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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 "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <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>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         15th October 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
  32 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
  33 these. :)</p>
  34
  35 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
  36 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
  37 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
  38 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
  39 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
  40 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
  41 hope you will to. :)</p>
  42
  43 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
  44 create video documentaries about the excessive spying on every
  45 Internet user that take place these days, and their need to fund the
  46 work.  I've already donated.  Are you next?</p>
  47
  48 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
  49 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
  50 statement under the heading
  51 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
  52 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
  53 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
  54 too.</p>
  55
  56       </div>
  57       <div class="tags">
  58
  59
  60         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>.
  61
  62
  63       </div>
  64     </div>
  65     <div class="padding"></div>
  66
  67     <div class="entry">
  68       <div class="title">
  69         <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>
  70       </div>
  71       <div class="date">
  72         27th September 2013
  73       </div>
  74       <div class="body">
  75         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
  76 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
  77 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
  78 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
  79
  80 <ul>
  81
  82 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
  83 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
  84
  85 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
  86 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
  87
  88 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
  89 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
  90 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
  91 (Youtube)</li>
  92
  93 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
  94 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
  95
  96 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
  97 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
  98
  99 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
 100 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
 101 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
 102
 103 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
 104 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
 105 (Youtube)</li>
 106
 107 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
 108 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
 109
 110 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
 111 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
 112
 113 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
 114 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
 115 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
 116
 117 </ul>
 118
 119 <p>A larger list is available from
 120 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
 121 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
 122
 123 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
 124 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
 125 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
 126 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
 127 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
 128 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
 129 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
 130 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
 131 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
 132 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 133 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 134
 135       </div>
 136       <div class="tags">
 137
 138
 139         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>.
 140
 141
 142       </div>
 143     </div>
 144     <div class="padding"></div>
 145
 146     <div class="entry">
 147       <div class="title">
 148         <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>
 149       </div>
 150       <div class="date">
 151         10th September 2013
 152       </div>
 153       <div class="body">
 154         <p>I was introduced to the
 155 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
 156 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
 157 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
 158 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
 159 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
 160 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
 161 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
 162 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
 163
 164 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
 165 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
 166 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
 167 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
 168 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
 169
 170 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
 171 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
 172 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
 173 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
 174 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
 175 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
 176 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
 177 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
 178 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
 179 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
 180 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
 181 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
 182 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
 183 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
 184 missing in Debian).</p>
 185
 186 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
 187 scripts
 188 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
 189 and a administrative web interface
 190 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
 191 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
 192 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
 193 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
 194 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
 195 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
 196 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
 197 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
 198 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
 199 this is really working yet, see
 200 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
 201 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
 202 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
 203 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
 204 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
 205 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
 206 with lots of half baked features.</p>
 207
 208 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
 209 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
 210 at.</p>
 211
 212 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
 213
 214 <ol>
 215
 216 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
 217 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
 218 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
 219 to the Debian installer:<p>
 220 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
 221
 222 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
 223 install on.</li>
 224
 225 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
 226 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
 227
 228 </ol>
 229
 230 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
 231
 232 <ol>
 233
 234 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
 235 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
 236 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
 237 <pre>
 238 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
 239 </pre></li>
 240 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
 241 <pre>
 242 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
 243    apt-key add -
 244 apt-get update
 245 apt-get install freedombox-setup
 246 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
 247 </pre></li>
 248 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
 249
 250 </ol>
 251
 252 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
 253 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
 254 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
 255 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
 256 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
 257
 258 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
 259 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
 260 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
 261 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
 262
 263 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
 264 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
 265 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
 266 irc.debian.org and the
 267 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
 268 mailing list</a>.</p>
 269
 270 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
 271 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
 272 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
 273 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
 274 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
 275 default password is 'secret'.</p>
 276
 277       </div>
 278       <div class="tags">
 279
 280
 281         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>.
 282
 283
 284       </div>
 285     </div>
 286     <div class="padding"></div>
 287
 288     <div class="entry">
 289       <div class="title">
 290         <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>
 291       </div>
 292       <div class="date">
 293         18th August 2013
 294       </div>
 295       <div class="body">
 296         <p>Earlier, I reported about
 297 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
 298 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
 299 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
 300 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
 301 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
 302 currently on the disk.</p>
 303
 304 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
 305 <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>
 306 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
 307 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
 308 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
 309 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
 310 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
 311 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
 312 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
 313 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
 314 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
 315 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
 316 the broken disks.</p>
 317
 318       </div>
 319       <div class="tags">
 320
 321
 322         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>.
 323
 324
 325       </div>
 326     </div>
 327     <div class="padding"></div>
 328
 329     <div class="entry">
 330       <div class="title">
 331         <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>
 332       </div>
 333       <div class="date">
 334         17th July 2013
 335       </div>
 336       <div class="body">
 337         <p>Today I switched to
 338 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
 339 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
 340 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
 341 <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
 342 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
 343 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
 344 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
 345 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
 346 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
 347 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
 348 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
 349 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
 350 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
 351 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
 352 station from now on.</p>
 353
 354 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
 355 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
 356 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
 357 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
 358 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
 359 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
 360 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
 361 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
 362 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
 363 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
 364 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
 365 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
 366
 367 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
 368 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
 369 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
 370 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
 371 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
 372 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
 373 parameters are tuned:</p>
 374
 375 <ul>
 376
 377 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
 378     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
 379
 380 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
 381     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
 382     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
 383
 384 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
 385     systems.</li>
 386
 387 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
 388     /etc/fstab.</li>
 389
 390 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
 391
 392 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
 393     cron.daily).</li>
 394
 395 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
 396     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
 397
 398 </ul>
 399
 400 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
 401 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
 402 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
 403 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
 404 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
 405 from getting the data on the disk (see
 406 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
 407 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
 408 right thing to do.</p>
 409
 410 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
 411 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
 412 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
 413
 414 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
 415 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
 416 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
 417 instead of during my work.</p>
 418
 419 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
 420 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
 421
 422 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
 423 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
 424 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
 425
 426 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
 427 there.</p>
 428
 429 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
 430 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
 431 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
 432 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
 433 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
 434 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
 435 back.</p>
 436
 437       </div>
 438       <div class="tags">
 439
 440
 441         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>.
 442
 443
 444       </div>
 445     </div>
 446     <div class="padding"></div>
 447
 448     <div class="entry">
 449       <div class="title">
 450         <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>
 451       </div>
 452       <div class="date">
 453         10th July 2013
 454       </div>
 455       <div class="body">
 456         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
 457 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
 458 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
 459 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
 460 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
 461 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
 462 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
 463 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
 464
 465 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
 466 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
 467 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
 468 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
 469 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
 470 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
 471 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
 472 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
 473 lock up when I download a new
 474 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
 475 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
 476 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
 477
 478 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
 479 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
 480 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
 481 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
 482 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
 483 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
 484
 485 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
 486 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
 487 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
 488 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
 489 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
 490 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
 491
 492 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
 493 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
 494 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
 495 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
 496 exist).</p>
 497
 498       </div>
 499       <div class="tags">
 500
 501
 502         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>.
 503
 504
 505       </div>
 506     </div>
 507     <div class="padding"></div>
 508
 509     <div class="entry">
 510       <div class="title">
 511         <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>
 512       </div>
 513       <div class="date">
 514          9th July 2013
 515       </div>
 516       <div class="body">
 517         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
 518 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
 519 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
 520 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
 521 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 522 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
 523 Bitraf</a>.</p>
 524
 525 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
 526 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
 527 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
 528 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
 529 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
 530
 531       </div>
 532       <div class="tags">
 533
 534
 535         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>.
 536
 537
 538       </div>
 539     </div>
 540     <div class="padding"></div>
 541
 542     <div class="entry">
 543       <div class="title">
 544         <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>
 545       </div>
 546       <div class="date">
 547          5th July 2013
 548       </div>
 549       <div class="body">
 550         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
 551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
 552 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
 553 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
 554 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
 555 ended up picking a
 556 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
 557 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
 558 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
 559 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
 560 on that below.</p>
 561
 562 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
 563 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
 564 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
 565 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
 566 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
 567 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
 568 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
 569 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
 570 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
 571
 572 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
 573 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
 574 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
 575 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
 576 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
 577 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
 578 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
 579
 580 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
 581 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
 582
 583 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
 584 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
 585 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
 586 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
 587 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
 588 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
 589 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
 590 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
 591 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
 592 kernel developers as
 593 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
 594 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
 595 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
 596 Lenovo forums, both for
 597 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
 598 2012-11-10</a> and for
 599 <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
 600 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
 601 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
 602 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
 603 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
 604 There is even a
 605 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
 606 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
 607 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
 608
 609 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
 610 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
 611 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
 612 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
 613 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
 614 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
 615 fixed. :)</p>
 616
 617       </div>
 618       <div class="tags">
 619
 620
 621         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>.
 622
 623
 624       </div>
 625     </div>
 626     <div class="padding"></div>
 627
 628     <div class="entry">
 629       <div class="title">
 630         <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>
 631       </div>
 632       <div class="date">
 633          4th July 2013
 634       </div>
 635       <div class="body">
 636         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
 637 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
 638 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
 639 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
 640 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
 641 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
 642 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
 643 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
 644 with an expencive door stop.</p>
 645
 646 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
 647 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
 648 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
 649 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
 650 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
 651 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
 652 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
 653
 654 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
 655 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
 656 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
 657 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
 658 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
 659 new laptop now. :)</p>
 660
 661 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
 662
 663       </div>
 664       <div class="tags">
 665
 666
 667         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>.
 668
 669
 670       </div>
 671     </div>
 672     <div class="padding"></div>
 673
 674     <div class="entry">
 675       <div class="title">
 676         <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>
 677       </div>
 678       <div class="date">
 679         25th June 2013
 680       </div>
 681       <div class="body">
 682         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
 683 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
 684 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
 685 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
 686 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
 687 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
 688 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
 689 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
 690 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
 691 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
 692 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
 693
 694 <p><pre>
 695 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 696 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
 697 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
 698 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
 699 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
 700 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
 701 firmware-ipw2x00
 702 firmware-ipw2x00
 703 Preconfiguring packages ...
 704 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
 705 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
 706 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
 707 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
 708 #
 709 </pre></p>
 710
 711 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
 712 printed instead:</p>
 713
 714 <p><pre>
 715 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 716 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
 717 #
 718 </pre></p>
 719
 720 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
 721 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
 722
 723 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
 724 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
 725 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
 726 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
 727 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
 728 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
 729 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
 730 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
 731 machine.</p>
 732
 733 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
 734 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
 735 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
 736 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
 737 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
 738 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
 739
 740       </div>
 741       <div class="tags">
 742
 743
 744         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>.
 745
 746
 747       </div>
 748     </div>
 749     <div class="padding"></div>
 750
 751     <div class="entry">
 752       <div class="title">
 753         <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>
 754       </div>
 755       <div class="date">
 756         11th June 2013
 757       </div>
 758       <div class="body">
 759         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
 760 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
 761 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
 762 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
 763 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
 764 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
 765 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
 766 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
 767 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
 768 i915 driver used by the
 769 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
 770 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
 771
 772 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
 773 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
 774 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
 775 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
 776 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
 777
 778 <pre>
 779 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
 780 update-initramfs -u -k all
 781 </pre>
 782
 783 <p>Since March 2012 there is
 784 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
 785 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
 786 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
 787 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
 788 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
 789 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
 790 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
 791 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
 792 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
 793 number.</p>
 794
 795 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
 796 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
 797
 798 <p><pre>
 799 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
 800     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
 801     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 802  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
 803  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
 804     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
 805  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
 806     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 807  Latency: 0
 808  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
 809  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 810  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 811  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
 812  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
 813  Capabilities: <access denied>
 814  Kernel driver in use: i915
 815 </pre></p>
 816
 817 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
 818
 819 <p><pre>
 820 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
 821        ...
 822         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
 823         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
 824        ...
 825 }
 826 </pre></p>
 827
 828 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
 829 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
 830 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
 831 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
 832 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
 833 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
 834 yet shown up in
 835 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
 836 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
 837 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
 838 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
 839 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
 840 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
 841
 842 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
 843 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
 844 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
 845 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
 846 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
 847 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
 848 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
 849 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
 850 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
 851 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
 852 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
 853 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
 854
 855 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
 856 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
 857 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
 858 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
 859 backlight.</p>
 860
 861       </div>
 862       <div class="tags">
 863
 864
 865         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>.
 866
 867
 868       </div>
 869     </div>
 870     <div class="padding"></div>
 871
 872     <div class="entry">
 873       <div class="title">
 874         <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>
 875       </div>
 876       <div class="date">
 877         27th May 2013
 878       </div>
 879       <div class="body">
 880         <p>Two days ago, I asked
 881 <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
 882 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
 883 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
 884 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
 885 and Windows 8.</p>
 886
 887 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
 888 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
 889 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
 890 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
 891 enough to tell.</p>
 892
 893 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
 894 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
 895 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
 896 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
 897 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
 898 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
 899 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
 900 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
 901 to follow.</p>
 902
 903 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
 904 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
 905 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
 906 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
 907 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
 908 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
 909 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
 910 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
 911
 912 <p>I've updated the
 913 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
 914 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
 915 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
 916 machine.</p>
 917
 918 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
 919 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
 920
 921       </div>
 922       <div class="tags">
 923
 924
 925         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>.
 926
 927
 928       </div>
 929     </div>
 930     <div class="padding"></div>
 931
 932     <div class="entry">
 933       <div class="title">
 934         <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>
 935       </div>
 936       <div class="date">
 937         25th May 2013
 938       </div>
 939       <div class="body">
 940         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
 941 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
 942 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
 943 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
 944 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
 945 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
 946
 947 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
 948 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
 949 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
 950 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
 951 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
 952 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
 953 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
 954 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
 955 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
 956 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
 957
 958 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
 959 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
 960 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
 961 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
 962 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
 963 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
 964
 965 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
 966 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
 967 on new Laptops?</p>
 968
 969       </div>
 970       <div class="tags">
 971
 972
 973         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>.
 974
 975
 976       </div>
 977     </div>
 978     <div class="padding"></div>
 979
 980     <div class="entry">
 981       <div class="title">
 982         <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>
 983       </div>
 984       <div class="date">
 985         17th May 2013
 986       </div>
 987       <div class="body">
 988         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
 989 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
 990 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
 991 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
 992 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
 993 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
 994 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
 995 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
 996 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
 997 donate some money</a>.
 998
 999 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
1000 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
1001 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
1002 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
1003 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
1004
1005 <p>The script,
1006 <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/>
1007 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
1008 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
1009 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
1010
1011 <ol>
1012
1013 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
1014 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
1015 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
1016     our configuration.</li>
1017 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
1018     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
1019     according to the profile specified in the config above,
1020     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
1021 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
1022     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
1023 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
1024
1025 </ol>
1026
1027 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
1028 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
1029 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
1030 the needed packages.</p>
1031
1032 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
1033 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
1034 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
1035 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
1036 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
1037 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
1038
1039 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
1040 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
1041 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
1042
1043 <p><pre>
1044 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
1045 DESKTOP="lxde"
1046 </pre></p>
1047
1048 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
1049 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
1050 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
1051 boot.</p>
1052
1053       </div>
1054       <div class="tags">
1055
1056
1057         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>.
1058
1059
1060       </div>
1061     </div>
1062     <div class="padding"></div>
1063
1064     <div class="entry">
1065       <div class="title">
1066         <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>
1067       </div>
1068       <div class="date">
1069         11th May 2013
1070       </div>
1071       <div class="body">
1072         <P>In January,
1073 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
1074 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
1075 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
1076 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
1077 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
1078 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
1079 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
1080 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
1081 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
1082 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
1083 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
1084 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
1085
1086 <p><table>
1087 <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>
1088 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
1089 <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>
1090 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
1091 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
1092 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
1093 <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>
1094 <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>
1095 <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>
1096 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
1097 </table></p>
1098
1099 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
1100 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
1101 available in experimental.</p>
1102
1103 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
1104 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
1105 for LEGO designers.</p>
1106
1107       </div>
1108       <div class="tags">
1109
1110
1111         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>.
1112
1113
1114       </div>
1115     </div>
1116     <div class="padding"></div>
1117
1118     <div class="entry">
1119       <div class="title">
1120         <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>
1121       </div>
1122       <div class="date">
1123          5th May 2013
1124       </div>
1125       <div class="body">
1126         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
1127 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
1128 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
1129 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
1130 soon.</p>
1131
1132 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
1133 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
1134 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
1135 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
1136 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
1137 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
1138 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
1139 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
1140 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
1141 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
1142 Edu.</a>
1143
1144 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
1145 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
1146 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
1147 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
1148 follow.<p>
1149
1150       </div>
1151       <div class="tags">
1152
1153
1154         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>.
1155
1156
1157       </div>
1158     </div>
1159     <div class="padding"></div>
1160
1161     <div class="entry">
1162       <div class="title">
1163         <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>
1164       </div>
1165       <div class="date">
1166          3rd April 2013
1167       </div>
1168       <div class="body">
1169         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
1170 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
1171 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
1172 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
1173
1174 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
1175 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
1176 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
1177 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
1178 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
1179 BTS. :)</p>
1180
1181       </div>
1182       <div class="tags">
1183
1184
1185         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>.
1186
1187
1188       </div>
1189     </div>
1190     <div class="padding"></div>
1191
1192     <div class="entry">
1193       <div class="title">
1194         <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>
1195       </div>
1196       <div class="date">
1197          2nd February 2013
1198       </div>
1199       <div class="body">
1200         <p>My
1201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
1202 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
1203 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
1204 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
1205 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
1206 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
1207 version too.</p>
1208
1209 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
1210 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
1211 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
1212 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
1213 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
1214 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
1215 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
1216 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
1217
1218 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
1219 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
1220 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
1221 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
1222 it. :)</p>
1223
1224 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1225 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1226 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1227
1228       </div>
1229       <div class="tags">
1230
1231
1232         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>.
1233
1234
1235       </div>
1236     </div>
1237     <div class="padding"></div>
1238
1239     <div class="entry">
1240       <div class="title">
1241         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
1242       </div>
1243       <div class="date">
1244         22nd January 2013
1245       </div>
1246       <div class="body">
1247         <p>Yesterday, I
1248 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
1249 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
1250 pluggable hardware devices, which I
1251 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
1252 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
1253 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
1254 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
1255 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
1256 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
1257 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
1258 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
1259 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
1260 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
1261
1262 <pre>
1263 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
1264 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
1265 </pre>
1266
1267 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
1268 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
1269 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
1270 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
1271
1272 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
1273 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
1274 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
1275 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
1276 word.</p>
1277
1278 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
1279 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
1280 process.</p>
1281
1282 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
1283 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
1284
1285       </div>
1286       <div class="tags">
1287
1288
1289         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>.
1290
1291
1292       </div>
1293     </div>
1294     <div class="padding"></div>
1295
1296     <div class="entry">
1297       <div class="title">
1298         <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>
1299       </div>
1300       <div class="date">
1301         21st January 2013
1302       </div>
1303       <div class="body">
1304         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
1305 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
1306 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
1307 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
1308 it, fetch the
1309 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
1310 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
1311 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
1312 autostart script.</p>
1313
1314 <p>The design is simple:</p>
1315
1316 <ul>
1317
1318 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1319 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
1320
1321 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1322 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1323 initially did.</li>
1324
1325 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1326 the APT database, a database
1327 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
1328 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
1329
1330 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1331 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1332 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1333 package or packages.</li>
1334
1335 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
1336 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
1337
1338 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1339 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
1340
1341 </ul>
1342
1343 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
1344 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
1345 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1346 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
1347
1348 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
1349 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
1350 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
1351 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
1352 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
1353
1354 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1355 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
1356 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1357 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1358 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1359 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1360 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1361 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
1362
1363 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
1364 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1365 '<tt>svn checkout
1366 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1367 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
1368 devscripts package.</p>
1369
1370 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
1371 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1372 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
1373 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
1374 instructions</a> for details.</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</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/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
1390       </div>
1391       <div class="date">
1392         19th January 2013
1393       </div>
1394       <div class="body">
1395         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
1396 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1397 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
1398 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
1399 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
1400 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
1401 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1402 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1403 not a durable solution.
1404
1405 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
1406 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
1407
1408 <ul>
1409
1410 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1411   than A4).</li>
1412 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
1413 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
1414 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
1415 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
1416 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
1417 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
1418 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
1419 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
1420 size).</li>
1421 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1422   X.org packages.</li>
1423 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1424   the time).
1425
1426 </ul>
1427
1428 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1429 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1430 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1431 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
1432 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1433 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1434 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1435 still be useful.</p>
1436
1437 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1438 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
1439 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
1440 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1441 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
1442 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
1443
1444       </div>
1445       <div class="tags">
1446
1447
1448         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>.
1449
1450
1451       </div>
1452     </div>
1453     <div class="padding"></div>
1454
1455     <div class="entry">
1456       <div class="title">
1457         <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>
1458       </div>
1459       <div class="date">
1460         18th January 2013
1461       </div>
1462       <div class="body">
1463         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1464 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
1465 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
1466 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1467 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1468 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1469 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
1470
1471 <pre>
1472 #!/usr/bin/python
1473 import sys
1474 import apt
1475 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1476     cache = apt.Cache()
1477     cache.open(None)
1478     thepkgs = []
1479     for pkg in cache:
1480         version = pkg.candidate
1481         if version is None:
1482             version = pkg.installed
1483         if version is None:
1484             continue
1485         record = version.record
1486         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
1487             continue
1488         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
1489         for t in mime_types:
1490             t = t.rstrip().strip()
1491             if t == mimetype:
1492                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1493     return thepkgs
1494 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
1495 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
1496     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1497 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
1498 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1499     print "  %s" %pkg
1500 </pre>
1501
1502 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
1503
1504 <pre>
1505 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1506 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1507   gecko-mediaplayer
1508 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1509 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1510   browser-plugin-gnash
1511 %
1512 </pre>
1513
1514 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1515 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1516 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
1517 anyone working on adding it?</p>
1518
1519 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
1520 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1521 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
1522 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
1523 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1524 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
1525
1526       </div>
1527       <div class="tags">
1528
1529
1530         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>.
1531
1532
1533       </div>
1534     </div>
1535     <div class="padding"></div>
1536
1537     <div class="entry">
1538       <div class="title">
1539         <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>
1540       </div>
1541       <div class="date">
1542         16th January 2013
1543       </div>
1544       <div class="body">
1545         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
1546 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
1547 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1548 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1549 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
1550 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1551 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1552 downloaded by the browser.</p>
1553
1554 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1555 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1556 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
1557 can be found on the
1558 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
1559 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
1560 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1561 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1562 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
1563
1564 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
1565
1566 <pre>
1567   count MIME type
1568   ----- -----------------------
1569      32 text/plain
1570      30 audio/mpeg
1571      29 image/png
1572      28 image/jpeg
1573      27 application/ogg
1574      26 audio/x-mp3
1575      25 image/tiff
1576      25 image/gif
1577      22 image/bmp
1578      22 audio/x-wav
1579      20 audio/x-flac
1580      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1581      18 video/x-ms-asf
1582      18 audio/x-musepack
1583      18 audio/x-mpeg
1584      18 application/x-ogg
1585      17 video/mpeg
1586      17 audio/x-scpls
1587      17 audio/ogg
1588      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1589 </pre>
1590
1591 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
1592
1593 <pre>
1594   count MIME type
1595   ----- -----------------------
1596      33 text/plain
1597      32 image/png
1598      32 image/jpeg
1599      29 audio/mpeg
1600      27 image/gif
1601      26 image/tiff
1602      26 application/ogg
1603      25 audio/x-mp3
1604      22 image/bmp
1605      21 audio/x-wav
1606      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1607      19 audio/x-mpeg
1608      18 video/mpeg
1609      18 audio/x-scpls
1610      18 audio/x-flac
1611      18 application/x-ogg
1612      17 video/x-ms-asf
1613      17 text/html
1614      17 audio/x-musepack
1615      16 image/x-xbitmap
1616 </pre>
1617
1618 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
1619
1620 <pre>
1621   count MIME type
1622   ----- -----------------------
1623      31 text/plain
1624      31 image/png
1625      31 image/jpeg
1626      29 audio/mpeg
1627      28 application/ogg
1628      27 image/gif
1629      26 image/tiff
1630      26 audio/x-mp3
1631      23 audio/x-wav
1632      22 image/bmp
1633      21 audio/x-flac
1634      20 audio/x-mpegurl
1635      19 audio/x-mpeg
1636      18 video/x-ms-asf
1637      18 video/mpeg
1638      18 audio/x-scpls
1639      18 application/x-ogg
1640      17 audio/x-musepack
1641      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1642      16 video/x-msvideo
1643 </pre>
1644
1645 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1646 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
1647 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1648 issues.</p>
1649
1650 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
1651 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
1652
1653       </div>
1654       <div class="tags">
1655
1656
1657         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>.
1658
1659
1660       </div>
1661     </div>
1662     <div class="padding"></div>
1663
1664     <div class="entry">
1665       <div class="title">
1666         <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>
1667       </div>
1668       <div class="date">
1669         15th January 2013
1670       </div>
1671       <div class="body">
1672         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
1673 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
1674 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
1675 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
1676 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1677 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1678 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1679 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1680 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1681 packages.</p>
1682
1683 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1684 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1685 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1686 modalias.</p>
1687
1688 <p><blockquote>
1689 Package: package-name
1690 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
1691 </blockquote></p>
1692
1693 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1694 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
1695
1696 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1697 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
1698
1699 <p><blockquote>
1700 Package: cheese
1701 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
1702 </blockquote></p>
1703
1704 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1705 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
1706
1707 <p><blockquote>
1708 Package: pcmciautils
1709 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1710 </blockquote></p>
1711
1712 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1713 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
1714
1715 <p><blockquote>
1716 Package: colorhug-client
1717 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
1718 </blockquote></p>
1719
1720 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1721 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1722 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
1723
1724 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1725 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1726 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1727 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1728 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
1729 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1730 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
1731 Raring.</p>
1732
1733 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1734 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1735 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
1736 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
1737 try the
1738 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
1739 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1740 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1741 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
1742
1743 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1744 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
1745
1746 <p><blockquote>
1747 % ./hw-support-lookup
1748 <br>yubikey-personalization
1749 <br>%
1750 </blockquote></p>
1751
1752 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1753 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
1754
1755 <p><blockquote>
1756 % ./hw-support-lookup
1757 <br>pcmciautils
1758 <br>%
1759 </blockquote></p>
1760
1761 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1762 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
1763 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
1764
1765 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1766 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
1767 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1768 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
1769 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1770 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1771 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
1772 see if it work.</p>
1773
1774 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1775 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1776 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1777 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1778
1779       </div>
1780       <div class="tags">
1781
1782
1783         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>.
1784
1785
1786       </div>
1787     </div>
1788     <div class="padding"></div>
1789
1790     <div class="entry">
1791       <div class="title">
1792         <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>
1793       </div>
1794       <div class="date">
1795         14th January 2013
1796       </div>
1797       <div class="body">
1798         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1799 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1800 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1801 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
1802 in
1803 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1804 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
1805
1806 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
1807
1808 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1809 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
1810 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
1811 &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;,
1812 &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
1813 &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;.
1814
1815 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1816 this shell script:</p>
1817
1818 <pre>
1819 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1820 </pre>
1821
1822 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1823 using modinfo:</p>
1824
1825 <pre>
1826 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1827 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1828 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1829 %
1830 </pre>
1831
1832 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
1833
1834 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
1835 Bridge memory controller:</p>
1836
1837 <p><blockquote>
1838 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1839 </blockquote></p>
1840
1841 <p>This represent these values:</p>
1842
1843 <pre>
1844  v   00008086  (vendor)
1845  d   00002770  (device)
1846  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
1847  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
1848  bc  06        (bus class)
1849  sc  00        (bus subclass)
1850  i   00        (interface)
1851 </pre>
1852
1853 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
1854 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1855 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
1856 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
1857
1858 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1859 means.</p>
1860
1861 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
1862
1863 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
1864 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
1865
1866 <p><blockquote>
1867 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1868 </blockquote></p>
1869
1870 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
1871
1872 <pre>
1873  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
1874  p    0001  (device product)
1875  d    0206  (bcddevice)
1876  dc     09  (device class)
1877  dsc    00  (device subclass)
1878  dp     00  (device protocol)
1879  ic     09  (interface class)
1880  isc    00  (interface subclass)
1881  ip     00  (interface protocol)
1882 </pre>
1883
1884 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
1885 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
1886 these alias entries show up:</p>
1887
1888 <p><blockquote>
1889 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1890 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1891 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1892 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1893 </blockquote></p>
1894
1895 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
1896 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
1897 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
1898
1899 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
1900
1901 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
1902 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
1903
1904 <p><blockquote>
1905 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1906 </blockquote></p>
1907
1908 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
1909
1910 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
1911
1912 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1913 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1914 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
1915
1916 <p><blockquote>
1917 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1918 </blockquote></p>
1919
1920 <p>The values present are</p>
1921
1922 <pre>
1923  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
1924  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
1925  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
1926  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
1927  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
1928  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
1929  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
1930  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
1931  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
1932  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
1933  ct   10             (chassis type)
1934  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
1935 </pre>
1936
1937 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
1938 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
1939
1940 <pre>
1941   3 Desktop
1942   4 Low Profile Desktop
1943   5 Pizza Box
1944   6 Mini Tower
1945   7 Tower
1946   8 Portable
1947   9 Laptop
1948  10 Notebook
1949  11 Hand Held
1950  12 Docking Station
1951  13 All In One
1952  14 Sub Notebook
1953  15 Space-saving
1954  16 Lunch Box
1955  17 Main Server Chassis
1956  18 Expansion Chassis
1957  19 Sub Chassis
1958  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1959  21 Peripheral Chassis
1960  22 RAID Chassis
1961  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1962  24 Sealed-case PC
1963  25 Multi-system
1964  26 CompactPCI
1965  27 AdvancedTCA
1966  28 Blade
1967  29 Blade Enclosing
1968 </pre>
1969
1970 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1971 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1972 claim it is a desktop.</p>
1973
1974 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
1975
1976 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1977 test machine:</p>
1978
1979 <p><blockquote>
1980 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1981 </blockquote></p>
1982
1983 <p>The values present are</p>
1984
1985 <pre>
1986   ty  01  (type)
1987   pr  00  (prototype)
1988   id  00  (id)
1989   ex  00  (extra)
1990 </pre>
1991
1992 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1993 the valid values are.</p>
1994
1995 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
1996
1997 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1998 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1999 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
2000 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
2001 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
2002 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
2003 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
2004
2005 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
2006
2007 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
2008 one can use the following shell script:</p>
2009
2010 <pre>
2011   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
2012     echo "$id" ; \
2013     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
2014   done
2015 </pre>
2016
2017 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
2018 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
2019
2020 <pre>
2021   acpi:ACPI0003:
2022     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
2023   acpi:device:
2024   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
2025   acpi:IBM0068:
2026     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
2027     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
2028     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
2029     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
2030   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2031     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
2032     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
2033     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
2034   [...]
2035 </pre>
2036
2037 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2038 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2039 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2040 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
2041
2042 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
2043 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
2044 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
2045
2046       </div>
2047       <div class="tags">
2048
2049
2050         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>.
2051
2052
2053       </div>
2054     </div>
2055     <div class="padding"></div>
2056
2057     <div class="entry">
2058       <div class="title">
2059         <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>
2060       </div>
2061       <div class="date">
2062         10th January 2013
2063       </div>
2064       <div class="body">
2065         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
2066 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
2067 Launcher and updated the Debian package
2068 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
2069 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
2070 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
2071 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
2072 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
2073 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
2074 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
2075 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
2076 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
2077 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
2078 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
2079 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
2080 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
2081 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
2082 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
2083
2084       </div>
2085       <div class="tags">
2086
2087
2088         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>.
2089
2090
2091       </div>
2092     </div>
2093     <div class="padding"></div>
2094
2095     <div class="entry">
2096       <div class="title">
2097         <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>
2098       </div>
2099       <div class="date">
2100          9th January 2013
2101       </div>
2102       <div class="body">
2103         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
2104 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
2105 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
2106 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
2107 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
2108 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
2109 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
2110 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
2111 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
2112 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
2113 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
2114
2115 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
2116 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
2117 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
2118 simple:
2119
2120 <ul>
2121
2122 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
2123   starting when a user log in.</li>
2124
2125 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
2126   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
2127
2128 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
2129   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
2130   packages.</li>
2131
2132 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
2133   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
2134
2135 </ul>
2136
2137 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
2138 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
2139 discover database to find packages and
2140 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
2141 packages.</p>
2142
2143 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
2144 draft package is now checked into
2145 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
2146 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
2147 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
2148 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
2149 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
2150 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
2151 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
2152 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
2153 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
2154 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
2155 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
2156 because of the freeze).</p>
2157
2158 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
2159 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
2160 inserted):</p>
2161
2162 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
2163
2164 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
2165 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
2166 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
2167
2168 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
2169 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
2170 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
2171 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
2172 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
2173 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
2174 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
2175
2176 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
2177 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
2178 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
2179 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
2180 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
2181 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
2182 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
2183 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
2184 not be installed?</p>
2185
2186 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
2187 please send me an email. :)</p>
2188
2189       </div>
2190       <div class="tags">
2191
2192
2193         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>.
2194
2195
2196       </div>
2197     </div>
2198     <div class="padding"></div>
2199
2200     <div class="entry">
2201       <div class="title">
2202         <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>
2203       </div>
2204       <div class="date">
2205          2nd January 2013
2206       </div>
2207       <div class="body">
2208         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
2209 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
2210 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
2211 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
2212 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
2213 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
2214 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
2215 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
2216 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
2217 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
2218
2219 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
2220 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
2221 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
2222
2223       </div>
2224       <div class="tags">
2225
2226
2227         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>.
2228
2229
2230       </div>
2231     </div>
2232     <div class="padding"></div>
2233
2234     <div class="entry">
2235       <div class="title">
2236         <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>
2237       </div>
2238       <div class="date">
2239         25th December 2012
2240       </div>
2241       <div class="body">
2242         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
2243 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
2244
2245 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
2246 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
2247 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
2248 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
2249 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
2250 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
2251 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
2252 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
2253 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
2254 name.</p>
2255
2256 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
2257 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
2258 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
2259
2260 <blockquote><pre>
2261 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
2262 cd bitcoin
2263 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
2264 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
2265 </pre></blockquote>
2266
2267 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
2268 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
2269 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
2270 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
2271 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
2272 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
2273 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
2274 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
2275 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
2276
2277 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2278 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2279 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2280
2281       </div>
2282       <div class="tags">
2283
2284
2285         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>.
2286
2287
2288       </div>
2289     </div>
2290     <div class="padding"></div>
2291
2292     <div class="entry">
2293       <div class="title">
2294         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
2295       </div>
2296       <div class="date">
2297         21st December 2012
2298       </div>
2299       <div class="body">
2300         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
2301 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
2302 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
2303 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
2304 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
2305 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
2306 is now maintained by a
2307 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
2308 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
2309 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
2310 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
2311 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
2312 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2313 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
2314 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2315 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2316 Corallo in a
2317 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
2318 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2319 Debian package.</p>
2320
2321 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2322 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2323 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2324 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2325 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2326 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2327 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
2328 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
2329 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2330 new version to unstable.
2331
2332 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2333 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
2334 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2335 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2336 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2337 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
2338 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
2339 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
2340 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
2341 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
2342 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
2343 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
2344 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
2345 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
2346 have not tested them.</p>
2347
2348 <p>My
2349 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
2350 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
2351 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
2352 years ago, as can be
2353 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
2354 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
2355 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
2356 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
2357 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
2358 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
2359 the same address as last time,
2360 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2361
2362       </div>
2363       <div class="tags">
2364
2365
2366         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>.
2367
2368
2369       </div>
2370     </div>
2371     <div class="padding"></div>
2372
2373     <div class="entry">
2374       <div class="title">
2375         <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>
2376       </div>
2377       <div class="date">
2378          7th September 2012
2379       </div>
2380       <div class="body">
2381         <p>As I
2382 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2383 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2384 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2385 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2386 repository for the project</a>.</p>
2387
2388 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2389 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2390 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2391 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
2392
2393 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2394 PostScript formats at
2395 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2396 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
2397
2398       </div>
2399       <div class="tags">
2400
2401
2402         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>.
2403
2404
2405       </div>
2406     </div>
2407     <div class="padding"></div>
2408
2409     <div class="entry">
2410       <div class="title">
2411         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
2412       </div>
2413       <div class="date">
2414         16th August 2012
2415       </div>
2416       <div class="body">
2417         <p>I dag fyller
2418 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
2419 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
2420 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
2421
2422       </div>
2423       <div class="tags">
2424
2425
2426         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
2427
2428
2429       </div>
2430     </div>
2431     <div class="padding"></div>
2432
2433     <div class="entry">
2434       <div class="title">
2435         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
2436       </div>
2437       <div class="date">
2438         24th June 2012
2439       </div>
2440       <div class="body">
2441         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
2442 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
2443 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
2444 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
2445 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
2446 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
2447 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
2448 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
2449 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
2450 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
2451 missing in my book.</p>
2452
2453 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
2454 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
2455 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
2456 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
2457 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
2458 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
2459 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
2460
2461       </div>
2462       <div class="tags">
2463
2464
2465         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>.
2466
2467
2468       </div>
2469     </div>
2470     <div class="padding"></div>
2471
2472     <div class="entry">
2473       <div class="title">
2474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
2475       </div>
2476       <div class="date">
2477         21st November 2011
2478       </div>
2479       <div class="body">
2480         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
2481 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
2482 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
2483 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
2484 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
2485 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
2486 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
2487 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
2488 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
2489 the tools to do so.</p>
2490
2491 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
2492 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
2493 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
2494 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
2495
2496 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
2497 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
2498 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
2499 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
2500 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
2501 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
2502 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
2503 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
2504
2505 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
2506 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
2507 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
2508
2509 <p><pre>
2510 #!/usr/bin/perl
2511 use strict;
2512 use warnings;
2513 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
2514 BEGIN {
2515     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
2516     my %rhelmodules = (
2517         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
2518         );
2519     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
2520         eval "use $module;";
2521         if ($@) {
2522             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
2523             system("yum install -y $pkg");
2524             eval "use $module;";
2525         }
2526     }
2527 }
2528 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
2529
2530 upgrade_dell();
2531
2532 exit 0;
2533
2534 sub run_firmware_script {
2535     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
2536     unless ($script) {
2537         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
2538         exit 1
2539     }
2540     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
2541
2542     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
2543         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
2544     } else {
2545         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
2546     }
2547 }
2548
2549 sub run_firmware_scripts {
2550     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
2551     # Run firmware packages
2552     for my $dir (@dirs) {
2553         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
2554         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
2555         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
2556             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
2557             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
2558         }
2559         closedir $dh;
2560     }
2561 }
2562
2563 sub download {
2564     my $url = shift;
2565     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
2566     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
2567 }
2568
2569 sub upgrade_dell {
2570     my @dirs;
2571     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2572     chomp $product;
2573
2574     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
2575
2576         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
2577         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
2578
2579         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
2580             CLEANUP => 1
2581             );
2582         chdir($tmpdir);
2583         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
2584         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
2585         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
2586         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
2587         my $fwopts = "-q";
2588         if (@paths) {
2589             for my $url (@paths) {
2590                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
2591             }
2592             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
2593         } else {
2594             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
2595             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
2596         }
2597         chdir('/');
2598     } else {
2599         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
2600         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
2601     }
2602 }
2603
2604 sub fetch_dell_fw {
2605     my $path = shift;
2606     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
2607     download($url);
2608 }
2609
2610 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
2611 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
2612 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
2613 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
2614     my $filename = shift;
2615
2616     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2617     chomp $product;
2618     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
2619
2620     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
2621
2622     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
2623     my @paths;
2624     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
2625         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
2626         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
2627         my $oscode;
2628         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
2629             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
2630         } else {
2631             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
2632         }
2633         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
2634         {
2635             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
2636         }
2637     }
2638     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
2639         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
2640
2641         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
2642         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
2643
2644         my $cpath = $component->{path};
2645         for my $path (@paths) {
2646             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
2647                 push(@paths, $cpath);
2648             }
2649         }
2650     }
2651     return @paths;
2652 }
2653 </pre>
2654
2655 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
2656 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
2657 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
2658 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
2659 outdated.</p>
2660
2661       </div>
2662       <div class="tags">
2663
2664
2665         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>.
2666
2667
2668       </div>
2669     </div>
2670     <div class="padding"></div>
2671
2672     <div class="entry">
2673       <div class="title">
2674         <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>
2675       </div>
2676       <div class="date">
2677          4th August 2011
2678       </div>
2679       <div class="body">
2680         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
2681 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
2682 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
2683 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
2684 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
2685 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
2686 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
2687 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
2688 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
2689
2690 <p><blockquote>
2691 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
2692 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
2693 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
2694 </blockquote></p>
2695
2696 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
2697 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
2698 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
2699 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
2700 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
2701 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
2702 hard to explain.</p>
2703
2704 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
2705 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
2706 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
2707 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
2708 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
2709 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
2710 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
2711 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
2712 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
2713 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
2714 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
2715 mode).</p>
2716
2717 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
2718 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
2719 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
2720 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
2721 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
2722 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
2723 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
2724 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
2725 after visiting single user mode.</p>
2726
2727 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
2728 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
2729 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
2730 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
2731 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
2732 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
2733 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
2734 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
2735
2736 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
2737 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
2738 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
2739
2740       </div>
2741       <div class="tags">
2742
2743
2744         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>.
2745
2746
2747       </div>
2748     </div>
2749     <div class="padding"></div>
2750
2751     <div class="entry">
2752       <div class="title">
2753         <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>
2754       </div>
2755       <div class="date">
2756         30th July 2011
2757       </div>
2758       <div class="body">
2759         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
2760 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
2761 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
2762 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
2763 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
2764 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
2765 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
2766 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
2767 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
2768 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
2769 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
2770 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
2771 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
2772
2773 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
2774 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
2775 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
2776 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
2777 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
2778 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
2779 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
2780 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
2781 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
2782
2783 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
2784 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
2785 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
2786 is presented.</p>
2787
2788 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
2789 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
2790 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
2791 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
2792 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
2793 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
2794 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
2795 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
2796 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
2797 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
2798 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
2799 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
2800 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
2801 find time to push this forward.</p>
2802
2803       </div>
2804       <div class="tags">
2805
2806
2807         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>.
2808
2809
2810       </div>
2811     </div>
2812     <div class="padding"></div>
2813
2814     <div class="entry">
2815       <div class="title">
2816         <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>
2817       </div>
2818       <div class="date">
2819         29th July 2011
2820       </div>
2821       <div class="body">
2822         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
2823 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
2824 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
2825 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
2826 issues.</p>
2827
2828 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
2829 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
2830 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
2831
2832 <ol>
2833
2834 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
2835 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
2836 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
2837 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
2838 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
2839 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
2840 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
2841 Debian.</li>
2842
2843 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
2844 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
2845 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
2846 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
2847 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
2848 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
2849 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
2850 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
2851 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
2852 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
2853 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
2854 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
2855 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
2856
2857 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
2858 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
2859 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
2860 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
2861 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
2862 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
2863 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
2864 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
2865 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
2866 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
2867
2868 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
2869 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
2870 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
2871 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
2872 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
2873 latter behaviour.</li>
2874
2875 </ol>
2876
2877 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
2878 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
2879 it do not matter much.</p>
2880
2881 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
2882 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
2883 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
2884
2885       </div>
2886       <div class="tags">
2887
2888
2889         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>.
2890
2891
2892       </div>
2893     </div>
2894     <div class="padding"></div>
2895
2896     <div class="entry">
2897       <div class="title">
2898         <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>
2899       </div>
2900       <div class="date">
2901         26th July 2011
2902       </div>
2903       <div class="body">
2904         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
2905 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
2906 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
2907 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
2908 security support for a few years.</p>
2909
2910 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
2911 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
2912 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
2913 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
2914 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
2915 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
2916 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
2917 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
2918 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
2919 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
2920 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
2921 easier in the future.</p>
2922
2923 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
2924 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
2925 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
2926 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
2927 do not have time for.</p>
2928
2929       </div>
2930       <div class="tags">
2931
2932
2933         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>.
2934
2935
2936       </div>
2937     </div>
2938     <div class="padding"></div>
2939
2940     <div class="entry">
2941       <div class="title">
2942         <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>
2943       </div>
2944       <div class="date">
2945          3rd April 2011
2946       </div>
2947       <div class="body">
2948         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
2949 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
2950 update in English.</p>
2951
2952 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
2953 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
2954 of the British service
2955 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
2956 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
2957 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
2958 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
2959 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
2960 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
2961 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
2962 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
2963 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
2964 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
2965 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
2966 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
2967 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
2968
2969 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
2970 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
2971 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
2972 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
2973 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
2974 public infrastructure.</p>
2975
2976 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
2977 such service?</p>
2978
2979       </div>
2980       <div class="tags">
2981
2982
2983         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>.
2984
2985
2986       </div>
2987     </div>
2988     <div class="padding"></div>
2989
2990     <div class="entry">
2991       <div class="title">
2992         <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>
2993       </div>
2994       <div class="date">
2995         28th January 2011
2996       </div>
2997       <div class="body">
2998         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
2999 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
3000 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
3001 available on the Internet, and check our locally
3002 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
3003 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
3004 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
3005 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
3006 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
3007 out which security holes were present in our free software
3008 collection.</p>
3009
3010 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
3011 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
3012 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
3013 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
3014 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
3015 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
3016 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
3017 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
3018 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
3019 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
3020 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
3021 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
3022 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
3023 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
3024 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
3025 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
3026
3027 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
3028 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
3029 check out, one could look up
3030 <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
3031 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
3032 The most recent one is
3033 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
3034 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
3035 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
3036
3037 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
3038 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
3039 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
3040 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
3041 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
3042 security issues out.</p>
3043
3044 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
3045 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
3046 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
3047 RHEL is providing
3048 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
3049 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
3050 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
3051
3052 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
3053 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
3054 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
3055 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
3056 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
3057 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
3058 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
3059 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
3060 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
3061 established soon.</p>
3062
3063 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
3064 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
3065 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
3066 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
3067 for their packages.</p>
3068
3069       </div>
3070       <div class="tags">
3071
3072
3073         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>.
3074
3075
3076       </div>
3077     </div>
3078     <div class="padding"></div>
3079
3080     <div class="entry">
3081       <div class="title">
3082         <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>
3083       </div>
3084       <div class="date">
3085         23rd January 2011
3086       </div>
3087       <div class="body">
3088         <p>In the
3089 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
3090 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
3091 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
3092 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
3093 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
3094 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
3095 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
3096 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
3097 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
3098 one of my machines like this:</p>
3099
3100 <pre>
3101 loaded modules:
3102 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
3103 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
3104 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
3105 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
3106 10de:03ec pata_amd
3107 10de:03f6 sata_nv
3108 1022:1103 k8temp
3109 109e:036e bttv
3110 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
3111 11ab:4364 sky2
3112 </pre>
3113
3114 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
3115 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
3116
3117 <pre>
3118 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
3119     echo loaded pci modules:
3120     (
3121         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
3122         for address in * ; do
3123             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
3124                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3125                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
3126                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3127                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
3128                     echo "$id $module"
3129                 fi
3130             fi
3131         done
3132     )
3133     echo
3134 fi
3135 </pre>
3136
3137 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
3138 mappings:</p>
3139
3140 <pre>
3141 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
3142     echo loaded usb modules:
3143     (
3144         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
3145         for address in * ; do
3146             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
3147                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3148                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
3149                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3150                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
3151                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
3152                         echo "$id $module"
3153                     fi
3154                 fi
3155             fi
3156         done
3157     )
3158     echo
3159 fi
3160 </pre>
3161
3162 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
3163 well.</p>
3164
3165       </div>
3166       <div class="tags">
3167
3168
3169         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>.
3170
3171
3172       </div>
3173     </div>
3174     <div class="padding"></div>
3175
3176     <div class="entry">
3177       <div class="title">
3178         <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>
3179       </div>
3180       <div class="date">
3181         22nd December 2010
3182       </div>
3183       <div class="body">
3184         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
3185 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
3186 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
3187 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
3188 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
3189 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
3190 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
3191 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
3192 university.</p>
3193
3194 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
3195 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
3196 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
3197 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
3198 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
3199 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
3200 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
3201 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
3202
3203 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
3204 I perform on a new model.</p>
3205
3206 <ul>
3207
3208 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
3209 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
3210 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
3211
3212 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
3213 installation, X.org is working.</li>
3214
3215 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
3216 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
3217 reported by the program.</li>
3218
3219 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
3220 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
3221 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
3222 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
3223 normally test this by playing
3224 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
3225 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
3226
3227 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
3228 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
3229
3230 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
3231 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
3232
3233 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
3234 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
3235
3236 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
3237 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
3238 few.</li>
3239
3240 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
3241 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
3242 notice this.</li>
3243
3244 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
3245 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
3246 resume.</li>
3247
3248 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
3249 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
3250 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
3251 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
3252 not.</li>
3253
3254 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
3255 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
3256 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
3257 existence.</li>
3258
3259 </ul>
3260
3261 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
3262 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
3263 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
3264 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
3265 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
3266 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
3267 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
3268 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
3269
3270       </div>
3271       <div class="tags">
3272
3273
3274         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>.
3275
3276
3277       </div>
3278     </div>
3279     <div class="padding"></div>
3280
3281     <div class="entry">
3282       <div class="title">
3283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
3284       </div>
3285       <div class="date">
3286         11th December 2010
3287       </div>
3288       <div class="body">
3289         <p>As I continue to explore
3290 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
3291 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
3292 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
3293
3294 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
3295 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
3296 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
3297 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
3298 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
3299 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
3300 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
3301 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
3302 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
3303 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
3304 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
3305 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
3306 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
3307 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
3308 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
3309 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
3310 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
3311 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
3312 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
3313 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
3314
3315 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
3316 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
3317 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
3318 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
3319 If the Skolelinux foundation
3320 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
3321 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
3322 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
3323 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
3324 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
3325 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
3326 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
3327 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
3328
3329 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
3330 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
3331 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
3332 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
3333 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
3334 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
3335 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
3336 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
3337 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
3338 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
3339 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
3340 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
3341 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
3342 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
3343 currencies.</p>
3344
3345 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
3346 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
3347 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
3348 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
3349 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
3350 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
3351 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
3352 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
3353 BitCoins.  Check out
3354 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
3355 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
3356 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
3357 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
3358 yet.</p>
3359
3360 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
3361 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
3362 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
3363 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
3364 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
3365
3366       </div>
3367       <div class="tags">
3368
3369
3370         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>.
3371
3372
3373       </div>
3374     </div>
3375     <div class="padding"></div>
3376
3377     <div class="entry">
3378       <div class="title">
3379         <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>
3380       </div>
3381       <div class="date">
3382         10th December 2010
3383       </div>
3384       <div class="body">
3385         <p>With this weeks lawless
3386 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
3387 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
3388 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
3389 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
3390 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
3391 A blog post from
3392 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
3393 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
3394 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
3395 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
3396 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
3397 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
3398 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
3399
3400 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
3401 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
3402 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
3403 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
3404 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
3405 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
3406 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
3407 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
3408 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
3409 Debian</a> soon.</p>
3410
3411 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
3412 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
3413 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
3414 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
3415 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
3416 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
3417 you can even get
3418 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
3419 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
3420 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
3421 on the current exchange rates.</p>
3422
3423 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
3424 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
3425 donations to the address
3426 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
3427
3428       </div>
3429       <div class="tags">
3430
3431
3432         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>.
3433
3434
3435       </div>
3436     </div>
3437     <div class="padding"></div>
3438
3439     <div class="entry">
3440       <div class="title">
3441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
3442       </div>
3443       <div class="date">
3444         27th November 2010
3445       </div>
3446       <div class="body">
3447         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
3448 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
3449 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
3450 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
3451 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
3452 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
3453 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
3454 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
3455
3456 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
3457 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3458 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
3459 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
3460 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
3461 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
3462 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
3463 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
3464 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
3465 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
3466 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
3467
3468 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
3469 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
3470 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
3471 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
3472 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
3473 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
3474 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
3475 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
3476 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
3477 what is going on.</p>
3478
3479       </div>
3480       <div class="tags">
3481
3482
3483         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>.
3484
3485
3486       </div>
3487     </div>
3488     <div class="padding"></div>
3489
3490     <div class="entry">
3491       <div class="title">
3492         <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>
3493       </div>
3494       <div class="date">
3495         22nd November 2010
3496       </div>
3497       <div class="body">
3498         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
3499 upgrade testing of the
3500 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
3501 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
3502 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
3503 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
3504
3505 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
3506
3507 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3508
3509 <blockquote><p>
3510   apache2.2-bin
3511   aptdaemon
3512   baobab
3513   binfmt-support
3514   browser-plugin-gnash
3515   cheese-common
3516   cli-common
3517   cups-pk-helper
3518   dmz-cursor-theme
3519   empathy
3520   empathy-common
3521   freedesktop-sound-theme
3522   freeglut3
3523   gconf-defaults-service
3524   gdm-themes
3525   gedit-plugins
3526   geoclue
3527   geoclue-hostip
3528   geoclue-localnet
3529   geoclue-manual
3530   geoclue-yahoo
3531   gnash
3532   gnash-common
3533   gnome
3534   gnome-backgrounds
3535   gnome-cards-data
3536   gnome-codec-install
3537   gnome-core
3538   gnome-desktop-environment
3539   gnome-disk-utility
3540   gnome-screenshot
3541   gnome-search-tool
3542   gnome-session-canberra
3543   gnome-system-log
3544   gnome-themes-extras
3545   gnome-themes-more
3546   gnome-user-share
3547   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3548   gstreamer0.10-tools
3549   gtk2-engines
3550   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3551   gtk2-engines-smooth
3552   hamster-applet
3553   libapache2-mod-dnssd
3554   libapr1
3555   libaprutil1
3556   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
3557   libaprutil1-ldap
3558   libart2.0-cil
3559   libboost-date-time1.42.0
3560   libboost-python1.42.0
3561   libboost-thread1.42.0
3562   libchamplain-0.4-0
3563   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
3564   libcheese-gtk18
3565   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3566   libcryptui0
3567   libdiscid0
3568   libelf1
3569   libepc-1.0-2
3570   libepc-common
3571   libepc-ui-1.0-2
3572   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3573   libfreerdp0
3574   libgconf2.0-cil
3575   libgdata-common
3576   libgdata7
3577   libgdu-gtk0
3578   libgee2
3579   libgeoclue0
3580   libgexiv2-0
3581   libgif4
3582   libglade2.0-cil
3583   libglib2.0-cil
3584   libgmime2.4-cil
3585   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3586   libgnome2.24-cil
3587   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
3588   libgpod-common
3589   libgpod4
3590   libgtk2.0-cil
3591   libgtkglext1
3592   libgtksourceview2.0-common
3593   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3594   libmono-addins0.2-cil
3595   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
3596   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3597   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
3598   libmono-posix2.0-cil
3599   libmono-security2.0-cil
3600   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3601   libmono-system2.0-cil
3602   libmtp8
3603   libmusicbrainz3-6
3604   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
3605   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
3606   libopal3.6.8
3607   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
3608   libpt2.6.7
3609   libpython2.6
3610   librpm1
3611   librpmio1
3612   libsdl1.2debian
3613   libsrtp0
3614   libssh-4
3615   libtelepathy-farsight0
3616   libtelepathy-glib0
3617   libtidy-0.99-0
3618   media-player-info
3619   mesa-utils
3620   mono-2.0-gac
3621   mono-gac
3622   mono-runtime
3623   nautilus-sendto
3624   nautilus-sendto-empathy
3625   p7zip-full
3626   pkg-config
3627   python-aptdaemon
3628   python-aptdaemon-gtk
3629   python-axiom
3630   python-beautifulsoup
3631   python-bugbuddy
3632   python-clientform
3633   python-coherence
3634   python-configobj
3635   python-crypto
3636   python-cupshelpers
3637   python-elementtree
3638   python-epsilon
3639   python-evolution
3640   python-feedparser
3641   python-gdata
3642   python-gdbm
3643   python-gst0.10
3644   python-gtkglext1
3645   python-gtksourceview2
3646   python-httplib2
3647   python-louie
3648   python-mako
3649   python-markupsafe
3650   python-mechanize
3651   python-nevow
3652   python-notify
3653   python-opengl
3654   python-openssl
3655   python-pam
3656   python-pkg-resources
3657   python-pyasn1
3658   python-pysqlite2
3659   python-rdflib
3660   python-serial
3661   python-tagpy
3662   python-twisted-bin
3663   python-twisted-conch
3664   python-twisted-core
3665   python-twisted-web
3666   python-utidylib
3667   python-webkit
3668   python-xdg
3669   python-zope.interface
3670   remmina
3671   remmina-plugin-data
3672   remmina-plugin-rdp
3673   remmina-plugin-vnc
3674   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3675   rhythmbox-plugins
3676   rpm-common
3677   rpm2cpio
3678   seahorse-plugins
3679   shotwell
3680   software-center
3681   system-config-printer-udev
3682   telepathy-gabble
3683   telepathy-mission-control-5
3684   telepathy-salut
3685   tomboy
3686   totem
3687   totem-coherence
3688   totem-mozilla
3689   totem-plugins
3690   transmission-common
3691   xdg-user-dirs
3692   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
3693   xserver-xephyr
3694 </p></blockquote>
3695
3696 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3697
3698 <blockquote><p>
3699   cheese
3700   ekiga
3701   eog
3702   epiphany-extensions
3703   evolution-exchange
3704   fast-user-switch-applet
3705   file-roller
3706   gcalctool
3707   gconf-editor
3708   gdm
3709   gedit
3710   gedit-common
3711   gnome-games
3712   gnome-games-data
3713   gnome-nettool
3714   gnome-system-tools
3715   gnome-themes
3716   gnuchess
3717   gucharmap
3718   guile-1.8-libs
3719   libavahi-ui0
3720   libdmx1
3721   libgalago3
3722   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3723   libgtksourceview2.0-0
3724   liblircclient0
3725   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
3726   libspeexdsp1
3727   libsvga1
3728   rhythmbox
3729   seahorse
3730   sound-juicer
3731   system-config-printer
3732   totem-common
3733   transmission-gtk
3734   vinagre
3735   vino
3736 </p></blockquote>
3737
3738 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3739
3740 <blockquote><p>
3741   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3742 </p></blockquote>
3743
3744 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3745
3746 <blockquote><p>
3747 [nothing]
3748 </p></blockquote>
3749
3750 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3751
3752 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3753
3754 <blockquote><p>
3755   ksmserver
3756 </p></blockquote>
3757
3758 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3759
3760 <blockquote><p>
3761   kwin
3762   network-manager-kde
3763 </p></blockquote>
3764
3765 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3766
3767 <blockquote><p>
3768   arts
3769   dolphin
3770   freespacenotifier
3771   google-gadgets-gst
3772   google-gadgets-xul
3773   kappfinder
3774   kcalc
3775   kcharselect
3776   kde-core
3777   kde-plasma-desktop
3778   kde-standard
3779   kde-window-manager
3780   kdeartwork
3781   kdeartwork-emoticons
3782   kdeartwork-style
3783   kdeartwork-theme-icon
3784   kdebase
3785   kdebase-apps
3786   kdebase-workspace
3787   kdebase-workspace-bin
3788   kdebase-workspace-data
3789   kdeeject
3790   kdelibs
3791   kdeplasma-addons
3792   kdeutils
3793   kdewallpapers
3794   kdf
3795   kfloppy
3796   kgpg
3797   khelpcenter4
3798   kinfocenter
3799   konq-plugins-l10n
3800   konqueror-nsplugins
3801   kscreensaver
3802   kscreensaver-xsavers
3803   ktimer
3804   kwrite
3805   libgle3
3806   libkde4-ruby1.8
3807   libkonq5
3808   libkonq5-templates
3809   libnetpbm10
3810   libplasma-ruby
3811   libplasma-ruby1.8
3812   libqt4-ruby1.8
3813   marble-data
3814   marble-plugins
3815   netpbm
3816   nuvola-icon-theme
3817   plasma-dataengines-workspace
3818   plasma-desktop
3819   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
3820   plasma-runners-addons
3821   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
3822   plasma-scriptengine-python
3823   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
3824   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
3825   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
3826   plasma-scriptengines
3827   plasma-wallpapers-addons
3828   plasma-widget-folderview
3829   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3830   ruby
3831   sweeper
3832   update-notifier-kde
3833   xscreensaver-data-extra
3834   xscreensaver-gl
3835   xscreensaver-gl-extra
3836   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3837 </p></blockquote>
3838
3839 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3840
3841 <blockquote><p>
3842   ark
3843   google-gadgets-common
3844   google-gadgets-qt
3845   htdig
3846   kate
3847   kdebase-bin
3848   kdebase-data
3849   kdepasswd
3850   kfind
3851   klipper
3852   konq-plugins
3853   konqueror
3854   ksysguard
3855   ksysguardd
3856   libarchive1
3857   libcln6
3858   libeet1
3859   libeina-svn-06
3860   libggadget-1.0-0b
3861   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
3862   libgps19
3863   libkdecorations4
3864   libkephal4
3865   libkonq4
3866   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
3867   libkscreensaver5
3868   libksgrd4
3869   libksignalplotter4
3870   libkunitconversion4
3871   libkwineffects1a
3872   libmarblewidget4
3873   libntrack-qt4-1
3874   libntrack0
3875   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
3876   libplasmaclock4a
3877   libplasmagenericshell4
3878   libprocesscore4a
3879   libprocessui4a
3880   libqalculate5
3881   libqedje0a
3882   libqtruby4shared2
3883   libqzion0a
3884   libruby1.8
3885   libscim8c2a
3886   libsmokekdecore4-3
3887   libsmokekdeui4-3
3888   libsmokekfile3
3889   libsmokekhtml3
3890   libsmokekio3
3891   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
3892   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
3893   libsmokekparts3
3894   libsmokektexteditor3
3895   libsmokekutils3
3896   libsmokenepomuk3
3897   libsmokephonon3
3898   libsmokeplasma3
3899   libsmokeqtcore4-3
3900   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
3901   libsmokeqtgui4-3
3902   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
3903   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
3904   libsmokeqtscript4-3
3905   libsmokeqtsql4-3
3906   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
3907   libsmokeqttest4-3
3908   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
3909   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
3910   libsmokeqtxml4-3
3911   libsmokesolid3
3912   libsmokesoprano3
3913   libtaskmanager4a
3914   libtidy-0.99-0
3915   libweather-ion4a
3916   libxklavier16
3917   libxxf86misc1
3918   okteta
3919   oxygencursors
3920   plasma-dataengines-addons
3921   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
3922   plasma-widget-lancelot
3923   plasma-widgets-addons
3924   plasma-widgets-workspace
3925   polkit-kde-1
3926   ruby1.8
3927   systemsettings
3928   update-notifier-common
3929 </p></blockquote>
3930
3931 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
3932 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
3933 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
3934 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
3935
3936       </div>
3937       <div class="tags">
3938
3939
3940         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>.
3941
3942
3943       </div>
3944     </div>
3945     <div class="padding"></div>
3946
3947     <div class="entry">
3948       <div class="title">
3949         <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>
3950       </div>
3951       <div class="date">
3952         22nd November 2010
3953       </div>
3954       <div class="body">
3955         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
3956 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
3957 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
3958 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
3959 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
3960 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
3961 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
3962 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
3963 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
3964
3965 <p>I found
3966 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
3967 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
3968 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
3969 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
3970 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
3971 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
3972
3973 <pre>
3974 #!/bin/sh
3975
3976 # Based on
3977 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
3978
3979 set -e
3980 set -x
3981
3982 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
3983     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
3984     exit 1
3985 else
3986     host="$1"
3987 fi
3988
3989 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
3990     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
3991     exit 1
3992 fi
3993
3994 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
3995 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3996 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3997 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
3998
3999 img=$host.img
4000 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
4001 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
4002
4003 parted $img mklabel msdos
4004 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
4005 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
4006 parted $img set 1 boot on
4007
4008 modprobe dm-mod
4009 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
4010 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
4011
4012 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
4013 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
4014 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
4015
4016 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
4017 losetup -d /dev/loop0
4018 </pre>
4019
4020 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
4021 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
4022
4023 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
4024 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
4025 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
4026 seem to work just fine.</p>
4027
4028       </div>
4029       <div class="tags">
4030
4031
4032         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>.
4033
4034
4035       </div>
4036     </div>
4037     <div class="padding"></div>
4038
4039     <div class="entry">
4040       <div class="title">
4041         <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>
4042       </div>
4043       <div class="date">
4044         20th November 2010
4045       </div>
4046       <div class="body">
4047         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
4048 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
4049 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
4050 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
4051
4052 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
4053 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
4054 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
4055
4056 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
4057
4058 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4059
4060 <blockquote><p>
4061   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
4062   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
4063   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
4064   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
4065   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
4066   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
4067   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
4068   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
4069   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
4070   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
4071   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
4072   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
4073   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
4074   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
4075   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
4076   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
4077   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
4078   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
4079   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
4080   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
4081   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
4082   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
4083   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
4084   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
4085   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
4086   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
4087   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
4088   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
4089   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
4090   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
4091   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
4092   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4093   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
4094   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
4095   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
4096   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
4097   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
4098   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
4099   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
4100   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
4101   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
4102   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
4103   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
4104   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
4105   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
4106   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
4107   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
4108   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
4109   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
4110   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
4111   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
4112   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
4113   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
4114   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
4115   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
4116   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
4117   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
4118   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
4119   zip
4120 </p></blockquote>
4121
4122 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
4123
4124 <blockquote><p>
4125   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
4126   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
4127   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
4128   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
4129   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
4130   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
4131   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
4132   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
4133   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
4134   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
4135   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
4136   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4137   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4138   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4139   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
4140   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
4141   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
4142   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
4143   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
4144   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
4145   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
4146   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
4147   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4148   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
4149   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
4150   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
4151   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
4152   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
4153   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
4154 </p></blockquote>
4155
4156 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4157
4158 <blockquote><p>
4159   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4160 </p></blockquote>
4161
4162 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4163
4164 <blockquote><p>
4165 [nothing]
4166 </p></blockquote>
4167
4168 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
4169
4170 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4171
4172 <blockquote><p>
4173   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
4174   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4175   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
4176   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
4177   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
4178   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
4179   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4180   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
4181   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
4182   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4183   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
4184   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
4185   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
4186   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
4187   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
4188   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
4189   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
4190   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
4191   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
4192   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
4193   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
4194   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
4195   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
4196   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
4197   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
4198   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
4199   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
4200   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
4201   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
4202   ttf-sazanami-gothic
4203 </p></blockquote>
4204
4205 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4206
4207 <blockquote><p>
4208   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
4209   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
4210   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
4211   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
4212   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
4213   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
4214   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
4215   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
4216   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
4217   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
4218   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
4219   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
4220   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
4221   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
4222   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4223   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4224   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
4225   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
4226   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4227   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
4228   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
4229   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
4230   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4231   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4232   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
4233   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
4234   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
4235   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
4236   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
4237   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
4238   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
4239   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
4240   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
4241 </p></blockquote>
4242
4243 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4244
4245 <blockquote><p>
4246   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
4247   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
4248   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
4249   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
4250   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
4251   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
4252   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
4253 </p></blockquote>
4254
4255 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4256
4257 <blockquote><p>
4258   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
4259 </p></blockquote>
4260
4261       </div>
4262       <div class="tags">
4263
4264
4265         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>.
4266
4267
4268       </div>
4269     </div>
4270     <div class="padding"></div>
4271
4272     <div class="entry">
4273       <div class="title">
4274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
4275       </div>
4276       <div class="date">
4277         20th November 2010
4278       </div>
4279       <div class="body">
4280         <p>Answering
4281 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
4282 call from the Gnash project</a> for
4283 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
4284 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
4285 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
4286 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
4287 releases out more often.</p>
4288
4289 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
4290 I have considered setting up a <a
4291 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
4292 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
4293 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
4294 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
4295 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
4296 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
4297 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
4298 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
4299 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
4300 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
4301 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
4302 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
4303
4304       </div>
4305       <div class="tags">
4306
4307
4308         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>.
4309
4310
4311       </div>
4312     </div>
4313     <div class="padding"></div>
4314
4315     <div class="entry">
4316       <div class="title">
4317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
4318       </div>
4319       <div class="date">
4320          9th November 2010
4321       </div>
4322       <div class="body">
4323         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
4324
4325 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
4326 3D linked in from
4327 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
4328 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
4329
4330       </div>
4331       <div class="tags">
4332
4333
4334         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>.
4335
4336
4337       </div>
4338     </div>
4339     <div class="padding"></div>
4340
4341     <div class="entry">
4342       <div class="title">
4343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
4344       </div>
4345       <div class="date">
4346         24th October 2010
4347       </div>
4348       <div class="body">
4349         <p>Some updates.</p>
4350
4351 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
4352 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
4353 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
4354 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
4355 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
4356 :)</p>
4357
4358 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
4359 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
4360 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
4361 It is called
4362 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
4363 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
4364 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
4365 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
4366 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
4367 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
4368
4369 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
4370 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
4371 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
4372 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
4373 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
4374 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
4375 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
4376 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
4377 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
4378 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
4379
4380       </div>
4381       <div class="tags">
4382
4383
4384         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>.
4385
4386
4387       </div>
4388     </div>
4389     <div class="padding"></div>
4390
4391     <div class="entry">
4392       <div class="title">
4393         <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>
4394       </div>
4395       <div class="date">
4396          4th September 2010
4397       </div>
4398       <div class="body">
4399         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
4400 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
4401 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
4402 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
4403 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
4404 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
4405 installed.</p>
4406
4407 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
4408 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
4409 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
4410 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
4411 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
4412 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
4413 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
4414 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
4415 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
4416
4417 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
4418 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
4419 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
4420 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
4421 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
4422 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
4423 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
4424 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
4425 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
4426 pages they want to visit.</p>
4427
4428 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
4429 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
4430 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
4431 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
4432 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
4433 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
4434 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
4435 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
4436 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
4437 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
4438 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
4439
4440       </div>
4441       <div class="tags">
4442
4443
4444         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>.
4445
4446
4447       </div>
4448     </div>
4449     <div class="padding"></div>
4450
4451     <div class="entry">
4452       <div class="title">
4453         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
4454       </div>
4455       <div class="date">
4456         27th July 2010
4457       </div>
4458       <div class="body">
4459         <p>I discovered this while doing
4460 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
4461 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
4462 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
4463 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
4464 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
4465
4466 <p>An example is from todays
4467 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
4468 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
4469 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
4470 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
4471 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
4472 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
4473 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
4474
4475 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
4476
4477 <blockquote><pre>
4478 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
4479  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
4480   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
4481 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
4482  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
4483 </pre></blockquote>
4484
4485 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
4486 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
4487 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
4488 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
4489 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
4490 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
4491 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
4492 of dependency loops.</p>
4493
4494 <p>Thanks to
4495 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
4496 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
4497 dependencies
4498 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
4499 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
4500
4501 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
4502 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
4503 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
4504 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
4505 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
4506 it.</p>
4507
4508       </div>
4509       <div class="tags">
4510
4511
4512         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>.
4513
4514
4515       </div>
4516     </div>
4517     <div class="padding"></div>
4518
4519     <div class="entry">
4520       <div class="title">
4521         <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>
4522       </div>
4523       <div class="date">
4524         17th July 2010
4525       </div>
4526       <div class="body">
4527         <p>This is a
4528 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
4529 on my
4530 <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
4531 work</a> on
4532 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
4533 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
4534
4535 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
4536 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
4537 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
4538 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
4539
4540 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
4541 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
4542 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
4543
4544 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
4545
4546 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
4547 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
4548 the web.
4549
4550 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
4551 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
4552 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
4553 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
4554 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
4555 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
4556
4557 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
4558 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
4559 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
4560 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
4561 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
4562 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
4563 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
4564 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
4565 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
4566 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
4567 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
4568 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
4569 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
4570 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
4571 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
4572 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
4573
4574 <blockquote><pre>
4575 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4576   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4577   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4578   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4579   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4580   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4581   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4582
4583 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4584   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4585   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
4586   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
4587   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
4588   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
4589 </pre></blockquote>
4590
4591 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
4592 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
4593 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
4594 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4595 also exist.</p>
4596
4597 <blockquote><pre>
4598 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4599 objectclass: top
4600 objectclass: dnsdomain
4601 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4602 dc: tjener
4603 arecord: 10.0.2.2
4604 associateddomain: tjener.intern
4605
4606 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4607 objectclass: top
4608 objectclass: dnsdomain2
4609 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4610 dc: 2
4611 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
4612 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
4613 </pre></blockquote>
4614
4615 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
4616 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
4617 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
4618 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
4619 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
4620 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
4621 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
4622 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
4623 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
4624 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
4625 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
4626 instead.</p>
4627
4628 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
4629 like this:</p>
4630
4631 <blockquote><pre>
4632 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
4633   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4634   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4635   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4636   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4637   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4638
4639 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
4640   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
4641 </pre></blockquote>
4642
4643 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
4644 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
4645 reverse lookups.</p>
4646
4647 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
4648 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
4649 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
4650 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
4651
4652 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
4653 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
4654 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
4655
4656 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
4657 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
4658 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
4659 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
4660 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
4661
4662 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
4663 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
4664 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
4665 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
4666 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
4667
4668 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
4669 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
4670 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
4671 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
4672 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
4673 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
4674
4675 <blockquote><pre>
4676 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
4677     SUP top
4678     AUXILIARY
4679     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
4680           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
4681           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
4682           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
4683           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
4684     ))
4685 </pre></blockquote>
4686
4687 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
4688 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
4689 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
4690 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
4691 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
4692 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
4693
4694 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
4695
4696 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
4697 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
4698 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
4699 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
4700 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
4701
4702 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
4703 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
4704 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
4705 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
4706
4707 <blockquote><pre>
4708 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
4709 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
4710 </pre></blockquote>
4711
4712 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
4713 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
4714 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
4715 search result is this entry:</p>
4716
4717 <blockquote><pre>
4718 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4719 cn: dhcp
4720 objectClass: top
4721 objectClass: dhcpServer
4722 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4723 </pre></blockquote>
4724
4725 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
4726 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
4727 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
4728 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
4729 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
4730 The search result is this entry:</p>
4731
4732 <blockquote><pre>
4733 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4734 cn: DHCP Config
4735 objectClass: top
4736 objectClass: dhcpService
4737 objectClass: dhcpOptions
4738 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4739 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
4740 dhcpStatements: authoritative
4741 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
4742 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
4743 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
4744 </pre></blockquote>
4745
4746 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
4747 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
4748 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
4749 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
4750 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
4751 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
4752 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
4753 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
4754 related computer objects.</p>
4755
4756 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
4757 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
4758 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
4759 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
4760 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
4761 like:</p>
4762
4763 <blockquote><pre>
4764 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4765 cn: hostname
4766 objectClass: top
4767 objectClass: dhcpHost
4768 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4769 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
4770 </pre></blockquote>
4771
4772 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
4773 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
4774 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
4775 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
4776 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
4777 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
4778 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
4779 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
4780 structural object class.
4781
4782 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
4783
4784 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
4785 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
4786 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
4787 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
4788 in the configuration.</p>
4789
4790 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
4791 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
4792 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
4793 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
4794 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
4795 structure.</p>
4796
4797 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
4798 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
4799
4800 <blockquote><pre>
4801 ou=services
4802   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
4803     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
4804     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
4805       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
4806         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
4807     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
4808       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
4809         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
4810     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
4811       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
4812 </pre></blockquote>
4813
4814 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
4815 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
4816 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
4817 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
4818
4819 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
4820 like this:</p>
4821
4822 <blockquote><pre>
4823 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4824 dc: hostname
4825 objectClass: top
4826 objectClass: dhcpHost
4827 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4828 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
4829 associateddomain: hostname.intern
4830 arecord: 10.11.12.13
4831 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4832 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
4833 </pre></blockquote>
4834
4835 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
4836 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
4837 auxiliary object class.</p>
4838
4839       </div>
4840       <div class="tags">
4841
4842
4843         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>.
4844
4845
4846       </div>
4847     </div>
4848     <div class="padding"></div>
4849
4850     <div class="entry">
4851       <div class="title">
4852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
4853       </div>
4854       <div class="date">
4855         14th July 2010
4856       </div>
4857       <div class="body">
4858         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
4859 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
4860 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
4861 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
4862 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
4863
4864 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
4865 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
4866
4867 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
4868 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
4869 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
4870 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
4871 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
4872 to a slave DNS server.</p>
4873
4874 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
4875 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
4876 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
4877 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
4878 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
4879 seem to work.</p>
4880
4881 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
4882 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
4883 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
4884 this:</p>
4885
4886 <blockquote><pre>
4887   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4888   cn: hostname
4889   objectClass: dhcphost
4890   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4891   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
4892   associateddomain: hostname.intern
4893   arecord: 10.11.12.13
4894   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4895   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
4896   ldapconfigsound: Y
4897 </pre></blockquote>
4898
4899 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
4900 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
4901 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
4902 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
4903
4904 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
4905 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
4906 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
4907 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
4908 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
4909 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
4910 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
4911 might be a good place to put it.</p>
4912
4913 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4914 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4915
4916       </div>
4917       <div class="tags">
4918
4919
4920         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>.
4921
4922
4923       </div>
4924     </div>
4925     <div class="padding"></div>
4926
4927     <div class="entry">
4928       <div class="title">
4929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
4930       </div>
4931       <div class="date">
4932         11th July 2010
4933       </div>
4934       <div class="body">
4935         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
4936 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
4937 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
4938 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
4939
4940 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
4941 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
4942 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
4943 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
4944 LTSP clients.</p>
4945
4946 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
4947 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
4948 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
4949
4950 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
4951 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
4952 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
4953
4954 <blockquote><pre>
4955 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
4956 #
4957 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
4958 #
4959 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
4960 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
4961 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
4962 #
4963 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
4964 # existence of attribute names.
4965 #
4966 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
4967 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
4968 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
4969 #
4970 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
4971 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
4972 #
4973 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
4974 #     SUP top
4975 #     AUXILIARY
4976 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
4977
4978 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
4979 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
4980     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
4981     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
4982         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
4983         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
4984             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
4985             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
4986             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
4987             # bass value on to clients
4988             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
4989         done
4990     done
4991 fi
4992 </pre></blockquote>
4993
4994 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
4995 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
4996 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
4997 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
4998 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
4999
5000 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
5001 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5002
5003 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
5004 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
5005 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
5006 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
5007 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
5008 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
5009
5010       </div>
5011       <div class="tags">
5012
5013
5014         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>.
5015
5016
5017       </div>
5018     </div>
5019     <div class="padding"></div>
5020
5021     <div class="entry">
5022       <div class="title">
5023         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
5024       </div>
5025       <div class="date">
5026          9th July 2010
5027       </div>
5028       <div class="body">
5029         <p>Since
5030 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
5031 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
5032 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
5033 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
5034 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
5035 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
5036 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
5037 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
5038 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
5039 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
5040 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
5041 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
5042 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
5043
5044       </div>
5045       <div class="tags">
5046
5047
5048         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>.
5049
5050
5051       </div>
5052     </div>
5053     <div class="padding"></div>
5054
5055     <div class="entry">
5056       <div class="title">
5057         <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>
5058       </div>
5059       <div class="date">
5060          3rd July 2010
5061       </div>
5062       <div class="body">
5063         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
5064 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
5065 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
5066 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
5067 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
5068 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
5069 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
5070 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
5071
5072 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
5073 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
5074 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
5075 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
5076 publish the difference.</p>
5077
5078 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5079
5080 <blockquote><p>
5081   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5082   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
5083   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
5084   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
5085   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
5086   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
5087   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
5088   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
5089 </p></blockquote>
5090
5091 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5092
5093 <blockquote><p>
5094   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
5095   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
5096   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
5097   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
5098   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
5099   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
5100   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
5101   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
5102   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5103   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
5104   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
5105   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
5106   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
5107   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
5108   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
5109   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
5110   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
5111   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
5112   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
5113   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
5114 </p></blockquote>
5115
5116 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5117
5118 <blockquote><p>
5119   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
5120   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
5121   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5122   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5123   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
5124   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
5125   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
5126   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5127   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5128   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5129   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5130   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
5131   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
5132   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
5133   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
5134   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
5135   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
5136   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
5137   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
5138   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
5139   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
5140 </p></blockquote>
5141
5142 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5143
5144 <blockquote><p>
5145   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
5146   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
5147   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
5148 </p></blockquote>
5149
5150 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
5151 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
5152 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
5153 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
5154 the difference somewhat.
5155
5156       </div>
5157       <div class="tags">
5158
5159
5160         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>.
5161
5162
5163       </div>
5164     </div>
5165     <div class="padding"></div>
5166
5167     <div class="entry">
5168       <div class="title">
5169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
5170       </div>
5171       <div class="date">
5172         28th June 2010
5173       </div>
5174       <div class="body">
5175         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
5176 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
5177 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
5178 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
5179 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
5180 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
5181 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
5182 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
5183 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
5184 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
5185
5186 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
5187 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
5188 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
5189 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
5190 released.</p>
5191
5192 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
5193 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
5194 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
5195 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
5196
5197 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
5198 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5199
5200 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
5201 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
5202 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
5203 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
5204 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
5205
5206       </div>
5207       <div class="tags">
5208
5209
5210         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>.
5211
5212
5213       </div>
5214     </div>
5215     <div class="padding"></div>
5216
5217     <div class="entry">
5218       <div class="title">
5219         <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>
5220       </div>
5221       <div class="date">
5222         24th June 2010
5223       </div>
5224       <div class="body">
5225         <p>A while back, I
5226 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
5227 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
5228 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
5229 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
5230
5231 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
5232 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
5233 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
5234 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
5235
5236 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
5237 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
5238 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
5239 Debian Edu.</p>
5240
5241 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
5242 the
5243 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
5244 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
5245 available today from IETF.</p>
5246
5247 <pre>
5248 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
5249 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
5250 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
5251  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
5252         NAME 'dhcpHost'
5253         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
5254 -       SUP top
5255 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
5256         MUST cn
5257         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
5258         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
5259 </pre>
5260
5261 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
5262 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
5263 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
5264
5265 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
5266 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5267
5268       </div>
5269       <div class="tags">
5270
5271
5272         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>.
5273
5274
5275       </div>
5276     </div>
5277     <div class="padding"></div>
5278
5279     <div class="entry">
5280       <div class="title">
5281         <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>
5282       </div>
5283       <div class="date">
5284         16th June 2010
5285       </div>
5286       <div class="body">
5287         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
5288 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
5289 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
5290 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
5291 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
5292 this:
5293
5294 <blockquote><pre>
5295 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5296 tasksel --new-install
5297 </pre></blockquote>
5298
5299 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
5300 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
5301 any output what so ever.
5302
5303 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
5304 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
5305 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
5306 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
5307 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
5308 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
5309 code like this:
5310
5311 <blockquote><pre>
5312 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5313 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
5314 $cmd
5315 </pre></blockquote>
5316
5317 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
5318 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
5319 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
5320 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
5321 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
5322 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
5323 installation.</p>
5324
5325 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
5326 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
5327 like this.</p>
5328
5329       </div>
5330       <div class="tags">
5331
5332
5333         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>.
5334
5335
5336       </div>
5337     </div>
5338     <div class="padding"></div>
5339
5340     <div class="entry">
5341       <div class="title">
5342         <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>
5343       </div>
5344       <div class="date">
5345         13th June 2010
5346       </div>
5347       <div class="body">
5348         <p>My
5349 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
5350 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
5351 finally made the upgrade logs available from
5352 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
5353 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
5354 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
5355 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
5356
5357 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
5358 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
5359 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
5360 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
5361 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
5362 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
5363 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
5364 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
5365
5366 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
5367 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
5368 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
5369 too surprising.</p>
5370
5371 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
5372 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
5373 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
5374 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
5375 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
5376 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
5377 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
5378 continue.</p>
5379
5380 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
5381 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
5382   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
5383   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
5384   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
5385   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
5386   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
5387   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5388   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5389   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5390   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5391   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5392   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5393   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5394   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5395   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5396   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5397   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5398   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5399   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5400   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5401   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5402   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5403   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5404   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5405   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5406   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5407   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5408   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
5409   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
5410
5411 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
5412
5413 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
5414   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
5415   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
5416   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
5417   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5418   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
5419   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
5420   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
5421   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
5422   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
5423   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5424   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
5425   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
5426   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
5427   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
5428   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
5429   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
5430   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
5431   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
5432   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
5433   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
5434   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
5435   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
5436   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
5437   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
5438   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
5439   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
5440   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
5441   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
5442   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5443   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5444   zip</p>
5445
5446 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
5447
5448 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
5449   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
5450   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
5451   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
5452   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
5453   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
5454   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5455   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5456   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5457   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5458   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5459   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5460   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5461   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5462   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5463   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5464   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5465   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5466   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5467   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5468   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5469   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5470   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5471   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5472   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5473   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5474   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5475   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
5476
5477 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
5478 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
5479   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
5480   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
5481   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
5482   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
5483   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
5484   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
5485   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
5486   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
5487   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
5488   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
5489   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
5490   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
5491   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
5492   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
5493   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
5494   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5495   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5496   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5497   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
5498   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5499   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
5500   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
5501   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5502   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5503   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
5504   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
5505   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
5506   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
5507   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
5508   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
5509   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
5510   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
5511   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
5512   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5513   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5514   xulrunner-1.9</p>
5515
5516
5517       </div>
5518       <div class="tags">
5519
5520
5521         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>.
5522
5523
5524       </div>
5525     </div>
5526     <div class="padding"></div>
5527
5528     <div class="entry">
5529       <div class="title">
5530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
5531       </div>
5532       <div class="date">
5533         11th June 2010
5534       </div>
5535       <div class="body">
5536         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
5537 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
5538 have been discovered and reported in the process
5539 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
5540 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
5541 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
5542 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
5543 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
5544
5545 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
5546 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
5547 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
5548 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
5549 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
5550 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
5551
5552 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
5553 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
5554 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5555 is created.  The bug report
5556 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
5557 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
5558 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
5559 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
5560 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
5561 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
5562 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
5563 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
5564 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
5565 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
5566 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
5567 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
5568 Debian Squeeze.</p>
5569
5570 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
5571 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
5572 trick:</p>
5573
5574 <blockquote><pre>
5575 #!/bin/sh
5576 set -ex
5577
5578 if [ "$1" ] ; then
5579     desktop=$1
5580 else
5581     desktop=gnome
5582 fi
5583
5584 from=lenny
5585 to=squeeze
5586
5587 exec &lt; /dev/null
5588 unset LANG
5589 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
5590 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
5591 fuser -mv .
5592 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
5593 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5594 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
5595 #!/bin/sh
5596 exit 101
5597 EOF
5598 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
5599 exit_cleanup() {
5600     umount $tmpdir/proc
5601 }
5602 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
5603 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
5604 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
5605
5606 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
5607
5608 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
5609 # to return the correct answers.
5610 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
5611     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
5612
5613 # Include the desktop and laptop task
5614 for test in desktop laptop ; do
5615     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
5616 #!/bin/sh
5617 exit 2
5618 EOF
5619     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
5620 done
5621
5622 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5623 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
5624 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
5625 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
5626
5627 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
5628 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5629 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5630 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
5631 fuser -mv
5632 </pre></blockquote>
5633
5634 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
5635 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
5636 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
5637 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
5638 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
5639 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
5640
5641 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
5642 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
5643 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
5644 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
5645 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
5646 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
5647 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
5648
5649 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
5650 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
5651 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
5652 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
5653 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
5654 packages.</p>
5655
5656       </div>
5657       <div class="tags">
5658
5659
5660         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>.
5661
5662
5663       </div>
5664     </div>
5665     <div class="padding"></div>
5666
5667     <div class="entry">
5668       <div class="title">
5669         <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>
5670       </div>
5671       <div class="date">
5672          6th June 2010
5673       </div>
5674       <div class="body">
5675         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
5676 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
5677 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
5678 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
5679 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
5680 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
5681 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
5682
5683 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
5684 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
5685 COLUMNS):</p>
5686
5687 <blockquote><pre>
5688 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
5689 previous=N
5690 PREVLEVEL=
5691 RUNLEVEL=
5692 runlevel=S
5693 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
5694 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
5695 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
5696 </pre></blockquote>
5697
5698 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
5699 script.</p>
5700
5701 <blockquote><pre>
5702 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
5703 previous=N
5704 PREVLEVEL=N
5705 RUNLEVEL=S
5706 runlevel=S
5707 </pre></blockquote>
5708
5709 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
5710 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
5711 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
5712
5713 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
5714 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
5715 choice.</p>
5716
5717       </div>
5718       <div class="tags">
5719
5720
5721         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>.
5722
5723
5724       </div>
5725     </div>
5726     <div class="padding"></div>
5727
5728     <div class="entry">
5729       <div class="title">
5730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
5731       </div>
5732       <div class="date">
5733          6th June 2010
5734       </div>
5735       <div class="body">
5736         <p>Via the
5737 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
5738 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
5739 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
5740 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
5741 following the standards wars of today.</p>
5742
5743       </div>
5744       <div class="tags">
5745
5746
5747         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>.
5748
5749
5750       </div>
5751     </div>
5752     <div class="padding"></div>
5753
5754     <div class="entry">
5755       <div class="title">
5756         <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>
5757       </div>
5758       <div class="date">
5759          3rd June 2010
5760       </div>
5761       <div class="body">
5762         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
5763 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
5764 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
5765 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
5766 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
5767
5768 <blockquote><pre>
5769 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
5770   vendor                    count
5771   Dell Computer Corporation     1
5772     PowerEdge 1750              1
5773   IBM                           1
5774     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
5775   Intel                         2
5776   [no-dmi-info]                 3
5777 maintainer:~#
5778 </pre></blockquote>
5779
5780 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
5781 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
5782 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
5783 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
5784 option to list the individual machines.</p>
5785
5786 <p>A larger list is
5787 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
5788 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
5789 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
5790 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
5791 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
5792 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
5793 collector.</p>
5794
5795       </div>
5796       <div class="tags">
5797
5798
5799         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>.
5800
5801
5802       </div>
5803     </div>
5804     <div class="padding"></div>
5805
5806     <div class="entry">
5807       <div class="title">
5808         <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>
5809       </div>
5810       <div class="date">
5811          1st June 2010
5812       </div>
5813       <div class="body">
5814         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
5815 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
5816 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
5817 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
5818 wait.</p>
5819
5820 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
5821 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
5822 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
5823 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
5824 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
5825 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
5826
5827 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
5828 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
5829 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
5830 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
5831 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
5832 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
5833 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
5834 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
5835
5836 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
5837
5838       </div>
5839       <div class="tags">
5840
5841
5842         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>.
5843
5844
5845       </div>
5846     </div>
5847     <div class="padding"></div>
5848
5849     <div class="entry">
5850       <div class="title">
5851         <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>
5852       </div>
5853       <div class="date">
5854         27th May 2010
5855       </div>
5856       <div class="body">
5857         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
5858 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
5859 issues are known and should be solved:
5860
5861 <p><ul>
5862
5863 <li>The wicd package seen to
5864 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
5865 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
5866 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
5867 seem to be on the case.</li>
5868
5869 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
5870 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
5871 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
5872 maintainer is on the case.</li>
5873
5874 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
5875 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
5876 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
5877 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
5878 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
5879 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
5880 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
5881 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
5882
5883 </ul></p>
5884
5885 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
5886 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
5887 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
5888 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
5889
5890 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5891 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5892 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5893 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5894
5895 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
5896
5897       </div>
5898       <div class="tags">
5899
5900
5901         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>.
5902
5903
5904       </div>
5905     </div>
5906     <div class="padding"></div>
5907
5908     <div class="entry">
5909       <div class="title">
5910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
5911       </div>
5912       <div class="date">
5913         22nd May 2010
5914       </div>
5915       <div class="body">
5916         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
5917 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
5918 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
5919 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
5920
5921 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
5922 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
5923 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
5924 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
5925 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
5926 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
5927 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
5928 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
5929 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
5930 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
5931 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
5932 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
5933 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
5934 going to work.</p>
5935
5936 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
5937 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
5938 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
5939 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
5940 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
5941 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
5942 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
5943 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
5944 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
5945 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
5946 Edu.</p>
5947
5948 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
5949 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
5950 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
5951 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
5952 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
5953 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
5954
5955 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
5956 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
5957
5958       </div>
5959       <div class="tags">
5960
5961
5962         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>.
5963
5964
5965       </div>
5966     </div>
5967     <div class="padding"></div>
5968
5969     <div class="entry">
5970       <div class="title">
5971         <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>
5972       </div>
5973       <div class="date">
5974         14th May 2010
5975       </div>
5976       <div class="body">
5977         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
5978 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
5979 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
5980 expected, if I am to believe the
5981 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5982 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
5983 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
5984 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
5985 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
5986 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
5987 version.</p>
5988
5989 More information about
5990 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5991 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
5992 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
5993 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5994
5995 <blockquote><pre>
5996 CONCURRENCY=none
5997 </pre></blockquote>
5998
5999 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
6000 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
6001 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6002 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
6003
6004       </div>
6005       <div class="tags">
6006
6007
6008         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>.
6009
6010
6011       </div>
6012     </div>
6013     <div class="padding"></div>
6014
6015     <div class="entry">
6016       <div class="title">
6017         <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>
6018       </div>
6019       <div class="date">
6020         14th May 2010
6021       </div>
6022       <div class="body">
6023         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
6024 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
6025 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
6026 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
6027 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
6028 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
6029 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
6030 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
6031
6032 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
6033 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
6034 this on the collector host:</p>
6035
6036 <blockquote><pre>
6037 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
6038 </pre></blockquote>
6039
6040 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
6041 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
6042
6043 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
6044 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
6045 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
6046 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
6047 written yet.</p>
6048
6049       </div>
6050       <div class="tags">
6051
6052
6053         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>.
6054
6055
6056       </div>
6057     </div>
6058     <div class="padding"></div>
6059
6060     <div class="entry">
6061       <div class="title">
6062         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
6063       </div>
6064       <div class="date">
6065         13th May 2010
6066       </div>
6067       <div class="body">
6068         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
6069 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
6070 has been
6071 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
6072
6073 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
6074 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
6075 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
6076 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
6077 based boot system.  Tollef is
6078 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
6079 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
6080 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
6081 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
6082 at the moment do not.</p>
6083
6084 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
6085 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
6086 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
6087 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
6088 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
6089 way forward.</p>
6090
6091 <p>In the mean time, based on the
6092 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
6093 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
6094 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
6095 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
6096 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
6097 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
6098 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
6099 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
6100
6101       </div>
6102       <div class="tags">
6103
6104
6105         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>.
6106
6107
6108       </div>
6109     </div>
6110     <div class="padding"></div>
6111
6112     <div class="entry">
6113       <div class="title">
6114         <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>
6115       </div>
6116       <div class="date">
6117          6th May 2010
6118       </div>
6119       <div class="body">
6120         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
6121 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
6122 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
6123 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
6124 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
6125 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
6126 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
6127
6128 <blockquote><pre>
6129 CONCURRENCY=makefile
6130 </pre></blockquote>
6131
6132 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
6133 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
6134 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
6135 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
6136 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
6137 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
6138 make this happen.</p>
6139
6140 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
6141 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
6142 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
6143 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
6144 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
6145
6146 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
6147 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
6148 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
6149 fix the remaining issues.</p>
6150
6151 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
6152 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
6153 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6154 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
6155
6156       </div>
6157       <div class="tags">
6158
6159
6160         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>.
6161
6162
6163       </div>
6164     </div>
6165     <div class="padding"></div>
6166
6167     <div class="entry">
6168       <div class="title">
6169         <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>
6170       </div>
6171       <div class="date">
6172         27th July 2009
6173       </div>
6174       <div class="body">
6175         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
6176 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
6177 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
6178 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
6179 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
6180 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
6181 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
6182
6183 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
6184 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
6185 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
6186
6187       </div>
6188       <div class="tags">
6189
6190
6191         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>.
6192
6193
6194       </div>
6195     </div>
6196     <div class="padding"></div>
6197
6198     <div class="entry">
6199       <div class="title">
6200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
6201       </div>
6202       <div class="date">
6203         22nd July 2009
6204       </div>
6205       <div class="body">
6206         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
6207 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
6208 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
6209 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
6210 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
6211 the package up to date.</p>
6212
6213 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
6214 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
6215 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
6216 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
6217 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
6218 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
6219 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
6220 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
6221 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
6222 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
6223 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
6224 working on the future release.</p>
6225
6226 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
6227 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
6228
6229       </div>
6230       <div class="tags">
6231
6232
6233         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>.
6234
6235
6236       </div>
6237     </div>
6238     <div class="padding"></div>
6239
6240     <div class="entry">
6241       <div class="title">
6242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
6243       </div>
6244       <div class="date">
6245         24th June 2009
6246       </div>
6247       <div class="body">
6248         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
6249 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
6250 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
6251 funded
6252 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
6253 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
6254 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
6255 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
6256 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
6257 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
6258
6259 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
6260 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
6261 boot:</p>
6262
6263 <ul>
6264
6265 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
6266
6267 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
6268    clock is in UTC.</li>
6269
6270 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
6271    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
6272    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
6273
6274 </ul>
6275
6276 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
6277 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
6278 Villegas</a>.
6279
6280 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
6281 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
6282 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
6283 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
6284 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
6285 using this.</p>
6286
6287 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
6288 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
6289 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
6290 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
6291 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
6292 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
6293 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
6294
6295       </div>
6296       <div class="tags">
6297
6298
6299         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>.
6300
6301
6302       </div>
6303     </div>
6304     <div class="padding"></div>
6305
6306     <div class="entry">
6307       <div class="title">
6308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
6309       </div>
6310       <div class="date">
6311         17th May 2009
6312       </div>
6313       <div class="body">
6314         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
6315 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
6316 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
6317 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
6318 dager siden kom
6319 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
6320 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
6321 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
6322 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
6323 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
6324
6325 <blockquote>
6326 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
6327 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
6328 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
6329 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
6330 </blockquote>
6331
6332 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
6333 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
6334 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
6335 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
6336 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
6337
6338 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
6339 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
6340 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
6341
6342       </div>
6343       <div class="tags">
6344
6345
6346         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</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>.
6347
6348
6349       </div>
6350     </div>
6351     <div class="padding"></div>
6352
6353     <div class="entry">
6354       <div class="title">
6355         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
6356       </div>
6357       <div class="date">
6358          7th May 2009
6359       </div>
6360       <div class="body">
6361         <p>Kom over
6362 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
6363 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
6364 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
6365 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
6366 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
6367 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
6368 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
6369
6370       </div>
6371       <div class="tags">
6372
6373
6374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6375
6376
6377       </div>
6378     </div>
6379     <div class="padding"></div>
6380
6381     <div class="entry">
6382       <div class="title">
6383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
6384       </div>
6385       <div class="date">
6386          2nd May 2009
6387       </div>
6388       <div class="body">
6389         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
6390 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
6391 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
6392 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
6393 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
6394 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
6395 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
6396 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
6397 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
6398 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
6399 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
6400 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
6401 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
6402 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
6403 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
6404 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
6405 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
6406 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
6407 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
6408 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
6409
6410 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
6411 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
6412 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
6413 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
6414 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
6415 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
6416 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
6417 betydelige.</p>
6418
6419       </div>
6420       <div class="tags">
6421
6422
6423         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</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>.
6424
6425
6426       </div>
6427     </div>
6428     <div class="padding"></div>
6429
6430     <div class="entry">
6431       <div class="title">
6432         <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>
6433       </div>
6434       <div class="date">
6435          2nd May 2009
6436       </div>
6437       <div class="body">
6438         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
6439 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
6440 do not yet know them.</p>
6441
6442 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
6443 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
6444 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
6445 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
6446 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
6447 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
6448 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
6449 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
6450 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
6451 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
6452 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
6453
6454 <p>The second one is
6455 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
6456 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
6457 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
6458 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
6459 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
6460 and the company behind it is running
6461 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
6462 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
6463 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
6464 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
6465 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
6466 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
6467 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
6468 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
6469
6470 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
6471 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
6472 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
6473 surrounded by today.</p>
6474
6475       </div>
6476       <div class="tags">
6477
6478
6479         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>.
6480
6481
6482       </div>
6483     </div>
6484     <div class="padding"></div>
6485
6486     <div class="entry">
6487       <div class="title">
6488         <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>
6489       </div>
6490       <div class="date">
6491         28th April 2009
6492       </div>
6493       <div class="body">
6494         <p>Julien Blache
6495 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
6496 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
6497 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
6498 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
6499 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
6500 properties.</p>
6501
6502       </div>
6503       <div class="tags">
6504
6505
6506         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>.
6507
6508
6509       </div>
6510     </div>
6511     <div class="padding"></div>
6512
6513     <div class="entry">
6514       <div class="title">
6515         <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>
6516       </div>
6517       <div class="date">
6518         30th March 2009
6519       </div>
6520       <div class="body">
6521         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
6522 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
6523 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
6524 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
6525 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
6526 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
6527 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
6528 application.</p>
6529
6530 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
6531 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
6532 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
6533 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
6534 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
6535 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
6536 blocked from doing so.</p>
6537
6538 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
6539 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
6540 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
6541 requirements change.</p>
6542
6543 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
6544 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
6545 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
6546
6547       </div>
6548       <div class="tags">
6549
6550
6551         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>.
6552
6553
6554       </div>
6555     </div>
6556     <div class="padding"></div>
6557
6558     <div class="entry">
6559       <div class="title">
6560         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
6561       </div>
6562       <div class="date">
6563         29th March 2009
6564       </div>
6565       <div class="body">
6566         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
6567 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
6568 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
6569 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
6570 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
6571 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
6572 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
6573 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
6574 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
6575 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
6576 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
6577 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
6578 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
6579 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
6580 now. :)</p>
6581
6582       </div>
6583       <div class="tags">
6584
6585
6586         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>.
6587
6588
6589       </div>
6590     </div>
6591     <div class="padding"></div>
6592
6593     <div class="entry">
6594       <div class="title">
6595         <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>
6596       </div>
6597       <div class="date">
6598         29th March 2009
6599       </div>
6600       <div class="body">
6601         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
6602 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
6603 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
6604 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
6605 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
6606 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
6607
6608 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
6609 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
6610 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
6611 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
6612 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
6613 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
6614 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
6615 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
6616 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
6617 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
6618 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
6619 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
6620 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
6621
6622 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
6623 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
6624 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
6625 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
6626
6627 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
6628 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
6629
6630 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
6631 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
6632 new IETF work group?</p>
6633
6634       </div>
6635       <div class="tags">
6636
6637
6638         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>.
6639
6640
6641       </div>
6642     </div>
6643     <div class="padding"></div>
6644
6645     <div class="entry">
6646       <div class="title">
6647         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
6648       </div>
6649       <div class="date">
6650         15th February 2009
6651       </div>
6652       <div class="body">
6653         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
6654 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
6655 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
6656 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
6657 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
6658 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
6659 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
6660 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
6661 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
6662 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
6663 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
6664 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
6665
6666       </div>
6667       <div class="tags">
6668
6669
6670         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/norsk">norsk</a>.
6671
6672
6673       </div>
6674     </div>
6675     <div class="padding"></div>
6676
6677     <div class="entry">
6678       <div class="title">
6679         <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>
6680       </div>
6681       <div class="date">
6682          7th December 2008
6683       </div>
6684       <div class="body">
6685         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
6686 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
6687 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
6688 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
6689 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
6690 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
6691 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
6692 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
6693
6694 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
6695 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
6696 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
6697 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
6698 of these cards.</p>
6699
6700       </div>
6701       <div class="tags">
6702
6703
6704         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>.
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/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
6714       </div>
6715       <div class="date">
6716         25th November 2008
6717       </div>
6718       <div class="body">
6719         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
6720 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
6721 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
6722 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
6723 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
6724 notes are available on
6725 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
6726 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
6727 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
6728 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
6729 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
6730 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
6731 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
6732 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
6733 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
6734
6735 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
6736 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
6737
6738       </div>
6739       <div class="tags">
6740
6741
6742         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>.
6743
6744
6745       </div>
6746     </div>
6747     <div class="padding"></div>
6748
6749     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
6750     <div id="sidebar">
6751
6752
6753
6754 <h2>Archive</h2>
6755 <ul>
6756
6757 <li>2013
6758 <ul>
6759
6760 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
6761
6762 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
6763
6764 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
6765
6766 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
6767
6768 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6769
6770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
6771
6772 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
6773
6774 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
6775
6776 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
6777
6778 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (3)</a></li>
6779
6780 </ul></li>
6781
6782 <li>2012
6783 <ul>
6784
6785 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
6786
6787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
6788
6789 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
6790
6791 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
6792
6793 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
6794
6795 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
6796
6797 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
6798
6799 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
6800
6801 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
6802
6803 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
6804
6805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
6806
6807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
6808
6809 </ul></li>
6810
6811 <li>2011
6812 <ul>
6813
6814 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
6815
6816 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
6817
6818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
6819
6820 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
6821
6822 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
6823
6824 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
6825
6826 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
6827
6828 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
6829
6830 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
6831
6832 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
6833
6834 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
6835
6836 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
6837
6838 </ul></li>
6839
6840 <li>2010
6841 <ul>
6842
6843 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
6844
6845 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
6846
6847 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
6848
6849 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
6850
6851 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6852
6853 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
6854
6855 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
6856
6857 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
6858
6859 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
6860
6861 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
6862
6863 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
6864
6865 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
6866
6867 </ul></li>
6868
6869 <li>2009
6870 <ul>
6871
6872 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
6873
6874 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
6875
6876 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
6877
6878 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
6879
6880 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6881
6882 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
6883
6884 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
6885
6886 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
6887
6888 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
6889
6890 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
6891
6892 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
6893
6894 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
6895
6896 </ul></li>
6897
6898 <li>2008
6899 <ul>
6900
6901 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
6902
6903 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
6904
6905 </ul></li>
6906
6907 </ul>
6908
6909
6910
6911 <h2>Tags</h2>
6912 <ul>
6913
6914  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
6915
6916  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
6917
6918  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
6919
6920  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
6921
6922  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
6923
6924  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
6925
6926  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
6927
6928  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (87)</a></li>
6929
6930  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (142)</a></li>
6931
6932  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
6933
6934  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
6935
6936  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
6937
6938  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (220)</a></li>
6939
6940  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
6941
6942  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
6943
6944  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
6945
6946  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (3)</a></li>
6947
6948  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
6949
6950  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
6951
6952  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
6953
6954  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
6955
6956  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
6957
6958  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
6959
6960  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
6961
6962  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
6963
6964  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (235)</a></li>
6965
6966  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (154)</a></li>
6967
6968  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
6969
6970  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
6971
6972  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
6973
6974  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (66)</a></li>
6975
6976  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
6977
6978  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
6979
6980  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
6981
6982  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (7)</a></li>
6983
6984  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
6985
6986  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
6987
6988  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
6989
6990  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (31)</a></li>
6991
6992  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
6993
6994  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
6995
6996  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
6997
6998  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
6999
7000  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (8)</a></li>
7001
7002  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (19)</a></li>
7003
7004  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
7005
7006  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
7007
7008  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
7009
7010  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
7011
7012  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
7013
7014 </ul>
7015
7016
7017     </div>
7018     <p style="text-align: right">
7019  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
7020 </p>
7021
7022   </body>
7023 </html>