
14761            newmode);
14762   }
14763
14764   umask (orig_umask);
14765   return 0;
14766 }
14767
14768 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
14769   [...]
14770   test_umask();
14771   return 0;
14772 }
14773 </pre>
14774
14775 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
14776
14777 <pre>
14778 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14779 info: testing symlink creation
14780 info: testing subdirectory creation
14781 info: testing fcntl locking
14782   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14783   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14784   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14785   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14786   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14787   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14788 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14789 </pre>
14790
14791 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
14792 result:</p>
14793
14794 <pre>
14795 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14796 info: testing symlink creation
14797 info: testing subdirectory creation
14798 info: testing fcntl locking
14799   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14800   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14801   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14802   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14803   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14804   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14805 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14806   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
14807   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
14808 </pre>
14809
14810 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
14811 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
14812 directory.</p>
14813
14814 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
14815 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
14816
14817 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14818 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14819 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
14820
14821       </div>
14822       <div class="tags">
14823
14824
14825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
14826
14827
14828       </div>
14829     </div>
14830     <div class="padding"></div>
14831
14832     <div class="entry">
14833       <div class="title">
14834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
14835       </div>
14836       <div class="date">
14837         15th August 2010
14838       </div>
14839       <div class="body">
14840         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
14841 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
14842 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
14843 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
14844 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
14845 long time.</p>
14846
14847       </div>
14848       <div class="tags">
14849
14850
14851         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>.
14852
14853
14854       </div>
14855     </div>
14856     <div class="padding"></div>
14857
14858     <div class="entry">
14859       <div class="title">
14860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
14861       </div>
14862       <div class="date">
14863          9th August 2010
14864       </div>
14865       <div class="body">
14866         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
14867 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
14868 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
14869 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
14870 generated configuration.</p>
14871
14872 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
14873 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
14874 without any manual configuration.</p>
14875
14876 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
14877 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
14878 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
14879 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
14880 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
14881 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
14882 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
14883 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
14884 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
14885 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
14886 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
14887 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
14888 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
14889 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
14890 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
14891 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
14892 use.</p>
14893
14894 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
14895 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
14896 working properly out of the box:</p>
14897
14898 <ul>
14899 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
14900 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
14901 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
14902 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
14903 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
14904 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
14905 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
14906 </ul>
14907
14908 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
14909
14910 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
14911 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
14912 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
14913 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
14914 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
14915
14916 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
14917 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
14918 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
14919 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
14920 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
14921 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
14922 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
14923 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
14924
14925 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
14926 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
14927 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
14928 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
14929 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
14930 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
14931 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
14932 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
14933 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
14934 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
14935 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
14936 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
14937 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
14938 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
14939 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
14940 current DNS domain is used.</p>
14941
14942 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
14943 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
14944 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
14945 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
14946 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
14947 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
14948 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
14949 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
14950 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
14951 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
14952 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
14953 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
14954 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
14955
14956 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
14957 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
14958 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
14959 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
14960 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
14961 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
14962 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
14963 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
14964 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
14965 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
14966 do for now. :)</p>
14967
14968 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
14969 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
14970 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
14971 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
14972 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
14973 yet.</p>
14974
14975 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
14976 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14977
14978 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
14979 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
14980 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
14981 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
14982
14983       </div>
14984       <div class="tags">
14985
14986
14987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
14988
14989
14990       </div>
14991     </div>
14992     <div class="padding"></div>
14993
14994     <div class="entry">
14995       <div class="title">
14996         <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>
14997       </div>
14998       <div class="date">
14999          8th August 2010
15000       </div>
15001       <div class="body">
15002         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
15003 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
15004 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
15005 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
15006 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
15007 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
15008 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
15009
15010 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
15011 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
15012 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
15013 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
15014 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
15015 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
15016 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
15017
15018 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
15019 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
15020 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
15021 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
15022 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
15023
15024 <pre>
15025 /*
15026  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
15027  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
15028  * directory.
15029  * License: GPL v2 or later
15030  *
15031  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
15032  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
15033 */
15034
15035 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
15036 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
15037 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
15038
15039 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
15040
15041 #include &lt;errno.h>
15042 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
15043 #include &lt;stdio.h>
15044 #include &lt;string.h>
15045 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
15046 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
15047 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
15048 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
15049 #include &lt;unistd.h>
15050
15051 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15052 /*
15053  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
15054  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
15055  * below.
15056  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
15057  */
15058 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
15059 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
15060   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
15061 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
15062   char *zErrMsg;
15063   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15064   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
15065   unlink(name);
15066   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
15067   if( rc ){
15068     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
15069     sqlite3_close(db);
15070     return -1;
15071   }
15072
15073   /* create tables */
15074   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
15075   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
15076     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
15077     sqlite3_close(db);
15078     return -1;
15079   }
15080   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
15081   sqlite3_close(db);
15082   return 0;
15083 }
15084 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15085
15086 /*
15087  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
15088  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
15089  * done in the sqlite3 library.
15090  * See also
15091  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
15092  * POSIX specification
15093  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
15094  */
15095 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
15096   struct flock fl;
15097   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15098   unlink(name);
15099   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
15100   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
15101
15102   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
15103   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
15104   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15105   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15106   fl.l_len    = 1;
15107   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15108   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15109
15110   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15111   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15112   fl.l_len    = 510;
15113   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15114   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15115
15116   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15117   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15118   fl.l_len    = 1;
15119   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15120   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15121
15122   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15123   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15124   fl.l_len    = 1;
15125   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
15126   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15127
15128   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15129   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15130   fl.l_len    = 510;
15131   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15132
15133   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
15134   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15135   fl.l_len    = 2;
15136   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15137   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15138
15139   close(fd);
15140   return 0;
15141 }
15142
15143 /*
15144  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
15145  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
15146  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
15147  * slowing down file operations.
15148  */
15149 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
15150 #define LEVELS 5
15151   char *path = strdup("test");
15152   char *dirs[LEVELS];
15153   int level;
15154   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
15155   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
15156     char *newpath = NULL;
15157     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
15158       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
15159              path, strerror(errno));
15160       break;
15161     }
15162     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
15163     free(path);
15164     path = newpath;
15165   }
15166   return 0;
15167 }
15168
15169 /*
15170  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
15171  * KDE.
15172  */
15173 int test_symlinks(void) {
15174   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
15175   unlink("symlink");
15176   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
15177     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
15178   return 0;
15179 }
15180
15181 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15182   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
15183   test_symlinks();
15184   test_subdirectory_creation();
15185 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15186   test_sqlite_open();
15187 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15188   test_gcompris_locking();
15189   return 0;
15190 }
15191 </pre>
15192
15193 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
15194 this:</p>
15195
15196 <pre>
15197 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15198 info: testing symlink creation
15199 info: testing subdirectory creation
15200 info: sqlite worked
15201 info: testing fcntl locking
15202   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15203   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15204   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15205   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15206   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15207   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15208 </pre>
15209
15210 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
15211 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
15212 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
15213 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
15214 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
15215 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
15216 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
15217 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
15218
15219 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
15220 it. :)</p>
15221
15222 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
15223 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
15224 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
15225
15226       </div>
15227       <div class="tags">
15228
15229
15230         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15231
15232
15233       </div>
15234     </div>
15235     <div class="padding"></div>
15236
15237     <div class="entry">
15238       <div class="title">
15239         <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>
15240       </div>
15241       <div class="date">
15242          7th August 2010
15243       </div>
15244       <div class="body">
15245         <p>A few days ago, I
15246 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
15247 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
15248 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
15249 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
15250 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
15251 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
15252 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
15253 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
15254 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
15255
15256 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
15257 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
15258 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
15259 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
15260 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
15261 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
15262 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
15263 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
15264 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
15265 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
15266 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
15267 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
15268 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
15269 gave it a IP address.</p>
15270
15271 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
15272 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
15273 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
15274 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
15275 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
15276 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15277 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
15278 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
15279
15280 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
15281 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
15282 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
15283 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
15284 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
15285 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
15286
15287 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
15288 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
15289 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
15290 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
15291 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
15292 with UID and GID values.</p>
15293
15294 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15295 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15296
15297       </div>
15298       <div class="tags">
15299
15300
15301         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15302
15303
15304       </div>
15305     </div>
15306     <div class="padding"></div>
15307
15308     <div class="entry">
15309       <div class="title">
15310         <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>
15311       </div>
15312       <div class="date">
15313          3rd August 2010
15314       </div>
15315       <div class="body">
15316         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
15317 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
15318 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
15319 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
15320 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
15321 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
15322 servers.</p>
15323
15324 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
15325 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
15326 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
15327 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
15328 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
15329 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
15330 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
15331 .uio.no.</p>
15332
15333 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
15334 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
15335 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
15336 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
15337 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
15338 university servers.</p>
15339
15340 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
15341 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
15342 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
15343 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
15344 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
15345 uses.</p>
15346
15347       </div>
15348       <div class="tags">
15349
15350
15351         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15352
15353
15354       </div>
15355     </div>
15356     <div class="padding"></div>
15357
15358     <div class="entry">
15359       <div class="title">
15360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
15361       </div>
15362       <div class="date">
15363         27th July 2010
15364       </div>
15365       <div class="body">
15366         <p>I discovered this while doing
15367 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
15368 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
15369 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
15370 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
15371 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
15372
15373 <p>An example is from todays
15374 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
15375 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
15376 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
15377 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
15378 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
15379 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
15380 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
15381
15382 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
15383
15384 <blockquote><pre>
15385 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
15386  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
15387   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
15388 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
15389  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
15390 </pre></blockquote>
15391
15392 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
15393 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
15394 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
15395 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
15396 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
15397 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
15398 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
15399 of dependency loops.</p>
15400
15401 <p>Thanks to
15402 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
15403 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
15404 dependencies
15405 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
15406 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
15407
15408 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
15409 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
15410 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
15411 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
15412 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
15413 it.</p>
15414
15415       </div>
15416       <div class="tags">
15417
15418
15419         Tags: <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>.
15420
15421
15422       </div>
15423     </div>
15424     <div class="padding"></div>
15425
15426     <div class="entry">
15427       <div class="title">
15428         <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>
15429       </div>
15430       <div class="date">
15431         27th July 2010
15432       </div>
15433       <div class="body">
15434         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
15435 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
15436 completed.</p>
15437
15438 <blockquote>
15439 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
15440 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
15441 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
15442 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
15443 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
15444 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
15445 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
15446 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
15447
15448 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
15449 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
15450 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
15451
15452 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
15453 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
15454 much.</p>
15455
15456 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
15457
15458 <ul>
15459 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
15460 <ul>
15461   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
15462          combination with some new artwork
15463   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
15464   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
15465   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
15466   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
15467   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
15468   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
15469   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
15470   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
15471   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
15472 </ul></li>
15473 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
15474     Enabled for:
15475 <ul>
15476   <li>PAM
15477   <li>LDAP
15478   <li>IMAP
15479   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
15480 </ul>
15481 </li>
15482 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
15483 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
15484     fetched from LDAP.</li>
15485 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
15486 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
15487 </ul>
15488 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
15489
15490 <ul>
15491 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
15492     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
15493     for testing.</li>
15494 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
15495     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
15496     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
15497 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
15498 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
15499 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
15500 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
15501     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
15502 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
15503     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
15504     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
15505 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
15506     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
15507     and help out with translations.</li>
15508 </ul>
15509
15510 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
15511
15512 <ul>
15513 <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>
15514 <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>
15515 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15516 </ul>
15517 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
15518
15519 <ul>
15520 <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>
15521 <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>
15522 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15523 </ul>
15524
15525 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
15526 get closer to the final release.</p>
15527
15528 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
15529
15530 <ul>
15531 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15532 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15533 </ul>
15534
15535 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
15536 <ul>
15537 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15538 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15539 </ul>
15540 <p>How to report bugs:
15541 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
15542
15543 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
15544 </blockquote>
15545
15546       </div>
15547       <div class="tags">
15548
15549
15550         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15551
15552
15553       </div>
15554     </div>
15555     <div class="padding"></div>
15556
15557     <div class="entry">
15558       <div class="title">
15559         <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>
15560       </div>
15561       <div class="date">
15562         25th July 2010
15563       </div>
15564       <div class="body">
15565         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
15566 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
15567 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
15568 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
15569 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
15570
15571 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
15572 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
15573 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
15574 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
15575 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
15576 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
15577 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
15578
15579 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
15580 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
15581 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
15582 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
15583 up. :)</p>
15584
15585 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
15586 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
15587 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
15588
15589 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
15590 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
15591 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
15592 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
15593 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
15594 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
15595 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
15596 release another day.</p>
15597
15598 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
15599 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15600
15601       </div>
15602       <div class="tags">
15603
15604
15605         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15606
15607
15608       </div>
15609     </div>
15610     <div class="padding"></div>
15611
15612     <div class="entry">
15613       <div class="title">
15614         <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>
15615       </div>
15616       <div class="date">
15617         18th July 2010
15618       </div>
15619       <div class="body">
15620         <p>Thanks to
15621 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
15622 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
15623 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
15624 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
15625 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
15626 only available from the development server, until more experience is
15627 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
15628
15629 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
15630 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
15631 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
15632 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
15633 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
15634 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
15635 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
15636
15637       </div>
15638       <div class="tags">
15639
15640
15641         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>.
15642
15643
15644       </div>
15645     </div>
15646     <div class="padding"></div>
15647
15648     <div class="entry">
15649       <div class="title">
15650         <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>
15651       </div>
15652       <div class="date">
15653         17th July 2010
15654       </div>
15655       <div class="body">
15656         <p>This is a
15657 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
15658 on my
15659 <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
15660 work</a> on
15661 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
15662 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
15663
15664 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
15665 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
15666 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
15667 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
15668
15669 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
15670 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
15671 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
15672
15673 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
15674
15675 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
15676 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
15677 the web.
15678
15679 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
15680 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
15681 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
15682 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
15683 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
15684 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
15685
15686 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
15687 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
15688 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
15689 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
15690 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
15691 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
15692 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
15693 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
15694 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
15695 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
15696 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
15697 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
15698 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
15699 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
15700 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
15701 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
15702
15703 <blockquote><pre>
15704 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15705   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15706   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15707   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15708   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15709   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15710   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15711
15712 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15713   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15714   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
15715   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
15716   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
15717   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
15718 </pre></blockquote>
15719
15720 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
15721 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
15722 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
15723 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15724 also exist.</p>
15725
15726 <blockquote><pre>
15727 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15728 objectclass: top
15729 objectclass: dnsdomain
15730 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15731 dc: tjener
15732 arecord: 10.0.2.2
15733 associateddomain: tjener.intern
15734
15735 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15736 objectclass: top
15737 objectclass: dnsdomain2
15738 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15739 dc: 2
15740 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
15741 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
15742 </pre></blockquote>
15743
15744 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
15745 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
15746 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
15747 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
15748 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
15749 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
15750 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
15751 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
15752 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
15753 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
15754 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
15755 instead.</p>
15756
15757 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
15758 like this:</p>
15759
15760 <blockquote><pre>
15761 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15762   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15763   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15764   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15765   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15766   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15767
15768 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15769   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
15770 </pre></blockquote>
15771
15772 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
15773 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
15774 reverse lookups.</p>
15775
15776 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
15777 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
15778 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
15779 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
15780
15781 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
15782 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
15783 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
15784
15785 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
15786 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
15787 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
15788 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
15789 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
15790
15791 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
15792 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
15793 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
15794 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
15795 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
15796
15797 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
15798 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
15799 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
15800 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
15801 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
15802 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
15803
15804 <blockquote><pre>
15805 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
15806     SUP top
15807     AUXILIARY
15808     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
15809           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
15810           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
15811           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
15812           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
15813     ))
15814 </pre></blockquote>
15815
15816 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
15817 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
15818 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
15819 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
15820 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
15821 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
15822
15823 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
15824
15825 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
15826 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
15827 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
15828 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
15829 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
15830
15831 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
15832 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
15833 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
15834 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
15835
15836 <blockquote><pre>
15837 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
15838 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
15839 </pre></blockquote>
15840
15841 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
15842 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
15843 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
15844 search result is this entry:</p>
15845
15846 <blockquote><pre>
15847 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15848 cn: dhcp
15849 objectClass: top
15850 objectClass: dhcpServer
15851 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15852 </pre></blockquote>
15853
15854 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
15855 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
15856 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
15857 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
15858 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
15859 The search result is this entry:</p>
15860
15861 <blockquote><pre>
15862 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15863 cn: DHCP Config
15864 objectClass: top
15865 objectClass: dhcpService
15866 objectClass: dhcpOptions
15867 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15868 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
15869 dhcpStatements: authoritative
15870 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
15871 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
15872 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
15873 </pre></blockquote>
15874
15875 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
15876 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
15877 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
15878 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
15879 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
15880 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
15881 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
15882 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
15883 related computer objects.</p>
15884
15885 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
15886 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
15887 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
15888 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
15889 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
15890 like:</p>
15891
15892 <blockquote><pre>
15893 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15894 cn: hostname
15895 objectClass: top
15896 objectClass: dhcpHost
15897 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15898 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
15899 </pre></blockquote>
15900
15901 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
15902 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
15903 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
15904 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
15905 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
15906 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
15907 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
15908 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
15909 structural object class.
15910
15911 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
15912
15913 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
15914 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
15915 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
15916 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
15917 in the configuration.</p>
15918
15919 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
15920 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
15921 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
15922 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
15923 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
15924 structure.</p>
15925
15926 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
15927 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
15928
15929 <blockquote><pre>
15930 ou=services
15931   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
15932     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
15933     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15934       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15935         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15936     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15937       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15938         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15939     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
15940       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
15941 </pre></blockquote>
15942
15943 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
15944 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
15945 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
15946 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
15947
15948 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
15949 like this:</p>
15950
15951 <blockquote><pre>
15952 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15953 dc: hostname
15954 objectClass: top
15955 objectClass: dhcpHost
15956 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15957 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
15958 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15959 arecord: 10.11.12.13
15960 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15961 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
15962 </pre></blockquote>
15963
15964 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
15965 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
15966 auxiliary object class.</p>
15967
15968       </div>
15969       <div class="tags">
15970
15971
15972         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>.
15973
15974
15975       </div>
15976     </div>
15977     <div class="padding"></div>
15978
15979     <div class="entry">
15980       <div class="title">
15981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
15982       </div>
15983       <div class="date">
15984         14th July 2010
15985       </div>
15986       <div class="body">
15987         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
15988 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
15989 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
15990 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
15991 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
15992
15993 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
15994 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
15995
15996 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
15997 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
15998 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
15999 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
16000 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
16001 to a slave DNS server.</p>
16002
16003 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
16004 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
16005 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
16006 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
16007 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
16008 seem to work.</p>
16009
16010 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
16011 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
16012 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
16013 this:</p>
16014
16015 <blockquote><pre>
16016   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16017   cn: hostname
16018   objectClass: dhcphost
16019   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16020   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
16021   associateddomain: hostname.intern
16022   arecord: 10.11.12.13
16023   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16024   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
16025   ldapconfigsound: Y
16026 </pre></blockquote>
16027
16028 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
16029 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
16030 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
16031 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
16032
16033 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
16034 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
16035 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
16036 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
16037 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
16038 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
16039 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
16040 might be a good place to put it.</p>
16041
16042 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16043 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16044
16045       </div>
16046       <div class="tags">
16047
16048
16049         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>.
16050
16051
16052       </div>
16053     </div>
16054     <div class="padding"></div>
16055
16056     <div class="entry">
16057       <div class="title">
16058         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
16059       </div>
16060       <div class="date">
16061         11th July 2010
16062       </div>
16063       <div class="body">
16064         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
16065 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
16066 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
16067 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
16068
16069 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
16070 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
16071 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
16072 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
16073 LTSP clients.</p>
16074
16075 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
16076 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
16077 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
16078
16079 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
16080 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
16081 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
16082
16083 <blockquote><pre>
16084 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
16085 #
16086 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
16087 #
16088 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
16089 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
16090 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
16091 #
16092 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
16093 # existence of attribute names.
16094 #
16095 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
16096 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
16097 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
16098 #
16099 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
16100 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
16101 #
16102 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
16103 #     SUP top
16104 #     AUXILIARY
16105 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
16106
16107 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
16108 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
16109     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
16110     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
16111         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
16112         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
16113             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
16114             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
16115             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
16116             # bass value on to clients
16117             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
16118         done
16119     done
16120 fi
16121 </pre></blockquote>
16122
16123 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
16124 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
16125 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
16126 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
16127 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
16128
16129 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16130 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16131
16132 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
16133 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
16134 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
16135 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
16136 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
16137 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
16138
16139       </div>
16140       <div class="tags">
16141
16142
16143         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>.
16144
16145
16146       </div>
16147     </div>
16148     <div class="padding"></div>
16149
16150     <div class="entry">
16151       <div class="title">
16152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16153       </div>
16154       <div class="date">
16155          9th July 2010
16156       </div>
16157       <div class="body">
16158         <p>Since
16159 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
16160 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
16161 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
16162 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
16163 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
16164 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
16165 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
16166 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
16167 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
16168 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
16169 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
16170 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
16171 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
16172
16173       </div>
16174       <div class="tags">
16175
16176
16177         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>.
16178
16179
16180       </div>
16181     </div>
16182     <div class="padding"></div>
16183
16184     <div class="entry">
16185       <div class="title">
16186         <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>
16187       </div>
16188       <div class="date">
16189          3rd July 2010
16190       </div>
16191       <div class="body">
16192         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
16193 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
16194 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
16195 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
16196 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
16197 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
16198 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
16199 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
16200
16201 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
16202 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
16203 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
16204 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
16205 publish the difference.</p>
16206
16207 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16208
16209 <blockquote><p>
16210   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16211   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
16212   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
16213   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16214   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
16215   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16216   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
16217   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
16218 </p></blockquote>
16219
16220 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16221
16222 <blockquote><p>
16223   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
16224   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
16225   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
16226   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
16227   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
16228   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
16229   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16230   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
16231   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16232   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16233   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
16234   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
16235   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
16236   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
16237   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
16238   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
16239   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
16240   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
16241   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
16242   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
16243 </p></blockquote>
16244
16245 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16246
16247 <blockquote><p>
16248   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
16249   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
16250   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16251   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16252   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
16253   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
16254   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
16255   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16256   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16257   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16258   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16259   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
16260   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
16261   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
16262   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
16263   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
16264   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
16265   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
16266   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
16267   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
16268   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
16269 </p></blockquote>
16270
16271 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16272
16273 <blockquote><p>
16274   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
16275   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
16276   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
16277 </p></blockquote>
16278
16279 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
16280 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
16281 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
16282 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
16283 the difference somewhat.
16284
16285       </div>
16286       <div class="tags">
16287
16288
16289         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>.
16290
16291
16292       </div>
16293     </div>
16294     <div class="padding"></div>
16295
16296     <div class="entry">
16297       <div class="title">
16298         <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>
16299       </div>
16300       <div class="date">
16301          1st July 2010
16302       </div>
16303       <div class="body">
16304         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
16305 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
16306 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
16307 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
16308 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
16309 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
16310 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
16311 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
16312 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
16313
16314 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16315
16316 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
16317 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
16318 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
16319 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
16320 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
16321 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
16322 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
16323 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
16324 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
16325 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
16326 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
16327 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
16328 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
16329 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
16330 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
16331
16332 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
16333
16334 <blockquote><pre>
16335 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
16336 </pre></blockquote>
16337
16338 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
16339 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
16340 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
16341 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
16342 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
16343 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
16344 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
16345 on how to get this working.</p>
16346
16347 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
16348 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
16349 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
16350 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
16351 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
16352 instructions I found in the
16353 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
16354 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
16355
16356 <blockquote><pre>
16357         debug-level             0
16358         reload-count            unlimited
16359         paranoia                no
16360
16361         enable-cache            passwd          yes
16362         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
16363         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
16364         suggested-size          passwd          211
16365         check-files             passwd          yes
16366         persistent              passwd          yes
16367         shared                  passwd          yes
16368         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
16369         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
16370
16371         enable-cache            group           yes
16372         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
16373         negative-time-to-live   group           20
16374         suggested-size          group           211
16375         check-files             group           yes
16376         persistent              group           yes
16377         shared                  group           yes
16378         max-db-size             group           33554432
16379         auto-propagate          group           yes
16380
16381         enable-cache            hosts           no
16382         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
16383         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
16384         suggested-size          hosts           211
16385         check-files             hosts           yes
16386         persistent              hosts           yes
16387         shared                  hosts           yes
16388         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
16389
16390         enable-cache            services        yes
16391         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
16392         negative-time-to-live   services        20
16393         suggested-size          services        211
16394         check-files             services        yes
16395         persistent              services        yes
16396         shared                  services        yes
16397         max-db-size             services        33554432
16398 </pre></blockquote>
16399
16400 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
16401 automatically like the one provided in
16402 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
16403 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
16404 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
16405 look like this:</p>
16406
16407 <blockquote><pre>
16408 passwd:         files ldap
16409 group:          files ldap
16410 shadow:         files ldap
16411 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
16412 networks:       files
16413 protocols:      files
16414 services:       files
16415 ethers:         files
16416 rpc:            files
16417 netgroup:       files ldap
16418 </pre></blockquote>
16419
16420 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
16421 shadow and netgroup.</p>
16422
16423 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
16424 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
16425 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
16426 attributes cached.
16427
16428 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
16429   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16430
16431 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
16432 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
16433 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
16434 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
16435 discovered sssd.</p>
16436
16437 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
16438
16439 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
16440 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
16441 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
16442 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
16443 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
16444 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
16445 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
16446 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
16447 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
16448 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
16449 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
16450 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
16451 version 1.2 is now in testing.
16452
16453 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
16454 roaming setup I want</p>
16455
16456 <blockquote><pre>
16457 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
16458 </pre></blockquote>
16459
16460 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
16461 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
16462
16463 <blockquote><pre>
16464 [sssd]
16465 config_file_version = 2
16466 reconnection_retries = 3
16467 sbus_timeout = 30
16468 services = nss, pam
16469 domains = INTERN
16470
16471 [nss]
16472 filter_groups = root
16473 filter_users = root
16474 reconnection_retries = 3
16475
16476 [pam]
16477 reconnection_retries = 3
16478
16479 [domain/INTERN]
16480 enumerate = false
16481 cache_credentials = true
16482
16483 id_provider = ldap
16484 auth_provider = ldap
16485 chpass_provider = ldap
16486
16487 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
16488 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16489 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
16490 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
16491 </pre></blockquote>
16492
16493 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
16494 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
16495
16496 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
16497 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
16498 modify it manually.</p>
16499
16500 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16501 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16502
16503       </div>
16504       <div class="tags">
16505
16506
16507         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16508
16509
16510       </div>
16511     </div>
16512     <div class="padding"></div>
16513
16514     <div class="entry">
16515       <div class="title">
16516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16517       </div>
16518       <div class="date">
16519         28th June 2010
16520       </div>
16521       <div class="body">
16522         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
16523 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
16524 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
16525 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
16526 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
16527 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
16528 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
16529 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
16530 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
16531 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
16532
16533 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
16534 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
16535 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
16536 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
16537 released.</p>
16538
16539 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
16540 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
16541 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
16542 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
16543
16544 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
16545 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16546
16547 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
16548 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
16549 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
16550 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
16551 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
16552
16553       </div>
16554       <div class="tags">
16555
16556
16557         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>.
16558
16559
16560       </div>
16561     </div>
16562     <div class="padding"></div>
16563
16564     <div class="entry">
16565       <div class="title">
16566         <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>
16567       </div>
16568       <div class="date">
16569         24th June 2010
16570       </div>
16571       <div class="body">
16572         <p>A while back, I
16573 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
16574 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
16575 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
16576 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
16577
16578 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
16579 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
16580 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
16581 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
16582
16583 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
16584 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
16585 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
16586 Debian Edu.</p>
16587
16588 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
16589 the
16590 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
16591 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
16592 available today from IETF.</p>
16593
16594 <pre>
16595 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
16596 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
16597 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
16598  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
16599         NAME 'dhcpHost'
16600         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
16601 -       SUP top
16602 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
16603         MUST cn
16604         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
16605         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
16606 </pre>
16607
16608 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
16609 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
16610 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
16611
16612 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16613 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16614
16615       </div>
16616       <div class="tags">
16617
16618
16619         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>.
16620
16621
16622       </div>
16623     </div>
16624     <div class="padding"></div>
16625
16626     <div class="entry">
16627       <div class="title">
16628         <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>
16629       </div>
16630       <div class="date">
16631         16th June 2010
16632       </div>
16633       <div class="body">
16634         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
16635 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
16636 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
16637 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
16638 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
16639 this:
16640
16641 <blockquote><pre>
16642 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16643 tasksel --new-install
16644 </pre></blockquote>
16645
16646 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
16647 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
16648 any output what so ever.
16649
16650 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
16651 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
16652 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
16653 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
16654 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
16655 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
16656 code like this:
16657
16658 <blockquote><pre>
16659 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16660 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
16661 $cmd
16662 </pre></blockquote>
16663
16664 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
16665 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
16666 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
16667 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
16668 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
16669 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
16670 installation.</p>
16671
16672 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
16673 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
16674 like this.</p>
16675
16676       </div>
16677       <div class="tags">
16678
16679
16680         Tags: <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>.
16681
16682
16683       </div>
16684     </div>
16685     <div class="padding"></div>
16686
16687     <div class="entry">
16688       <div class="title">
16689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
16690       </div>
16691       <div class="date">
16692         13th June 2010
16693       </div>
16694       <div class="body">
16695         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
16696 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
16697 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
16698 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
16699 pages.</p>
16700
16701 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
16702 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
16703 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
16704 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
16705 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
16706 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
16707 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
16708 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
16709 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
16710 see how the project is doing.</p>
16711
16712 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
16713 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
16714 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
16715 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
16716 Windows.  This is great.</p>
16717
16718       </div>
16719       <div class="tags">
16720
16721
16722         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>.
16723
16724
16725       </div>
16726     </div>
16727     <div class="padding"></div>
16728
16729     <div class="entry">
16730       <div class="title">
16731         <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>
16732       </div>
16733       <div class="date">
16734         13th June 2010
16735       </div>
16736       <div class="body">
16737         <p>My
16738 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
16739 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
16740 finally made the upgrade logs available from
16741 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
16742 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
16743 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
16744 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
16745
16746 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
16747 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
16748 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
16749 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
16750 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
16751 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
16752 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
16753 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
16754
16755 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
16756 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
16757 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
16758 too surprising.</p>
16759
16760 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
16761 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
16762 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
16763 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
16764 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
16765 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
16766 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
16767 continue.</p>
16768
16769 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
16770 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
16771   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
16772   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
16773   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
16774   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
16775   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
16776   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16777   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16778   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16779   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16780   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16781   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16782   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16783   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16784   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16785   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16786   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16787   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16788   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16789   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16790   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16791   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16792   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16793   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16794   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16795   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16796   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16797   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
16798   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
16799
16800 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
16801
16802 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
16803   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
16804   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
16805   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
16806   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16807   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
16808   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
16809   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
16810   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
16811   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
16812   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16813   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
16814   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16815   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
16816   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
16817   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
16818   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
16819   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
16820   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
16821   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
16822   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
16823   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
16824   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
16825   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
16826   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16827   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
16828   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
16829   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
16830   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
16831   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16832   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16833   zip</p>
16834
16835 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
16836
16837 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
16838   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
16839   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
16840   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
16841   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
16842   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
16843   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16844   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16845   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16846   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16847   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16848   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16849   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16850   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16851   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16852   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16853   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16854   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16855   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16856   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16857   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16858   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16859   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16860   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16861   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16862   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16863   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16864   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
16865
16866 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
16867 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
16868   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16869   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
16870   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
16871   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16872   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
16873   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
16874   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16875   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
16876   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
16877   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
16878   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
16879   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
16880   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
16881   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
16882   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
16883   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16884   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16885   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16886   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
16887   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16888   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
16889   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
16890   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16891   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16892   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
16893   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
16894   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
16895   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
16896   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
16897   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
16898   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
16899   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
16900   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
16901   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16902   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16903   xulrunner-1.9</p>
16904
16905
16906       </div>
16907       <div class="tags">
16908
16909
16910         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>.
16911
16912
16913       </div>
16914     </div>
16915     <div class="padding"></div>
16916
16917     <div class="entry">
16918       <div class="title">
16919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
16920       </div>
16921       <div class="date">
16922         11th June 2010
16923       </div>
16924       <div class="body">
16925         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
16926 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
16927 have been discovered and reported in the process
16928 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
16929 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
16930 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
16931 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
16932 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
16933
16934 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
16935 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
16936 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
16937 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
16938 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
16939 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
16940
16941 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
16942 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
16943 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16944 is created.  The bug report
16945 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
16946 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
16947 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
16948 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
16949 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
16950 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
16951 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
16952 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
16953 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
16954 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
16955 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
16956 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
16957 Debian Squeeze.</p>
16958
16959 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
16960 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
16961 trick:</p>
16962
16963 <blockquote><pre>
16964 #!/bin/sh
16965 set -ex
16966
16967 if [ "$1" ] ; then
16968     desktop=$1
16969 else
16970     desktop=gnome
16971 fi
16972
16973 from=lenny
16974 to=squeeze
16975
16976 exec &lt; /dev/null
16977 unset LANG
16978 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
16979 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
16980 fuser -mv .
16981 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
16982 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16983 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
16984 #!/bin/sh
16985 exit 101
16986 EOF
16987 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
16988 exit_cleanup() {
16989     umount $tmpdir/proc
16990 }
16991 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
16992 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
16993 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
16994
16995 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
16996
16997 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
16998 # to return the correct answers.
16999 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
17000     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
17001
17002 # Include the desktop and laptop task
17003 for test in desktop laptop ; do
17004     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
17005 #!/bin/sh
17006 exit 2
17007 EOF
17008     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
17009 done
17010
17011 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17012 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
17013 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
17014 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
17015
17016 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
17017 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17018 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17019 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
17020 fuser -mv
17021 </pre></blockquote>
17022
17023 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
17024 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
17025 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
17026 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
17027 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
17028 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
17029
17030 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
17031 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
17032 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
17033 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
17034 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
17035 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
17036 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
17037
17038 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
17039 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
17040 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
17041 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
17042 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
17043 packages.</p>
17044
17045       </div>
17046       <div class="tags">
17047
17048
17049         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>.
17050
17051
17052       </div>
17053     </div>
17054     <div class="padding"></div>
17055
17056     <div class="entry">
17057       <div class="title">
17058         <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>
17059       </div>
17060       <div class="date">
17061          6th June 2010
17062       </div>
17063       <div class="body">
17064         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
17065 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
17066 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
17067 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
17068 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
17069 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
17070 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
17071
17072 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
17073 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
17074 COLUMNS):</p>
17075
17076 <blockquote><pre>
17077 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
17078 previous=N
17079 PREVLEVEL=
17080 RUNLEVEL=
17081 runlevel=S
17082 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
17083 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
17084 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
17085 </pre></blockquote>
17086
17087 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
17088 script.</p>
17089
17090 <blockquote><pre>
17091 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
17092 previous=N
17093 PREVLEVEL=N
17094 RUNLEVEL=S
17095 runlevel=S
17096 </pre></blockquote>
17097
17098 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
17099 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
17100 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
17101
17102 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
17103 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
17104 choice.</p>
17105
17106       </div>
17107       <div class="tags">
17108
17109
17110         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>.
17111
17112
17113       </div>
17114     </div>
17115     <div class="padding"></div>
17116
17117     <div class="entry">
17118       <div class="title">
17119         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
17120       </div>
17121       <div class="date">
17122          6th June 2010
17123       </div>
17124       <div class="body">
17125         <p>Via the
17126 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
17127 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
17128 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
17129 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
17130 following the standards wars of today.</p>
17131
17132       </div>
17133       <div class="tags">
17134
17135
17136         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>.
17137
17138
17139       </div>
17140     </div>
17141     <div class="padding"></div>
17142
17143     <div class="entry">
17144       <div class="title">
17145         <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>
17146       </div>
17147       <div class="date">
17148          3rd June 2010
17149       </div>
17150       <div class="body">
17151         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
17152 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
17153 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
17154 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
17155 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
17156
17157 <blockquote><pre>
17158 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
17159   vendor                    count
17160   Dell Computer Corporation     1
17161     PowerEdge 1750              1
17162   IBM                           1
17163     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
17164   Intel                         2
17165   [no-dmi-info]                 3
17166 maintainer:~#
17167 </pre></blockquote>
17168
17169 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
17170 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
17171 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
17172 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
17173 option to list the individual machines.</p>
17174
17175 <p>A larger list is
17176 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
17177 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
17178 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
17179 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
17180 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
17181 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
17182 collector.</p>
17183
17184       </div>
17185       <div class="tags">
17186
17187
17188         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>.
17189
17190
17191       </div>
17192     </div>
17193     <div class="padding"></div>
17194
17195     <div class="entry">
17196       <div class="title">
17197         <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>
17198       </div>
17199       <div class="date">
17200          1st June 2010
17201       </div>
17202       <div class="body">
17203         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
17204 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
17205 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
17206 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
17207 wait.</p>
17208
17209 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
17210 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
17211 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
17212 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
17213 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
17214 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
17215
17216 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
17217 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
17218 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
17219 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
17220 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
17221 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
17222 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
17223 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
17224
17225 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
17226
17227       </div>
17228       <div class="tags">
17229
17230
17231         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>.
17232
17233
17234       </div>
17235     </div>
17236     <div class="padding"></div>
17237
17238     <div class="entry">
17239       <div class="title">
17240         <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>
17241       </div>
17242       <div class="date">
17243         27th May 2010
17244       </div>
17245       <div class="body">
17246         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
17247 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
17248 issues are known and should be solved:
17249
17250 <p><ul>
17251
17252 <li>The wicd package seen to
17253 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
17254 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
17255 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
17256 seem to be on the case.</li>
17257
17258 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
17259 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
17260 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
17261 maintainer is on the case.</li>
17262
17263 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
17264 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
17265 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
17266 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
17267 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
17268 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
17269 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
17270 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
17271
17272 </ul></p>
17273
17274 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
17275 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
17276 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
17277 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
17278
17279 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17280 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17281 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17282 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17283
17284 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
17285
17286       </div>
17287       <div class="tags">
17288
17289
17290         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>.
17291
17292
17293       </div>
17294     </div>
17295     <div class="padding"></div>
17296
17297     <div class="entry">
17298       <div class="title">
17299         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
17300       </div>
17301       <div class="date">
17302         22nd May 2010
17303       </div>
17304       <div class="body">
17305         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
17306 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
17307 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
17308 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
17309
17310 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
17311 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
17312 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
17313 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
17314 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
17315 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
17316 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
17317 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
17318 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
17319 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
17320 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
17321 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
17322 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
17323 going to work.</p>
17324
17325 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
17326 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
17327 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
17328 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
17329 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
17330 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
17331 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
17332 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
17333 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
17334 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
17335 Edu.</p>
17336
17337 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
17338 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
17339 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
17340 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
17341 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
17342 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
17343
17344 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
17345 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
17346
17347       </div>
17348       <div class="tags">
17349
17350
17351         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>.
17352
17353
17354       </div>
17355     </div>
17356     <div class="padding"></div>
17357
17358     <div class="entry">
17359       <div class="title">
17360         <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>
17361       </div>
17362       <div class="date">
17363         19th May 2010
17364       </div>
17365       <div class="body">
17366         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
17367 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
17368 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
17369 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
17370 into unstable.  The
17371 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
17372 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
17373 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
17374 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
17375 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17376 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
17377 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
17378
17379 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
17380 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
17381 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
17382 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
17383 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
17384 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
17385 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
17386 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
17387
17388 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
17389 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
17390 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
17391 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
17392 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
17393 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
17394 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
17395
17396 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
17397 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
17398 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
17399 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
17400 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
17401 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
17402 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
17403 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
17404 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
17405 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
17406 on the home directory servers.</p>
17407
17408 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
17409 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
17410 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
17411 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
17412 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
17413 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
17414
17415 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17416 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17417
17418       </div>
17419       <div class="tags">
17420
17421
17422         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17423
17424
17425       </div>
17426     </div>
17427     <div class="padding"></div>
17428
17429     <div class="entry">
17430       <div class="title">
17431         <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>
17432       </div>
17433       <div class="date">
17434         14th May 2010
17435       </div>
17436       <div class="body">
17437         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
17438 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
17439 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
17440 expected, if I am to believe the
17441 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17442 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
17443 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
17444 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
17445 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
17446 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
17447 version.</p>
17448
17449 More information about
17450 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17451 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
17452 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
17453 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17454
17455 <blockquote><pre>
17456 CONCURRENCY=none
17457 </pre></blockquote>
17458
17459 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17460 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17461 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17462 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17463
17464       </div>
17465       <div class="tags">
17466
17467
17468         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>.
17469
17470
17471       </div>
17472     </div>
17473     <div class="padding"></div>
17474
17475     <div class="entry">
17476       <div class="title">
17477         <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>
17478       </div>
17479       <div class="date">
17480         14th May 2010
17481       </div>
17482       <div class="body">
17483         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
17484 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
17485 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
17486 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
17487 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
17488 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
17489 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
17490 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
17491
17492 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
17493 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
17494 this on the collector host:</p>
17495
17496 <blockquote><pre>
17497 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
17498 </pre></blockquote>
17499
17500 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
17501 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
17502
17503 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
17504 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
17505 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
17506 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
17507 written yet.</p>
17508
17509       </div>
17510       <div class="tags">
17511
17512
17513         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>.
17514
17515
17516       </div>
17517     </div>
17518     <div class="padding"></div>
17519
17520     <div class="entry">
17521       <div class="title">
17522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
17523       </div>
17524       <div class="date">
17525         13th May 2010
17526       </div>
17527       <div class="body">
17528         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
17529 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
17530 has been
17531 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
17532
17533 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
17534 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
17535 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
17536 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
17537 based boot system.  Tollef is
17538 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
17539 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
17540 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
17541 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
17542 at the moment do not.</p>
17543
17544 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
17545 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
17546 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
17547 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
17548 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
17549 way forward.</p>
17550
17551 <p>In the mean time, based on the
17552 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17553 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
17554 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
17555 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
17556 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
17557 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
17558 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
17559 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
17560
17561       </div>
17562       <div class="tags">
17563
17564
17565         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>.
17566
17567
17568       </div>
17569     </div>
17570     <div class="padding"></div>
17571
17572     <div class="entry">
17573       <div class="title">
17574         <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>
17575       </div>
17576       <div class="date">
17577          6th May 2010
17578       </div>
17579       <div class="body">
17580         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
17581 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
17582 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
17583 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
17584 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17585 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
17586 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17587
17588 <blockquote><pre>
17589 CONCURRENCY=makefile
17590 </pre></blockquote>
17591
17592 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
17593 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
17594 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
17595 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
17596 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
17597 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
17598 make this happen.</p>
17599
17600 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
17601 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
17602 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
17603 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
17604 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
17605
17606 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
17607 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
17608 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
17609 fix the remaining issues.</p>
17610
17611 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17612 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17613 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17614 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17615
17616       </div>
17617       <div class="tags">
17618
17619
17620         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>.
17621
17622
17623       </div>
17624     </div>
17625     <div class="padding"></div>
17626
17627     <div class="entry">
17628       <div class="title">
17629         <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>
17630       </div>
17631       <div class="date">
17632          2nd May 2010
17633       </div>
17634       <div class="body">
17635         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
17636 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
17637 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
17638
17639 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
17640 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
17641 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
17642 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
17643 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
17644
17645 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
17646 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
17647
17648 <blockquote><pre>
17649 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17650 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
17651 Password expires                                        : never
17652 Password inactive                                       : never
17653 Account expires                                         : never
17654 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17655 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
17656 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17657 root@tjener:~#
17658 </pre></blockquote>
17659
17660 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
17661 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
17662 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
17663 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
17664 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
17665 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
17666
17667 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
17668 intended:</p>
17669
17670 <blockquote><pre>
17671 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
17672 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17673 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
17674 Password expires                                        : never
17675 Password inactive                                       : never
17676 Account expires                                         : never
17677 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17678 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
17679 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17680 root@tjener:~#
17681 </pre></blockquote>
17682
17683 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
17684 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
17685 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
17686
17687 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
17688 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
17689
17690 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
17691 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17692
17693 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
17694 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
17695 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
17696 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
17697 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
17698 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
17699 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
17700
17701 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
17702 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
17703 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
17704 change.</p>
17705
17706       </div>
17707       <div class="tags">
17708
17709
17710         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17711
17712
17713       </div>
17714     </div>
17715     <div class="padding"></div>
17716
17717     <div class="entry">
17718       <div class="title">
17719         <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>
17720       </div>
17721       <div class="date">
17722         28th April 2010
17723       </div>
17724       <div class="body">
17725         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
17726 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
17727 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
17728 and go.</p>
17729
17730 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
17731 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
17732 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
17733 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
17734
17735 <ul>
17736
17737  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
17738    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
17739    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
17740    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
17741    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
17742    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
17743    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
17744    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
17745    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
17746    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
17747    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
17748    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
17749
17750  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
17751    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
17752    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
17753    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
17754    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17755    or the Fedora developed
17756    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
17757    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
17758
17759  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
17760    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
17761    directory, using unison.</li>
17762
17763  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
17764    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
17765    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
17766    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
17767    implemented.</li>
17768
17769  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
17770    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
17771
17772  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
17773    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
17774    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
17775
17776 </ul>
17777
17778 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
17779 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
17780 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
17781 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
17782 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
17783 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
17784 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
17785 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
17786 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
17787
17788 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17789 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17790
17791       </div>
17792       <div class="tags">
17793
17794
17795         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17796
17797
17798       </div>
17799     </div>
17800     <div class="padding"></div>
17801
17802     <div class="entry">
17803       <div class="title">
17804         <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>
17805       </div>
17806       <div class="date">
17807         19th April 2010
17808       </div>
17809       <div class="body">
17810         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
17811 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
17812 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
17813 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
17814 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
17815 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
17816 restrictions on the web, for example from
17817 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
17818 epub-version from
17819 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
17820 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
17821 strongly recommend this book.</p>
17822
17823       </div>
17824       <div class="tags">
17825
17826
17827         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>.
17828
17829
17830       </div>
17831     </div>
17832     <div class="padding"></div>
17833
17834     <div class="entry">
17835       <div class="title">
17836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
17837       </div>
17838       <div class="date">
17839         14th April 2010
17840       </div>
17841       <div class="body">
17842         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
17843 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
17844 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
17845 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
17846 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
17847 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
17848 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
17849 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
17850 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
17851
17852 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
17853 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
17854 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
17855 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
17856 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
17857
17858 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
17859 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
17860
17861 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
17862 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
17863 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
17864 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
17865 to work properly.</p>
17866
17867 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
17868 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
17869 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
17870 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
17871 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
17872 time.</p>
17873
17874 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
17875 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
17876 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
17877 up in a few days.</p>
17878
17879       </div>
17880       <div class="tags">
17881
17882
17883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17884
17885
17886       </div>
17887     </div>
17888     <div class="padding"></div>
17889
17890     <div class="entry">
17891       <div class="title">
17892         <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>
17893       </div>
17894       <div class="date">
17895          6th March 2010
17896       </div>
17897       <div class="body">
17898         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
17899 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
17900 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
17901 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
17902 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
17903 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
17904
17905 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
17906 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
17907 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
17908 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
17909
17910 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
17911 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
17912 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
17913 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
17914 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
17915 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
17916
17917       </div>
17918       <div class="tags">
17919
17920
17921         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17922
17923
17924       </div>
17925     </div>
17926     <div class="padding"></div>
17927
17928     <div class="entry">
17929       <div class="title">
17930         <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>
17931       </div>
17932       <div class="date">
17933         11th February 2010
17934       </div>
17935       <div class="body">
17936         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
17937 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
17938 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
17939 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
17940 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
17941 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
17942 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
17943
17944 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
17945
17946 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
17947 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
17948 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
17949 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
17950
17951       </div>
17952       <div class="tags">
17953
17954
17955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17956
17957
17958       </div>
17959     </div>
17960     <div class="padding"></div>
17961
17962     <div class="entry">
17963       <div class="title">
17964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
17965       </div>
17966       <div class="date">
17967         27th January 2010
17968       </div>
17969       <div class="body">
17970         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
17971 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
17972 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
17973 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
17974 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
17975 further.</p>
17976
17977 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
17978 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
17979 configured to be a server for the
17980 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
17981 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
17982 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
17983 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
17984 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
17985 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
17986 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
17987 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
17988 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
17989 and Nagios configuration.</p>
17990
17991 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
17992 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
17993 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
17994 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
17995
17996 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
17997 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
17998 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
17999 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
18000 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
18001 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
18002 the machine.</p>
18003
18004 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
18005 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
18006 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
18007 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
18008
18009 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
18010 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
18011 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
18012 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
18013 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
18014 everything is taken care of.</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</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/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
18030       </div>
18031       <div class="date">
18032         12th August 2009
18033       </div>
18034       <div class="body">
18035         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
18036 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
18037 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
18038 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
18039
18040 <table>
18041 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18042 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18043 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
18044 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
18045 </table>
18046
18047 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
18048 got these numbers:</p>
18049
18050 <table>
18051 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18052 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
18053 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
18054 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
18055 </table>
18056
18057 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
18058
18059 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
18060 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
18061 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
18062 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
18063 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
18064
18065
18066 <table>
18067 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18068 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18069 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
18070 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
18071 </table>
18072
18073 <p>And with 'site:no':
18074
18075 <table>
18076 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18077 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
18078 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
18079 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
18080 </table>
18081
18082 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
18083 numbers.</p>
18084
18085       </div>
18086       <div class="tags">
18087
18088
18089         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>.
18090
18091
18092       </div>
18093     </div>
18094     <div class="padding"></div>
18095
18096     <div class="entry">
18097       <div class="title">
18098         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
18099       </div>
18100       <div class="date">
18101          8th August 2009
18102       </div>
18103       <div class="body">
18104         <p>According to <a
18105 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
18106 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
18107 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
18108 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
18109 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
18110 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
18111 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
18112 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
18113 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
18114 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
18115
18116 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
18117 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
18118 seminar this autumn.</p>
18119
18120       </div>
18121       <div class="tags">
18122
18123
18124         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>.
18125
18126
18127       </div>
18128     </div>
18129     <div class="padding"></div>
18130
18131     <div class="entry">
18132       <div class="title">
18133         <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>
18134       </div>
18135       <div class="date">
18136         27th July 2009
18137       </div>
18138       <div class="body">
18139         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
18140 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
18141 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
18142 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
18143 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
18144 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
18145 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
18146
18147 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
18148 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
18149 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
18150
18151       </div>
18152       <div class="tags">
18153
18154
18155         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>.
18156
18157
18158       </div>
18159     </div>
18160     <div class="padding"></div>
18161
18162     <div class="entry">
18163       <div class="title">
18164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
18165       </div>
18166       <div class="date">
18167         22nd July 2009
18168       </div>
18169       <div class="body">
18170         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
18171 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
18172 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
18173 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
18174 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
18175 the package up to date.</p>
18176
18177 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
18178 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
18179 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
18180 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
18181 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
18182 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
18183 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
18184 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
18185 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
18186 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
18187 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
18188 working on the future release.</p>
18189
18190 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
18191 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
18192
18193       </div>
18194       <div class="tags">
18195
18196
18197         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>.
18198
18199
18200       </div>
18201     </div>
18202     <div class="padding"></div>
18203
18204     <div class="entry">
18205       <div class="title">
18206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
18207       </div>
18208       <div class="date">
18209         24th June 2009
18210       </div>
18211       <div class="body">
18212         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
18213 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
18214 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
18215 funded
18216 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
18217 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
18218 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
18219 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
18220 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
18221 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
18222
18223 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
18224 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
18225 boot:</p>
18226
18227 <ul>
18228
18229 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
18230
18231 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
18232    clock is in UTC.</li>
18233
18234 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
18235    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18236    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
18237
18238 </ul>
18239
18240 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
18241 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
18242 Villegas</a>.
18243
18244 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
18245 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
18246 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
18247 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
18248 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
18249 using this.</p>
18250
18251 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
18252 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
18253 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
18254 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
18255 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
18256 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
18257 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
18258
18259       </div>
18260       <div class="tags">
18261
18262
18263         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>.
18264
18265
18266       </div>
18267     </div>
18268     <div class="padding"></div>
18269
18270     <div class="entry">
18271       <div class="title">
18272         <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>
18273       </div>
18274       <div class="date">
18275          2nd May 2009
18276       </div>
18277       <div class="body">
18278         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
18279 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
18280 do not yet know them.</p>
18281
18282 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
18283 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
18284 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
18285 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
18286 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
18287 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
18288 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
18289 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
18290 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
18291 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
18292 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
18293
18294 <p>The second one is
18295 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
18296 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
18297 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
18298 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
18299 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
18300 and the company behind it is running
18301 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
18302 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
18303 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
18304 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
18305 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
18306 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
18307 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
18308 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
18309
18310 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
18311 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
18312 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
18313 surrounded by today.</p>
18314
18315       </div>
18316       <div class="tags">
18317
18318
18319         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18320
18321
18322       </div>
18323     </div>
18324     <div class="padding"></div>
18325
18326     <div class="entry">
18327       <div class="title">
18328         <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>
18329       </div>
18330       <div class="date">
18331         28th April 2009
18332       </div>
18333       <div class="body">
18334         <p>Julien Blache
18335 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
18336 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
18337 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
18338 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
18339 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
18340 properties.</p>
18341
18342       </div>
18343       <div class="tags">
18344
18345
18346         Tags: <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>.
18347
18348
18349       </div>
18350     </div>
18351     <div class="padding"></div>
18352
18353     <div class="entry">
18354       <div class="title">
18355         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
18356       </div>
18357       <div class="date">
18358          5th April 2009
18359       </div>
18360       <div class="body">
18361         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
18362 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
18363 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
18364 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
18365 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
18366 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
18367 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
18368 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
18369
18370 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
18371 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
18372 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
18373   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18374   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
18375
18376 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
18377 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
18378 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
18379 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
18380
18381 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
18382 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
18383 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
18384 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
18385
18386 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
18387 set -e
18388 URL="$1"
18389 SAVEFILE="$2"
18390 DURATION="$3"
18391 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
18392   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18393   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
18394 pid=$!
18395 sleep $DURATION
18396 kill $pid
18397 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
18398
18399       </div>
18400       <div class="tags">
18401
18402
18403         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>.
18404
18405
18406       </div>
18407     </div>
18408     <div class="padding"></div>
18409
18410     <div class="entry">
18411       <div class="title">
18412         <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>
18413       </div>
18414       <div class="date">
18415         30th March 2009
18416       </div>
18417       <div class="body">
18418         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
18419 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
18420 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
18421 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
18422 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
18423 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
18424 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
18425 application.</p>
18426
18427 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
18428 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
18429 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
18430 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
18431 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
18432 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
18433 blocked from doing so.</p>
18434
18435 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
18436 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
18437 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
18438 requirements change.</p>
18439
18440 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
18441 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
18442 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
18443
18444       </div>
18445       <div class="tags">
18446
18447
18448         Tags: <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>.
18449
18450
18451       </div>
18452     </div>
18453     <div class="padding"></div>
18454
18455     <div class="entry">
18456       <div class="title">
18457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
18458       </div>
18459       <div class="date">
18460         29th March 2009
18461       </div>
18462       <div class="body">
18463         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
18464 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
18465 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
18466 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
18467 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
18468 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
18469 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
18470 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
18471 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
18472 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
18473 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
18474 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
18475 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
18476 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
18477 now. :)</p>
18478
18479       </div>
18480       <div class="tags">
18481
18482
18483         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>.
18484
18485
18486       </div>
18487     </div>
18488     <div class="padding"></div>
18489
18490     <div class="entry">
18491       <div class="title">
18492         <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>
18493       </div>
18494       <div class="date">
18495         29th March 2009
18496       </div>
18497       <div class="body">
18498         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
18499 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
18500 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
18501 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
18502 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
18503 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
18504
18505 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
18506 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
18507 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
18508 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
18509 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
18510 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
18511 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
18512 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
18513 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
18514 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
18515 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
18516 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
18517 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
18518
18519 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
18520 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
18521 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
18522 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
18523
18524 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
18525 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
18526
18527 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
18528 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
18529 new IETF work group?</p>
18530
18531       </div>
18532       <div class="tags">
18533
18534
18535         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>.
18536
18537
18538       </div>
18539     </div>
18540     <div class="padding"></div>
18541
18542     <div class="entry">
18543       <div class="title">
18544         <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>
18545       </div>
18546       <div class="date">
18547         28th February 2009
18548       </div>
18549       <div class="body">
18550         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
18551 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
18552 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
18553 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
18554 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
18555 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
18556 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
18557 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
18558 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
18559 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
18560 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
18561 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
18562 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
18563 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
18564 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
18565 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
18566 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
18567 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
18568 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
18569 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
18570 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
18571 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
18572 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
18573 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
18574 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
18575 machine.</p>
18576
18577 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
18578 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
18579 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
18580 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
18581 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
18582 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
18583 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
18584
18585 <pre>
18586 use LWP::Simple;
18587 use POSIX;
18588 use WWW::Mechanize;
18589 use Date::Parse;
18590 [...]
18591 sub get_support_info {
18592     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
18593     my $str;
18594
18595     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
18596         # fetch website from Dell support
18597         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";
18598         my $webpage = get($url);
18599         return undef unless ($webpage);
18600
18601         my $daysleft = -1;
18602         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
18603         foreach my $line (@lines) {
18604             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
18605             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18606             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
18607
18608             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
18609             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
18610             my $lastend = "";
18611             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
18612                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
18613
18614                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18615                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18616                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18617                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
18618                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
18619                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
18620                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
18621             }
18622             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18623             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18624                 if ($lastend lt $today);
18625         }
18626     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
18627         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
18628         my $url =
18629             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
18630         $mech->get($url);
18631         my $fields = {
18632             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
18633             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
18634             'country' => 'NO',
18635             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
18636             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
18637         };
18638         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
18639                             fields      => $fields );
18640         # Next step is screen scraping
18641         my $content = $mech->content();
18642
18643         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18644         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18645         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18646         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18647
18648         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18649
18650         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
18651             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
18652                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
18653             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
18654             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18655                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18656             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18657                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
18658
18659             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
18660
18661             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18662                 if ($end lt $today);
18663         }
18664     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
18665         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
18666         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
18667         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
18668             my $content =
18669                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
18670             if ($content) {
18671                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18672                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18673                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18674                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18675
18676                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
18677                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
18678
18679                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
18680
18681                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18682                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18683                     if ($end lt $today);
18684             }
18685         }
18686     }
18687     return $str;
18688 }
18689 </pre>
18690
18691 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
18692 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
18693 from dmidecode.</p>
18694
18695 <pre>
18696 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
18697                        "447707-B21");
18698 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
18699 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
18700                        "1234567");
18701 </pre>
18702
18703 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
18704 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
18705
18706 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
18707 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
18708 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
18709 do so.</p>
18710
18711       </div>
18712       <div class="tags">
18713
18714
18715         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>.
18716
18717
18718       </div>
18719     </div>
18720     <div class="padding"></div>
18721
18722     <div class="entry">
18723       <div class="title">
18724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
18725       </div>
18726       <div class="date">
18727         20th February 2009
18728       </div>
18729       <div class="body">
18730         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
18731 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
18732 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
18733 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
18734 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
18735 the "missing" computer.</p>
18736
18737 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
18738 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
18739 code blocks as defined in the
18740 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
18741 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
18742 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
18743 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
18744 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
18745 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
18746 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
18747 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
18748 codes.</p>
18749
18750 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
18751 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
18752 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
18753 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
18754 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
18755 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
18756
18757 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
18758 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
18759 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
18760 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
18761 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
18762 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
18763 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
18764 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
18765 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
18766 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
18767
18768 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
18769 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
18770 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
18771
18772       </div>
18773       <div class="tags">
18774
18775
18776         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>.
18777
18778
18779       </div>
18780     </div>
18781     <div class="padding"></div>
18782
18783     <div class="entry">
18784       <div class="title">
18785         <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>
18786       </div>
18787       <div class="date">
18788         17th January 2009
18789       </div>
18790       <div class="body">
18791         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
18792 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
18793 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
18794 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
18795 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
18796 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
18797 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
18798 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
18799 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
18800 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
18801 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
18802 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
18803 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
18804 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
18805
18806 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
18807 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
18808 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
18809 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
18810 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
18811 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
18812 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
18813 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
18814 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
18815 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
18816 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
18817 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
18818 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
18819 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
18820 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
18821 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
18822 playing when the download is done.</p>
18823
18824 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
18825 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
18826 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
18827 too.</p>
18828
18829 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
18830 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
18831 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
18832 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
18833
18834       </div>
18835       <div class="tags">
18836
18837
18838         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>.
18839
18840
18841       </div>
18842     </div>
18843     <div class="padding"></div>
18844
18845     <div class="entry">
18846       <div class="title">
18847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
18848       </div>
18849       <div class="date">
18850         28th December 2008
18851       </div>
18852       <div class="body">
18853         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
18854 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
18855 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
18856 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
18857 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
18858 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
18859 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
18860 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
18861 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
18862 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
18863 source, sink and mixer applications and
18864 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
18865 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
18866 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
18867 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
18868 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
18869 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
18870 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
18871 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
18872 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
18873
18874 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
18875 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
18876 larger stick as well.</p>
18877
18878       </div>
18879       <div class="tags">
18880
18881
18882         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>.
18883
18884
18885       </div>
18886     </div>
18887     <div class="padding"></div>
18888
18889     <div class="entry">
18890       <div class="title">
18891         <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>
18892       </div>
18893       <div class="date">
18894          7th December 2008
18895       </div>
18896       <div class="body">
18897         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
18898 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
18899 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
18900 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
18901 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
18902 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
18903 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
18904 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
18905
18906 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
18907 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
18908 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
18909 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
18910 of these cards.</p>
18911
18912       </div>
18913       <div class="tags">
18914
18915
18916         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>.
18917
18918
18919       </div>
18920     </div>
18921     <div class="padding"></div>
18922
18923     <div class="entry">
18924       <div class="title">
18925         <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>
18926       </div>
18927       <div class="date">
18928         25th November 2008
18929       </div>
18930       <div class="body">
18931         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
18932 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
18933 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
18934 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
18935 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
18936 notes are available on
18937 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
18938 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
18939 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
18940 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
18941 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
18942 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
18943 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
18944 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
18945 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
18946
18947 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
18948 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
18949
18950       </div>
18951       <div class="tags">
18952
18953
18954         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>.
18955
18956
18957       </div>
18958     </div>
18959     <div class="padding"></div>
18960
18961     <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>
18962     <div id="sidebar">
18963
18964
18965
18966 <h2>Archive</h2>
18967 <ul>
18968
18969 <li>2014
18970 <ul>
18971
18972 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
18973
18974 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
18975
18976 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (2)</a></li>
18977
18978 </ul></li>
18979
18980 <li>2013
18981 <ul>
18982
18983 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
18984
18985 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
18986
18987 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
18988
18989 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
18990
18991 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
18992
18993 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
18994
18995 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
18996
18997 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
18998
18999 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
19000
19001 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
19002
19003 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
19004
19005 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19006
19007 </ul></li>
19008
19009 <li>2012
19010 <ul>
19011
19012 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
19013
19014 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
19015
19016 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
19017
19018 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
19019
19020 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
19021
19022 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
19023
19024 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
19025
19026 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19027
19028 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
19029
19030 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
19031
19032 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
19033
19034 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19035
19036 </ul></li>
19037
19038 <li>2011
19039 <ul>
19040
19041 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
19042
19043 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
19044
19045 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
19046
19047 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
19048
19049 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
19050
19051 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
19052
19053 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19054
19055 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19056
19057 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
19058
19059 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19060
19061 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19062
19063 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
19064
19065 </ul></li>
19066
19067 <li>2010
19068 <ul>
19069
19070 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19071
19072 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
19073
19074 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
19075
19076 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
19077
19078 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19079
19080 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
19081
19082 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
19083
19084 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
19085
19086 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
19087
19088 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
19089
19090 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
19091
19092 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
19093
19094 </ul></li>
19095
19096 <li>2009
19097 <ul>
19098
19099 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
19100
19101 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
19102
19103 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
19104
19105 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
19106
19107 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19108
19109 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
19110
19111 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
19112
19113 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19114
19115 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
19116
19117 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19118
19119 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19120
19121 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19122
19123 </ul></li>
19124
19125 <li>2008
19126 <ul>
19127
19128 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
19129
19130 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19131
19132 </ul></li>
19133
19134 </ul>
19135
19136
19137
19138 <h2>Tags</h2>
19139 <ul>
19140
19141  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
19142
19143  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
19144
19145  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
19146
19147  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
19148
19149  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
19150
19151  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
19152
19153  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
19154
19155  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
19156
19157  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (94)</a></li>
19158
19159  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (145)</a></li>
19160
19161  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
19162
19163  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
19164
19165  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
19166
19167  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (237)</a></li>
19168
19169  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
19170
19171  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
19172
19173  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
19174
19175  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (5)</a></li>
19176
19177  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
19178
19179  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (39)</a></li>
19180
19181  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
19182
19183  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
19184
19185  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
19186
19187  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (7)</a></li>
19188
19189  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
19190
19191  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (7)</a></li>
19192
19193  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
19194
19195  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (241)</a></li>
19196
19197  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (161)</a></li>
19198
19199  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (10)</a></li>
19200
19201  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
19202
19203  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
19204
19205  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (69)</a></li>
19206
19207  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
19208
19209  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
19210
19211  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
19212
19213  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
19214
19215  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
19216
19217  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
19218
19219  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
19220
19221  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (34)</a></li>
19222
19223  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
19224
19225  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
19226
19227  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
19228
19229  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
19230
19231  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
19232
19233  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (21)</a></li>
19234
19235  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
19236
19237  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
19238
19239  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
19240
19241  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
19242
19243  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
19244
19245 </ul>
19246
19247
19248     </div>
19249     <p style="text-align: right">
19250  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
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19252
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