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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged english</title>
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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Legal_to_share_more_than_3000_movies_listed_on_IMDB_.html">Legal to share more than 3000 movies listed on IMDB?</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         18th November 2017
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>A month ago, I blogged about my work to
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Locating_IMDB_IDs_of_movies_in_the_Internet_Archive_using_Wikidata.html">automatically
  33 check the copyright status of IMDB entries</a>, and try to count the
  34 number of movies listed in IMDB that is legal to distribute on the
  35 Internet.  I have continued to look for good data sources, and
  36 identified a few more.  The code used to extract information from
  37 various data sources is available in
  38 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/public-domain-free-imdb">a
  39 git repository</a>, currently available from github.</p>
  40
  41 <p>So far I have identified 3186 unique IMDB title IDs.  To gain
  42 better understanding of the structure of the data set, I created a
  43 histogram of the year associated with each movie (typically release
  44 year).  It is interesting to notice where the peaks and dips in the
  45 graph are located.  I wonder why they are placed there.  I suspect
  46 World War II caused the dip around 1940, but what caused the peak
  47 around 2010?</p>
  48
  49 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-11-18-verk-i-det-fri-filmer.png" /></p>
  50
  51 <p>I've so far identified ten sources for IMDB title IDs for movies in
  52 the public domain or with a free license.  This is the statistics
  53 reported when running 'make stats' in the git repository:</p>
  54
  55 <pre>
  56   249 entries (    6 unique) with and   288 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-archive-org-butter.json
  57  2301 entries (  540 unique) with and     0 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-archive-org-wikidata.json
  58   830 entries (   29 unique) with and     0 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-icheckmovies-archive-mochard.json
  59  2109 entries (  377 unique) with and     0 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-imdb-pd.json
  60   291 entries (  122 unique) with and     0 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-letterboxd-pd.json
  61   144 entries (  135 unique) with and     0 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-manual.json
  62   350 entries (    1 unique) with and   801 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-publicdomainmovies.json
  63     4 entries (    0 unique) with and   124 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-publicdomainreview.json
  64   698 entries (  119 unique) with and   118 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-publicdomaintorrents.json
  65     8 entries (    8 unique) with and   196 without IMDB title ID in free-movies-vodo.json
  66  3186 unique IMDB title IDs in total
  67 </pre>
  68
  69 <p>The entries without IMDB title ID are candidates to increase the
  70 data set, but might equally well be duplicates of entries already
  71 listed with IMDB title ID in one of the other sources, or represent
  72 movies that lack a IMDB title ID.  I've seen examples of all these
  73 situations when peeking at the entries without IMDB title ID.  Based
  74 on these data sources, the lower bound for movies listed in IMDB that
  75 are legal to distribute on the Internet is between 3186 and 4713.
  76
  77 <p>It would be great for improving the accuracy of this measurement,
  78 if the various sources added IMDB title ID to their metadata.  I have
  79 tried to reach the people behind the various sources to ask if they
  80 are interested in doing this, without any replies so far.  Perhaps you
  81 can help me get in touch with the people behind VODO, Public Domain
  82 Torrents, Public Domain Movies and Public Domain Review to try to
  83 convince them to add more metadata to their movie entries?</p>
  84
  85 <p>Another way you could help is by adding pages to Wikipedia about
  86 movies that are legal to distribute on the Internet.  If such page
  87 exist and include a link to both IMDB and The Internet Archive, the
  88 script used to generate free-movies-archive-org-wikidata.json should
  89 pick up the mapping as soon as wikidata is updates.</p>
  90
  91       </div>
  92       <div class="tags">
  93
  94
  95         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
  96
  97
  98       </div>
  99     </div>
 100     <div class="padding"></div>
 101
 102     <div class="entry">
 103       <div class="title">
 104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_fault_tolerant_storage_systems.html">Some notes on fault tolerant storage systems</a>
 105       </div>
 106       <div class="date">
 107          1st November 2017
 108       </div>
 109       <div class="body">
 110         <p>If you care about how fault tolerant your storage is, you might
 111 find these articles and papers interesting.  They have formed how I
 112 think of when designing a storage system.</p>
 113
 114 <ul>
 115
 116 <li>USENIX :login; <a
 117 href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2017/ganesan">Redundancy
 118 Does Not Imply Fault Tolerance.  Analysis of Distributed Storage
 119 Reactions to Single Errors and Corruptions</a> by Aishwarya Ganesan,
 120 Ramnatthan Alagappan, Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau, and Remzi
 121 H. Arpaci-Dusseau</li>
 122
 123 <li>ZDNet
 124 <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/">Why
 125 RAID 5 stops working in 2009</a> by Robin Harris</li>
 126
 127 <li>ZDNet
 128 <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/">Why
 129 RAID 6 stops working in 2019</a> by Robin Harris</li>
 130
 131 <li>USENIX FAST'07
 132 <a href="http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf">Failure
 133 Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population</a> by Eduardo Pinheiro,
 134 Wolf-Dietrich Weber and Luiz André Barroso</li>
 135
 136 <li>USENIX ;login: <a
 137 href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/hughes12-04.pdf">Data
 138 Integrity.  Finding Truth in a World of Guesses and Lies</a> by Doug
 139 Hughes</li>
 140
 141 <li>USENIX FAST'08
 142 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/events/fast08/tech/full_papers/bairavasundaram/bairavasundaram_html/">An
 143 Analysis of Data Corruption in the Storage Stack</a> by
 144 L. N. Bairavasundaram, G. R. Goodson, B. Schroeder, A. C.
 145 Arpaci-Dusseau, and R. H. Arpaci-Dusseau</li>
 146
 147 <li>USENIX FAST'07 <a
 148 href="https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast07/tech/schroeder/schroeder_html/">Disk
 149 failures in the real world: what does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean
 150 to you?</a> by B. Schroeder and G. A. Gibson.</li>
 151
 152 <li>USENIX ;login: <a
 153 href="https://www.usenix.org/events/fast08/tech/full_papers/jiang/jiang_html/">Are
 154 Disks the Dominant Contributor for Storage Failures?  A Comprehensive
 155 Study of Storage Subsystem Failure Characteristics</a> by Weihang
 156 Jiang, Chongfeng Hu, Yuanyuan Zhou, and Arkady Kanevsky</li>
 157
 158 <li>SIGMETRICS 2007
 159 <a href="http://research.cs.wisc.edu/adsl/Publications/latent-sigmetrics07.pdf">An
 160 analysis of latent sector errors in disk drives</a> by
 161 L. N. Bairavasundaram, G. R. Goodson, S. Pasupathy, and J. Schindler</li>
 162
 163 </ul>
 164
 165 <p>Several of these research papers are based on data collected from
 166 hundred thousands or millions of disk, and their findings are eye
 167 opening.  The short story is simply do not implicitly trust RAID or
 168 redundant storage systems.  Details matter.  And unfortunately there
 169 are few options on Linux addressing all the identified issues.  Both
 170 ZFS and Btrfs are doing a fairly good job, but have legal and
 171 practical issues on their own.  I wonder how cluster file systems like
 172 Ceph do in this regard.  After all, there is an old saying, you know
 173 you have a distributed system when the crash of a computer you have
 174 never heard of stops you from getting any work done.  The same holds
 175 true if fault tolerance do not work.</p>
 176
 177 <p>Just remember, in the end, it do not matter how redundant, or how
 178 fault tolerant your storage is, if you do not continuously monitor its
 179 status to detect and replace failed disks.</p>
 180
 181       </div>
 182       <div class="tags">
 183
 184
 185         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
 186
 187
 188       </div>
 189     </div>
 190     <div class="padding"></div>
 191
 192     <div class="entry">
 193       <div class="title">
 194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_services_for_writing_academic_LaTeX_papers_as_a_team.html">Web services for writing academic LaTeX papers as a team</a>
 195       </div>
 196       <div class="date">
 197         31st October 2017
 198       </div>
 199       <div class="body">
 200         <p>I was surprised today to learn that a friend in academia did not
 201 know there are easily available web services available for writing
 202 LaTeX documents as a team.  I thought it was common knowledge, but to
 203 make sure at least my readers are aware of it, I would like to mention
 204 these useful services for writing LaTeX documents.  Some of them even
 205 provide a WYSIWYG editor to ease writing even further.</p>
 206
 207 <p>There are two commercial services available,
 208 <a href="https://sharelatex.com">ShareLaTeX</a> and
 209 <a href="https://overleaf.com">Overleaf</a>.  They are very easy to
 210 use.  Just start a new document, select which publisher to write for
 211 (ie which LaTeX style to use), and start writing.  Note, these two
 212 have announced their intention to join forces, so soon it will only be
 213 one joint service.  I've used both for different documents, and they
 214 work just fine.  While
 215 <a href="https://github.com/sharelatex/sharelatex">ShareLaTeX is free
 216 software</a>, while the latter is not.  According to <a
 217 href="https://www.overleaf.com/help/17-is-overleaf-open-source">a
 218 announcement from Overleaf</a>, they plan to keep the ShareLaTeX code
 219 base maintained as free software.</p>
 220
 221 But these two are not the only alternatives.
 222 <a href="https://app.fiduswriter.org/">Fidus Writer</a> is another free
 223 software solution with <a href="https://github.com/fiduswriter">the
 224 source available on github</a>.  I have not used it myself.  Several
 225 others can be found on the nice
 226 <a href="https://alternativeto.net/software/sharelatex/">alterntiveTo
 227 web service</a>.
 228
 229 <p>If you like Google Docs or Etherpad, but would like to write
 230 documents in LaTeX, you should check out these services.  You can even
 231 host your own, if you want to. :)</p>
 232
 233
 234       </div>
 235       <div class="tags">
 236
 237
 238         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 239
 240
 241       </div>
 242     </div>
 243     <div class="padding"></div>
 244
 245     <div class="entry">
 246       <div class="title">
 247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Locating_IMDB_IDs_of_movies_in_the_Internet_Archive_using_Wikidata.html">Locating IMDB IDs of movies in the Internet Archive using Wikidata</a>
 248       </div>
 249       <div class="date">
 250         25th October 2017
 251       </div>
 252       <div class="body">
 253         <p>Recently, I needed to automatically check the copyright status of a
 254 set of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/">The Internet Movie database
 255 (IMDB)</a> entries, to figure out which one of the movies they refer
 256 to can be freely distributed on the Internet.  This proved to be
 257 harder than it sounds.  IMDB for sure list movies without any
 258 copyright protection, where the copyright protection has expired or
 259 where the movie is lisenced using a permissive license like one from
 260 Creative Commons.  These are mixed with copyright protected movies,
 261 and there seem to be no way to separate these classes of movies using
 262 the information in IMDB.</p>
 263
 264 <p>First I tried to look up entries manually in IMDB,
 265 <a href="https://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> and
 266 <a href="https://www.archive.org/">The Internet Archive</a>, to get a
 267 feel how to do this.  It is hard to know for sure using these sources,
 268 but it should be possible to be reasonable confident a movie is "out
 269 of copyright" with a few hours work per movie.  As I needed to check
 270 almost 20,000 entries, this approach was not sustainable.  I simply
 271 can not work around the clock for about 6 years to check this data
 272 set.</p>
 273
 274 <p>I asked the people behind The Internet Archive if they could
 275 introduce a new metadata field in their metadata XML for IMDB ID, but
 276 was told that they leave it completely to the uploaders to update the
 277 metadata.  Some of the metadata entries had IMDB links in the
 278 description, but I found no way to download all metadata files in bulk
 279 to locate those ones and put that approach aside.</p>
 280
 281 <p>In the process I noticed several Wikipedia articles about movies
 282 had links to both IMDB and The Internet Archive, and it occured to me
 283 that I could use the Wikipedia RDF data set to locate entries with
 284 both, to at least get a lower bound on the number of movies on The
 285 Internet Archive with a IMDB ID.  This is useful based on the
 286 assumption that movies distributed by The Internet Archive can be
 287 legally distributed on the Internet.  With some help from the RDF
 288 community (thank you DanC), I was able to come up with this query to
 289 pass to <a href="https://query.wikidata.org/">the SPARQL interface on
 290 Wikidata</a>:
 291
 292 <p><pre>
 293 SELECT ?work ?imdb ?ia ?when ?label
 294 WHERE
 295 {
 296   ?work wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q11424.
 297   ?work wdt:P345 ?imdb.
 298   ?work wdt:P724 ?ia.
 299   OPTIONAL {
 300         ?work wdt:P577 ?when.
 301         ?work rdfs:label ?label.
 302         FILTER(LANG(?label) = "en").
 303   }
 304 }
 305 </pre></p>
 306
 307 <p>If I understand the query right, for every film entry anywhere in
 308 Wikpedia, it will return the IMDB ID and The Internet Archive ID, and
 309 when the movie was released and its English title, if either or both
 310 of the latter two are available.  At the moment the result set contain
 311 2338 entries.  Of course, it depend on volunteers including both
 312 correct IMDB and The Internet Archive IDs in the wikipedia articles
 313 for the movie.  It should be noted that the result will include
 314 duplicates if the movie have entries in several languages.  There are
 315 some bogus entries, either because The Internet Archive ID contain a
 316 typo or because the movie is not available from The Internet Archive.
 317 I did not verify the IMDB IDs, as I am unsure how to do that
 318 automatically.</p>
 319
 320 <p>I wrote a small python script to extract the data set from Wikidata
 321 and check if the XML metadata for the movie is available from The
 322 Internet Archive, and after around 1.5 hour it produced a list of 2097
 323 free movies and their IMDB ID.  In total, 171 entries in Wikidata lack
 324 the refered Internet Archive entry.  I assume the 70 "disappearing"
 325 entries (ie 2338-2097-171) are duplicate entries.</p>
 326
 327 <p>This is not too bad, given that The Internet Archive report to
 328 contain <a href="https://archive.org/details/feature_films">5331
 329 feature films</a> at the moment, but it also mean more than 3000
 330 movies are missing on Wikipedia or are missing the pair of references
 331 on Wikipedia.</p>
 332
 333 <p>I was curious about the distribution by release year, and made a
 334 little graph to show how the amount of free movies is spread over the
 335 years:<p>
 336
 337 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-10-25-verk-i-det-fri-filmer.png"></p>
 338
 339 <p>I expect the relative distribution of the remaining 3000 movies to
 340 be similar.</p>
 341
 342 <p>If you want to help, and want to ensure Wikipedia can be used to
 343 cross reference The Internet Archive and The Internet Movie Database,
 344 please make sure entries like this are listed under the "External
 345 links" heading on the Wikipedia article for the movie:</p>
 346
 347 <p><pre>
 348 * {{Internet Archive film|id=FightingLady}}
 349 * {{IMDb title|id=0036823|title=The Fighting Lady}}
 350 </pre></p>
 351
 352 <p>Please verify the links on the final page, to make sure you did not
 353 introduce a typo.</p>
 354
 355 <p>Here is the complete list, if you want to correct the 171
 356 identified Wikipedia entries with broken links to The Internet
 357 Archive: <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1140317">Q1140317</a>,
 358 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q458656">Q458656</a>,
 359 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q458656">Q458656</a>,
 360 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q470560">Q470560</a>,
 361 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q743340">Q743340</a>,
 362 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q822580">Q822580</a>,
 363 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q480696">Q480696</a>,
 364 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q128761">Q128761</a>,
 365 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1307059">Q1307059</a>,
 366 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1335091">Q1335091</a>,
 367 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1537166">Q1537166</a>,
 368 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1438334">Q1438334</a>,
 369 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1479751">Q1479751</a>,
 370 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1497200">Q1497200</a>,
 371 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1498122">Q1498122</a>,
 372 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q865973">Q865973</a>,
 373 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q834269">Q834269</a>,
 374 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q841781">Q841781</a>,
 375 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q841781">Q841781</a>,
 376 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1548193">Q1548193</a>,
 377 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q499031">Q499031</a>,
 378 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1564769">Q1564769</a>,
 379 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1585239">Q1585239</a>,
 380 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1585569">Q1585569</a>,
 381 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1624236">Q1624236</a>,
 382 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4796595">Q4796595</a>,
 383 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4853469">Q4853469</a>,
 384 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4873046">Q4873046</a>,
 385 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q915016">Q915016</a>,
 386 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4660396">Q4660396</a>,
 387 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4677708">Q4677708</a>,
 388 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4738449">Q4738449</a>,
 389 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4756096">Q4756096</a>,
 390 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4766785">Q4766785</a>,
 391 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q880357">Q880357</a>,
 392 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q882066">Q882066</a>,
 393 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q882066">Q882066</a>,
 394 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q204191">Q204191</a>,
 395 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q204191">Q204191</a>,
 396 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1194170">Q1194170</a>,
 397 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q940014">Q940014</a>,
 398 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q946863">Q946863</a>,
 399 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q172837">Q172837</a>,
 400 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q573077">Q573077</a>,
 401 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1219005">Q1219005</a>,
 402 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1219599">Q1219599</a>,
 403 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1643798">Q1643798</a>,
 404 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1656352">Q1656352</a>,
 405 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1659549">Q1659549</a>,
 406 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1660007">Q1660007</a>,
 407 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1698154">Q1698154</a>,
 408 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1737980">Q1737980</a>,
 409 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1877284">Q1877284</a>,
 410 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1199354">Q1199354</a>,
 411 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1199354">Q1199354</a>,
 412 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1199451">Q1199451</a>,
 413 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1211871">Q1211871</a>,
 414 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1212179">Q1212179</a>,
 415 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1238382">Q1238382</a>,
 416 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4906454">Q4906454</a>,
 417 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q320219">Q320219</a>,
 418 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1148649">Q1148649</a>,
 419 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q645094">Q645094</a>,
 420 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5050350">Q5050350</a>,
 421 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5166548">Q5166548</a>,
 422 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2677926">Q2677926</a>,
 423 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2698139">Q2698139</a>,
 424 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2707305">Q2707305</a>,
 425 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2740725">Q2740725</a>,
 426 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2024780">Q2024780</a>,
 427 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2117418">Q2117418</a>,
 428 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2138984">Q2138984</a>,
 429 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1127992">Q1127992</a>,
 430 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1058087">Q1058087</a>,
 431 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1070484">Q1070484</a>,
 432 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1080080">Q1080080</a>,
 433 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1090813">Q1090813</a>,
 434 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1251918">Q1251918</a>,
 435 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1254110">Q1254110</a>,
 436 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1257070">Q1257070</a>,
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 528
 529       </div>
 530       <div class="tags">
 531
 532
 533         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 534
 535
 536       </div>
 537     </div>
 538     <div class="padding"></div>
 539
 540     <div class="entry">
 541       <div class="title">
 542         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_one_way_wall_on_the_border_.html">A one-way wall on the border?</a>
 543       </div>
 544       <div class="date">
 545         14th October 2017
 546       </div>
 547       <div class="body">
 548         <p>I find it fascinating how many of the people being locked inside
 549 the proposed border wall between USA and Mexico support the idea.  The
 550 proposal to keep Mexicans out reminds me of
 551 <a href="http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-berlin-wall">the
 552 propaganda twist from the East Germany government</a> calling the wall
 553 the “Antifascist Bulwark” after erecting the Berlin Wall, claiming
 554 that the wall was erected to keep enemies from creeping into East
 555 Germany, while it was obvious to the people locked inside it that it
 556 was erected to keep the people from escaping.</p>
 557
 558 <p>Do the people in USA supporting this wall really believe it is a
 559 one way wall, only keeping people on the outside from getting in,
 560 while not keeping people in the inside from getting out?</p>
 561
 562       </div>
 563       <div class="tags">
 564
 565
 566         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 567
 568
 569       </div>
 570     </div>
 571     <div class="padding"></div>
 572
 573     <div class="entry">
 574       <div class="title">
 575         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
 576       </div>
 577       <div class="date">
 578          9th October 2017
 579       </div>
 580       <div class="body">
 581         <p>At my nearby maker space,
 582 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
 583 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
 584 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
 585 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
 586 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
 587 as the software involved,
 588 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
 589 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
 590 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
 591 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
 592 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
 593 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
 594 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
 595
 596 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
 597 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
 598 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
 599 on
 600 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 601 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
 602
 603 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
 604 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
 605 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
 606 upstream version.</p>
 607
 608 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
 609 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
 610 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
 611 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
 612 Debian, check out
 613 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
 614 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
 615 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
 616
 617       </div>
 618       <div class="tags">
 619
 620
 621         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>.
 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/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
 631       </div>
 632       <div class="date">
 633         29th September 2017
 634       </div>
 635       <div class="body">
 636         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
 637 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
 638 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
 639 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
 640 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
 641 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
 642 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
 643 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
 644 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
 645 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
 646 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
 647 listen.</p>
 648
 649 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
 650 visualizing this information up and running for
 651 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
 652 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
 653 library.  The solution is based on the
 654 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
 655 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
 656 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
 657 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
 658 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
 659 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
 660 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
 661 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
 662
 663 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
 664 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
 665 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
 666 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
 667 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
 668 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
 669 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
 670 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
 671
 672 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
 673 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
 674 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
 675 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
 676 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
 677 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
 678 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
 679 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
 680 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
 681 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
 682 mentioned in
 683 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
 684 issue for the topic</a>.
 685
 686 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
 687
 688       </div>
 689       <div class="tags">
 690
 691
 692         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 693
 694
 695       </div>
 696     </div>
 697     <div class="padding"></div>
 698
 699     <div class="entry">
 700       <div class="title">
 701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
 702       </div>
 703       <div class="date">
 704         24th September 2017
 705       </div>
 706       <div class="body">
 707         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
 708 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
 709 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
 710 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
 711 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
 712 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
 713 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
 714 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
 715 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
 716
 717 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
 718 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
 719 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
 720 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
 721
 722 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
 723 clone of two python scripts:</p>
 724
 725 <ol>
 726
 727 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
 728   testing).</li>
 729
 730 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
 731   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
 732
 733 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
 734   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
 735
 736 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
 737
 738 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 739   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
 740   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
 741
 742 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 743   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
 744
 745 </ol>
 746
 747 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
 748 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
 749 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
 750 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
 751 very cheaply
 752 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
 753 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
 754 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
 755
 756 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
 757 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
 758 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
 759 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
 760 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
 761 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
 762 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
 763 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
 764
 765 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
 766 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
 767 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
 768 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
 769 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
 770 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
 771 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
 772 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
 773 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
 774 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
 775 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
 776 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
 777
 778       </div>
 779       <div class="tags">
 780
 781
 782         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 783
 784
 785       </div>
 786     </div>
 787     <div class="padding"></div>
 788
 789     <div class="entry">
 790       <div class="title">
 791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
 792       </div>
 793       <div class="date">
 794          9th August 2017
 795       </div>
 796       <div class="body">
 797         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
 798 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
 799 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
 800 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
 801 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
 802 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
 803 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
 804
 805 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
 806 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
 807 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
 808 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
 809 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
 810 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
 811 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
 812 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
 813 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
 814 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
 815 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
 816 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
 817 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
 818
 819 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
 820 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
 821 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
 822 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
 823 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
 824 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
 825 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
 826 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
 827 collector for a few days now.</p>
 828
 829 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
 830
 831 <ol>
 832
 833 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
 834
 835 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
 836 <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
 837
 838 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
 839
 840 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
 841 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
 842 found a GSM station).</li>
 843
 844 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
 845
 846 </ol>
 847
 848 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
 849 running, I decided to package
 850 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
 851 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
 852 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
 853 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
 854 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
 855
 856 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
 857 commercial tools like
 858 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
 859 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
 860 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
 861 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
 862 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
 863 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
 864 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
 865 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
 866 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
 867 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
 868 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
 869 of government officials...</p>
 870
 871 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
 872 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
 873 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
 874 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
 875 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
 876 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
 877 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
 878 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
 879 one frequency?</p>
 880
 881       </div>
 882       <div class="tags">
 883
 884
 885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 886
 887
 888       </div>
 889     </div>
 890     <div class="padding"></div>
 891
 892     <div class="entry">
 893       <div class="title">
 894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
 895       </div>
 896       <div class="date">
 897         25th July 2017
 898       </div>
 899       <div class="body">
 900         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
 901
 902 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
 903 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
 904 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
 905 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
 906 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
 907 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
 908 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
 909 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
 910 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
 911 as a web page</a>.</p>
 912
 913 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
 914 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
 915 in
 916 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
 917 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
 918 and
 919 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
 920 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
 921 project.  I hope
 922 "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
 923 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
 924
 925       </div>
 926       <div class="tags">
 927
 928
 929         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 930
 931
 932       </div>
 933     </div>
 934     <div class="padding"></div>
 935
 936     <div class="entry">
 937       <div class="title">
 938         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_sales_number_for_my_Free_Culture_paper_editions.html">Updated sales number for my Free Culture paper editions</a>
 939       </div>
 940       <div class="date">
 941         12th June 2017
 942       </div>
 943       <div class="body">
 944         <p>It is pleasing to see that the work we put down in publishing new
 945 editions of the classic <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free
 946 Culture book</a> by the founder of the Creative Commons movement,
 947 Lawrence Lessig, is still being appreciated.  I had a look at the
 948 latest sales numbers for the paper edition today.  Not too impressive,
 949 but happy to see some buyers still exist.  All the revenue from the
 950 books is sent to the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative
 951 Commons Corporation</a>, and they receive the largest cut if you buy
 952 directly from Lulu.  Most books are sold via Amazon, with Ingram
 953 second and only a small fraction directly from Lulu.  The ebook
 954 edition is available for free from
 955 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
 956
 957 <table border="0">
 958 <tr><th rowspan="2" valign="bottom">Title / language</th><th colspan="3">Quantity</th></tr>
 959 <tr><th>2016 jan-jun</th><th>2016 jul-dec</th><th>2017 jan-may</th></tr>
 960
 961 <tr>
 962   <td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td>
 963   <td align="right">3</td>
 964   <td align="right">6</td>
 965   <td align="right">15</td>
 966 </tr>
 967
 968 <tr>
 969   <td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td>
 970   <td align="right">7</td>
 971   <td align="right">1</td>
 972   <td align="right">0</td>
 973 </tr>
 974
 975 <tr>
 976   <td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td>
 977   <td align="right">14</td>
 978   <td align="right">27</td>
 979   <td align="right">16</td>
 980 </tr>
 981
 982 <tr>
 983   <td>Total</td>
 984   <td align="right">24</td>
 985   <td align="right">34</td>
 986   <td align="right">31</td>
 987 </tr>
 988
 989 </table>
 990
 991 <p>A bit sad to see the low sales number on the Norwegian edition, and
 992 a bit surprising the English edition still selling so well.</p>
 993
 994 <p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
 995 language, I would be happy to help make it happen.  Please get in
 996 touch.</p>
 997
 998       </div>
 999       <div class="tags">
1000
1001
1002         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1003
1004
1005       </div>
1006     </div>
1007     <div class="padding"></div>
1008
1009     <div class="entry">
1010       <div class="title">
1011         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Release_0_1_1_of_free_software_archive_system_Nikita_announced.html">Release 0.1.1 of free software archive system Nikita announced</a>
1012       </div>
1013       <div class="date">
1014         10th June 2017
1015       </div>
1016       <div class="body">
1017         <p>I am very happy to report that the
1018 <a href="https://github.com/hiOA-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">Nikita Noark 5
1019 core project</a> tagged its second release today.  The free software
1020 solution is an implementation of the Norwegian archive standard Noark
1021 5 used by government offices in Norway.  These were the changes in
1022 version 0.1.1 since version 0.1.0 (from NEWS.md):
1023
1024 <ul>
1025
1026  <li>Continued work on the angularjs GUI, including document upload.</li>
1027  <li>Implemented correspondencepartPerson, correspondencepartUnit and
1028    correspondencepartInternal</li>
1029  <li>Applied for coverity coverage and started submitting code on
1030    regualr basis.</li>
1031  <li>Started fixing bugs reported by coverity</li>
1032  <li>Corrected and completed HATEOAS links to make sure entire API is
1033    available via URLs in _links.</li>
1034  <li>Corrected all relation URLs to use trailing slash.</li>
1035  <li>Add initial support for storing data in ElasticSearch.</li>
1036  <li>Now able to receive and store uploaded files in the archive.</li>
1037  <li>Changed JSON output for object lists to have relations in _links.</li>
1038  <li>Improve JSON output for empty object lists.</li>
1039  <li>Now uses correct MIME type application/vnd.noark5-v4+json.</li>
1040  <li>Added support for docker container images.</li>
1041  <li>Added simple API browser implemented in JavaScript/Angular.</li>
1042  <li>Started on archive client implemented in JavaScript/Angular.</li>
1043  <li>Started on prototype to show the public mail journal.</li>
1044  <li>Improved performance by disabling Sprint FileWatcher.</li>
1045  <li>Added support for 'arkivskaper', 'saksmappe' and 'journalpost'.</li>
1046  <li>Added support for some metadata codelists.</li>
1047  <li>Added support for Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS).</li>
1048  <li>Changed login method from Basic Auth to JSON Web Token (RFC 7519)
1049    style.</li>
1050  <li>Added support for GET-ing ny-* URLs.</li>
1051  <li>Added support for modifying entities using PUT and eTag.</li>
1052  <li>Added support for returning XML output on request.</li>
1053  <li>Removed support for English field and class names, limiting ourself
1054    to the official names.</li>
1055  <li>...</li>
1056
1057 </ul>
1058
1059 <p>If this sound interesting to you, please contact us on IRC (#nikita
1060 on irc.freenode.net) or email
1061 (<a href="https://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/nikita-noark">nikita-noark
1062 mailing list).</p>
1063
1064       </div>
1065       <div class="tags">
1066
1067
1068         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1069
1070
1071       </div>
1072     </div>
1073     <div class="padding"></div>
1074
1075     <div class="entry">
1076       <div class="title">
1077         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_trusted_timestamps_in_a_Noark_5_archive.html">Idea for storing trusted timestamps in a Noark 5 archive</a>
1078       </div>
1079       <div class="date">
1080          7th June 2017
1081       </div>
1082       <div class="body">
1083         <p><em>This is a copy of
1084 <a href="https://lists.nuug.no/pipermail/nikita-noark/2017-June/000297.html">an
1085 email I posted to the nikita-noark mailing list</a>.  Please follow up
1086 there if you would like to discuss this topic.  The background is that
1087 we are making a free software archive system based on the Norwegian
1088 <a href="https://www.arkivverket.no/forvaltning-og-utvikling/regelverk-og-standarder/noark-standarden">Noark
1089 5 standard</a> for government archives.</em></p>
1090
1091 <p>I've been wondering a bit lately how trusted timestamps could be
1092 stored in Noark 5.
1093 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">Trusted
1094 timestamps</a> can be used to verify that some information
1095 (document/file/checksum/metadata) have not been changed since a
1096 specific time in the past.  This is useful to verify the integrity of
1097 the documents in the archive.</p>
1098
1099 <p>Then it occured to me, perhaps the trusted timestamps could be
1100 stored as dokument variants (ie dokumentobjekt referered to from
1101 dokumentbeskrivelse) with the filename set to the hash it is
1102 stamping?</p>
1103
1104 <p>Given a "dokumentbeskrivelse" with an associated "dokumentobjekt",
1105 a new dokumentobjekt is associated with "dokumentbeskrivelse" with the
1106 same attributes as the stamped dokumentobjekt except these
1107 attributes:</p>
1108
1109 <ul>
1110
1111 <li>format -> "RFC3161"
1112 <li>mimeType -> "application/timestamp-reply"
1113 <li>formatDetaljer -> "&lt;source URL for timestamp service&gt;"
1114 <li>filenavn -> "&lt;sjekksum&gt;.tsr"
1115
1116 </ul>
1117
1118 <p>This assume a service following
1119 <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">IETF RFC 3161</a> is
1120 used, which specifiy the given MIME type for replies and the .tsr file
1121 ending for the content of such trusted timestamp.  As far as I can
1122 tell from the Noark 5 specifications, it is OK to have several
1123 variants/renderings of a dokument attached to a given
1124 dokumentbeskrivelse objekt.  It might be stretching it a bit to make
1125 some of these variants represent crypto-signatures useful for
1126 verifying the document integrity instead of representing the dokument
1127 itself.</p>
1128
1129 <p>Using the source of the service in formatDetaljer allow several
1130 timestamping services to be used.  This is useful to spread the risk
1131 of key compromise over several organisations.  It would only be a
1132 problem to trust the timestamps if all of the organisations are
1133 compromised.</p>
1134
1135 <p>The following oneliner on Linux can be used to generate the tsr
1136 file.  $input is the path to the file to checksum, and $sha256 is the
1137 SHA-256 checksum of the file (ie the "<sjekksum>.tsr" value mentioned
1138 above).</p>
1139
1140 <p><blockquote><pre>
1141 openssl ts -query -data "$inputfile" -cert -sha256 -no_nonce \
1142   | curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/timestamp-query" \
1143       --data-binary "@-" http://zeitstempel.dfn.de > $sha256.tsr
1144 </pre></blockquote></p>
1145
1146 <p>To verify the timestamp, you first need to download the public key
1147 of the trusted timestamp service, for example using this command:</p>
1148
1149 <p><blockquote><pre>
1150 wget -O ca-cert.txt \
1151   https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt
1152 </pre></blockquote></p>
1153
1154 <p>Note, the public key should be stored alongside the timestamps in
1155 the archive to make sure it is also available 100 years from now.  It
1156 is probably a good idea to standardise how and were to store such
1157 public keys, to make it easier to find for those trying to verify
1158 documents 100 or 1000 years from now. :)</p>
1159
1160 <p>The verification itself is a simple openssl command:</p>
1161
1162 <p><blockquote><pre>
1163 openssl ts -verify -data $inputfile -in $sha256.tsr \
1164   -CAfile ca-cert.txt -text
1165 </pre></blockquote></p>
1166
1167 <p>Is there any reason this approach would not work?  Is it somehow against
1168 the Noark 5 specification?</p>
1169
1170       </div>
1171       <div class="tags">
1172
1173
1174         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1175
1176
1177       </div>
1178     </div>
1179     <div class="padding"></div>
1180
1181     <div class="entry">
1182       <div class="title">
1183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_archive_system_Nikita_now_able_to_store_documents.html">Free software archive system Nikita now able to store documents</a>
1184       </div>
1185       <div class="date">
1186         19th March 2017
1187       </div>
1188       <div class="body">
1189         <p>The <a href="https://github.com/hiOA-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">Nikita
1190 Noark 5 core project</a> is implementing the Norwegian standard for
1191 keeping an electronic archive of government documents.
1192 <a href="http://www.arkivverket.no/arkivverket/Offentlig-forvaltning/Noark/Noark-5/English-version">The
1193 Noark 5 standard</a> document the requirement for data systems used by
1194 the archives in the Norwegian government, and the Noark 5 web interface
1195 specification document a REST web service for storing, searching and
1196 retrieving documents and metadata in such archive.  I've been involved
1197 in the project since a few weeks before Christmas, when the Norwegian
1198 Unix User Group
1199 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/NOARK5_kjerne_som_fri_programvare_f_r_epostliste_hos_NUUG.shtml">announced
1200 it supported the project</a>.  I believe this is an important project,
1201 and hope it can make it possible for the government archives in the
1202 future to use free software to keep the archives we citizens depend
1203 on.  But as I do not hold such archive myself, personally my first use
1204 case is to store and analyse public mail journal metadata published
1205 from the government.  I find it useful to have a clear use case in
1206 mind when developing, to make sure the system scratches one of my
1207 itches.</p>
1208
1209 <p>If you would like to help make sure there is a free software
1210 alternatives for the archives, please join our IRC channel
1211 (<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nikita"">#nikita on
1212 irc.freenode.net</a>) and
1213 <a href="https://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/nikita-noark">the
1214 project mailing list</a>.</p>
1215
1216 <p>When I got involved, the web service could store metadata about
1217 documents.  But a few weeks ago, a new milestone was reached when it
1218 became possible to store full text documents too.  Yesterday, I
1219 completed an implementation of a command line tool
1220 <tt>archive-pdf</tt> to upload a PDF file to the archive using this
1221 API.  The tool is very simple at the moment, and find existing
1222 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonds">fonds</a>, series and
1223 files while asking the user to select which one to use if more than
1224 one exist.  Once a file is identified, the PDF is associated with the
1225 file and uploaded, using the title extracted from the PDF itself.  The
1226 process is fairly similar to visiting the archive, opening a cabinet,
1227 locating a file and storing a piece of paper in the archive.  Here is
1228 a test run directly after populating the database with test data using
1229 our API tester:</p>
1230
1231 <p><blockquote><pre>
1232 ~/src//noark5-tester$ ./archive-pdf mangelmelding/mangler.pdf
1233 using arkiv: Title of the test fonds created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1234 using arkivdel: Title of the test series created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1235
1236  0 - Title of the test case file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1237  1 - Title of the test file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1238 Select which mappe you want (or search term): 0
1239 Uploading mangelmelding/mangler.pdf
1240   PDF title: Mangler i spesifikasjonsdokumentet for NOARK 5 Tjenestegrensesnitt
1241   File 2017/1: Title of the test case file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1242 ~/src//noark5-tester$
1243 </pre></blockquote></p>
1244
1245 <p>You can see here how the fonds (arkiv) and serie (arkivdel) only had
1246 one option, while the user need to choose which file (mappe) to use
1247 among the two created by the API tester.  The <tt>archive-pdf</tt>
1248 tool can be found in the git repository for the API tester.</p>
1249
1250 <p>In the project, I have been mostly working on
1251 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester">the API
1252 tester</a> so far, while getting to know the code base.  The API
1253 tester currently use
1254 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS">the HATEOAS links</a>
1255 to traverse the entire exposed service API and verify that the exposed
1256 operations and objects match the specification, as well as trying to
1257 create objects holding metadata and uploading a simple XML file to
1258 store.  The tester has proved very useful for finding flaws in our
1259 implementation, as well as flaws in the reference site and the
1260 specification.</p>
1261
1262 <p>The test document I uploaded is a summary of all the specification
1263 defects we have collected so far while implementing the web service.
1264 There are several unclear and conflicting parts of the specification,
1265 and we have
1266 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester/tree/master/mangelmelding">started
1267 writing down</a> the questions we get from implementing it.  We use a
1268 format inspired by how <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/austin/">The
1269 Austin Group</a> collect defect reports for the POSIX standard with
1270 <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/austin/mantis.html">their
1271 instructions for the MANTIS defect tracker system</a>, in lack of an official way to structure defect reports for Noark 5 (our first submitted defect report was a <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester/blob/master/mangelmelding/sendt/2017-03-15-mangel-prosess.md">request for a procedure for submitting defect reports</a> :).
1272
1273 <p>The Nikita project is implemented using Java and Spring, and is
1274 fairly easy to get up and running using Docker containers for those
1275 that want to test the current code base.  The API tester is
1276 implemented in Python.</p>
1277
1278       </div>
1279       <div class="tags">
1280
1281
1282         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1283
1284
1285       </div>
1286     </div>
1287     <div class="padding"></div>
1288
1289     <div class="entry">
1290       <div class="title">
1291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
1292       </div>
1293       <div class="date">
1294          9th March 2017
1295       </div>
1296       <div class="body">
1297         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
1298 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
1299 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
1300 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
1301 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
1302 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
1303 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
1304 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
1305
1306 <p><blockquote>
1307 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
1308 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
1309 </blockquote></p>
1310
1311 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
1312 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
1313 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
1314 are noticed.</p>
1315
1316 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
1317 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
1318 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
1319 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
1320 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
1321 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
1322
1323 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
1324 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
1325 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
1326 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
1327 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
1328 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
1329
1330 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
1331
1332 <p><blockquote><pre>
1333 [...]
1334 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
1335 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
1336         opts:   rw,vers=3,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,acregmin=3,acregmax=60,acdirmin=30,acdirmax=60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=129.240.3.145,mountvers=3,mountport=4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
1337         age:    7863311
1338         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
1339         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
1340         events: 61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
1341         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
1342         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
1343         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
1344         per-op statistics
1345                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1346              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
1347              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
1348               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
1349               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
1350             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
1351                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
1352                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
1353               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
1354                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
1355              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
1356                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
1357               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
1358                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
1359               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
1360                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
1361              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
1362          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
1363               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
1364               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
1365             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
1366               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1367
1368 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
1369 [...]
1370 </pre></blockquote></p>
1371
1372 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
1373 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
1374 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
1375 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
1376 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
1377 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
1378 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
1379 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
1380 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
1381 mount options.</p>
1382
1383 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
1384 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
1385 But according to
1386 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
1387 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
1388 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
1389 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
1390 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
1391 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
1392
1393 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
1394 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
1395 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
1396 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
1397 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
1398
1399       </div>
1400       <div class="tags">
1401
1402
1403         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/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1404
1405
1406       </div>
1407     </div>
1408     <div class="padding"></div>
1409
1410     <div class="entry">
1411       <div class="title">
1412         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_does_it_feel_to_be_wiretapped__when_you_should_be_doing_the_wiretapping___.html">How does it feel to be wiretapped, when you should be doing the wiretapping...</a>
1413       </div>
1414       <div class="date">
1415          8th March 2017
1416       </div>
1417       <div class="body">
1418         <p>So the new president in the United States of America claim to be
1419 surprised to discover that he was wiretapped during the election
1420 before he was elected president.  He even claim this must be illegal.
1421 Well, doh, if it is one thing the confirmations from Snowden
1422 documented, it is that the entire population in USA is wiretapped, one
1423 way or another.  Of course the president candidates were wiretapped,
1424 alongside the senators, judges and the rest of the people in USA.</p>
1425
1426 <p>Next, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ask the Department of
1427 Justice to go public rejecting the claims that Donald Trump was
1428 wiretapped illegally.  I fail to see the relevance, given that I am
1429 sure the surveillance industry in USA believe they have all the legal
1430 backing they need to conduct mass surveillance on the entire
1431 world.</p>
1432
1433 <p>There is even the director of the FBI stating that he never saw an
1434 order requesting wiretapping of Donald Trump.  That is not very
1435 surprising, given how the FISA court work, with all its activity being
1436 secret.  Perhaps he only heard about it?</p>
1437
1438 <p>What I find most sad in this story is how Norwegian journalists
1439 present it.  In a news reports the other day in the radio from the
1440 Norwegian National broadcasting Company (NRK), I heard the journalist
1441 claim that 'the FBI denies any wiretapping', while the reality is that
1442 'the FBI denies any illegal wiretapping'.  There is a fundamental and
1443 important difference, and it make me sad that the journalists are
1444 unable to grasp it.</p>
1445
1446 <p><strong>Update 2017-03-13:</strong> Look like
1447 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/03/13/rand-paul-is-right-nsa-routinely-monitors-americans-communications-without-warrants/">The
1448 Intercept report that US Senator Rand Paul confirm what I state above</a>.</p>
1449
1450       </div>
1451       <div class="tags">
1452
1453
1454         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1455
1456
1457       </div>
1458     </div>
1459     <div class="padding"></div>
1460
1461     <div class="entry">
1462       <div class="title">
1463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
1464       </div>
1465       <div class="date">
1466          3rd March 2017
1467       </div>
1468       <div class="body">
1469         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
1470 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
1471 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
1472 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
1473 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
1474 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
1475 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
1476 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
1477 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
1478
1479 <p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
1480
1481 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
1482 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
1483 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
1484 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
1485 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
1486 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
1487 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
1488 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
1489
1490       </div>
1491       <div class="tags">
1492
1493
1494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1495
1496
1497       </div>
1498     </div>
1499     <div class="padding"></div>
1500
1501     <div class="entry">
1502       <div class="title">
1503         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
1504       </div>
1505       <div class="date">
1506          1st March 2017
1507       </div>
1508       <div class="body">
1509         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
1510 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
1511 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
1512 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
1513 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
1514 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
1515 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
1516 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
1517 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
1518 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
1519 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1520
1521 <blockquote><pre>
1522 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1523   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1524   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1525      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1526      sleep 1; \
1527   done
1528 300
1529 0+1 oppføringer inn
1530 0+1 oppføringer ut
1531 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
1532 4
1533 8
1534 12
1535 17
1536 21
1537 %
1538 </pre></blockquote>
1539
1540 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
1541 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
1542 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
1543 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1544
1545 <blockquote><pre>
1546 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1547   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1548   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1549      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1550      sleep 1; \
1551   done
1552 1079
1553 0+1 oppføringer inn
1554 0+1 oppføringer ut
1555 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
1556 433
1557 1028
1558 1031
1559 1035
1560 1038
1561 %
1562 </pre></blockquote>
1563
1564 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
1565 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
1566
1567 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
1568 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
1569 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
1570 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
1571 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
1572 post.</p>
1573
1574       </div>
1575       <div class="tags">
1576
1577
1578         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>.
1579
1580
1581       </div>
1582     </div>
1583     <div class="padding"></div>
1584
1585     <div class="entry">
1586       <div class="title">
1587         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detect_OOXML_files_with_undefined_behaviour_.html">Detect OOXML files with undefined behaviour?</a>
1588       </div>
1589       <div class="date">
1590         21st February 2017
1591       </div>
1592       <div class="body">
1593         <p>I just noticed
1594 <a href="http://www.arkivrad.no/aktuelt/riksarkivarens-forskrift-pa-horing">the
1595 new Norwegian proposal for archiving rules in the goverment</a> list
1596 <a href="http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm">ECMA-376</a>
1597 / ISO/IEC 29500 (aka OOXML) as valid formats to put in long term
1598 storage.  Luckily such files will only be accepted based on
1599 pre-approval from the National Archive.  Allowing OOXML files to be
1600 used for long term storage might seem like a good idea as long as we
1601 forget that there are plenty of ways for a "valid" OOXML document to
1602 have content with no defined interpretation in the standard, which
1603 lead to a question and an idea.</p>
1604
1605 <p>Is there any tool to detect if a OOXML document depend on such
1606 undefined behaviour?  It would be useful for the National Archive (and
1607 anyone else interested in verifying that a document is well defined)
1608 to have such tool available when considering to approve the use of
1609 OOXML.  I'm aware of the
1610 <a href="https://github.com/arlm/officeotron/">officeotron OOXML
1611 validator</a>, but do not know how complete it is nor if it will
1612 report use of undefined behaviour.  Are there other similar tools
1613 available?  Please send me an email if you know of any such tool.</p>
1614
1615       </div>
1616       <div class="tags">
1617
1618
1619         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1620
1621
1622       </div>
1623     </div>
1624     <div class="padding"></div>
1625
1626     <div class="entry">
1627       <div class="title">
1628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ruling_ignored_our_objections_to_the_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no___domstolkontroll_.html">Ruling ignored our objections to the seizure of popcorn-time.no (#domstolkontroll)</a>
1629       </div>
1630       <div class="date">
1631         13th February 2017
1632       </div>
1633       <div class="body">
1634         <p>A few days ago, we received the ruling from
1635 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html">my
1636 day in court</a>.  The case in question is a challenge of the seizure
1637 of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no.  The ruling simply did not mention
1638 most of our arguments, and seemed to take everything ØKOKRIM said at
1639 face value, ignoring our demonstration and explanations.  But it is
1640 hard to tell for sure, as we still have not seen most of the documents
1641 in the case and thus were unprepared and unable to contradict several
1642 of the claims made in court by the opposition.  We are considering an
1643 appeal, but it is partly a question of funding, as it is costing us
1644 quite a bit to pay for our lawyer.  If you want to help, please
1645 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to the
1646 NUUG defense fund</a>.</p>
1647
1648 <p>The details of the case, as far as we know it, is available in
1649 Norwegian from
1650 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/">the NUUG
1651 blog</a>.  This also include
1652 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/Avslag_etter_rettslig_h_ring_om_DNS_beslaget___vurderer_veien_videre.shtml">the
1653 ruling itself</a>.</p>
1654
1655       </div>
1656       <div class="tags">
1657
1658
1659         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1660
1661
1662       </div>
1663     </div>
1664     <div class="padding"></div>
1665
1666     <div class="entry">
1667       <div class="title">
1668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html">A day in court challenging seizure of popcorn-time.no for #domstolkontroll</a>
1669       </div>
1670       <div class="date">
1671          3rd February 2017
1672       </div>
1673       <div class="body">
1674         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-02-01-popcorn-time-in-court.jpeg"></p>
1675
1676 <p>On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in court in Follo Tingrett
1677 representing <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the member association
1678 NUUG</a>, alongside <a href="https://www.efn.no/">the member
1679 association EFN</a> and <a href="http://www.imc.no">the DNS registrar
1680 IMC</a>, challenging the seizure of the DNS name popcorn-time.no.  It
1681 was interesting to sit in a court of law for the first time in my
1682 life.  Our team can be seen in the picture above: attorney Ola
1683 Tellesbø, EFN board member Tom Fredrik Blenning, IMC CEO Morten Emil
1684 Eriksen and NUUG board member Petter Reinholdtsen.</p>
1685
1686 <p><a href="http://www.domstol.no/no/Enkelt-domstol/follo-tingrett/Nar-gar-rettssaken/Beramming/?cid=AAAA1701301512081262234UJFBVEZZZZZEJBAvtale">The
1687 case at hand</a> is that the Norwegian National Authority for
1688 Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (aka
1689 Økokrim) decided on their own, to seize a DNS domain early last
1690 year, without following
1691 <a href="https://www.norid.no/no/regelverk/navnepolitikk/#link12">the
1692 official policy of the Norwegian DNS authority</a> which require a
1693 court decision.  The web site in question was a site covering Popcorn
1694 Time.  And Popcorn Time is the name of a technology with both legal
1695 and illegal applications.  Popcorn Time is a client combining
1696 searching a Bittorrent directory available on the Internet with
1697 downloading/distribute content via Bittorrent and playing the
1698 downloaded content on screen.  It can be used illegally if it is used
1699 to distribute content against the will of the right holder, but it can
1700 also be used legally to play a lot of content, for example the
1701 millions of movies
1702 <a href="https://archive.org/details/movies">available from the
1703 Internet Archive</a> or the collection
1704 <a href="http://vodo.net/films/">available from Vodo</a>.  We created
1705 <a href="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:86c1802af5a667ca56d3918aecb7d3c0f7173084&dn=PresentasjonFolloTingrett.mov&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fpublic.popcorn-tracker.org%3A6969%2Fannounce">a
1706 video demonstrating legally use of Popcorn Time</a> and played it in
1707 Court.  It can of course be downloaded using Bittorrent.</p>
1708
1709 <p>I did not quite know what to expect from a day in court.  The
1710 government held on to their version of the story and we held on to
1711 ours, and I hope the judge is able to make sense of it all.  We will
1712 know in two weeks time.  Unfortunately I do not have high hopes, as
1713 the Government have the upper hand here with more knowledge about the
1714 case, better training in handling criminal law and in general higher
1715 standing in the courts than fairly unknown DNS registrar and member
1716 associations.  It is expensive to be right also in Norway.  So far the
1717 case have cost more than NOK 70 000,-.  To help fund the case, NUUG
1718 and EFN have asked for donations, and managed to collect around NOK 25
1719 000,- so far.  Given the presentation from the Government, I expect
1720 the government to appeal if the case go our way.  And if the case do
1721 not go our way, I hope we have enough funding to appeal.</p>
1722
1723 <p>From the other side came two people from Økokrim.  On the benches,
1724 appearing to be part of the group from the government were two people
1725 from the Simonsen Vogt Wiik lawyer office, and three others I am not
1726 quite sure who was.  Økokrim had proposed to present two witnesses
1727 from The Motion Picture Association, but this was rejected because
1728 they did not speak Norwegian and it was a bit late to bring in a
1729 translator, but perhaps the two from MPA were present anyway.  All
1730 seven appeared to know each other.  Good to see the case is take
1731 seriously.</p>
1732
1733 <p>If you, like me, believe the courts should be involved before a DNS
1734 domain is hijacked by the government, or you believe the Popcorn Time
1735 technology have a lot of useful and legal applications, I suggest you
1736 too <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to
1737 the NUUG defense fund</a>.  Both Bitcoin and bank transfer are
1738 available. If NUUG get more than we need for the legal action (very
1739 unlikely), the rest will be spend promoting free software, open
1740 standards and unix-like operating systems in Norway, so no matter what
1741 happens the money will be put to good use.</p>
1742
1743 <p>If you want to lean more about the case, I recommend you check out
1744 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/">the blog
1745 posts from NUUG covering the case</a>.  They cover the legal arguments
1746 on both sides.</p>
1747
1748       </div>
1749       <div class="tags">
1750
1751
1752         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1753
1754
1755       </div>
1756     </div>
1757     <div class="padding"></div>
1758
1759     <div class="entry">
1760       <div class="title">
1761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
1762       </div>
1763       <div class="date">
1764          9th January 2017
1765       </div>
1766       <div class="body">
1767         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
1768 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
1769 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
1770 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
1771 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
1772 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
1773 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
1774 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
1775 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
1776 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
1777 this:
1778
1779 <p><pre>
1780 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1781  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
1782  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
1783  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
1784  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
1785  5  he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48)  3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.857 ms
1786  6  ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39)  0.662 ms  0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23)  0.622 ms
1787  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
1788  8  * * *
1789  9  * * *
1790 [...]
1791 </pre></p>
1792
1793 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
1794 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
1795 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
1796 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
1797 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
1798 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
1799 traceroute request.</p>
1800
1801 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
1802 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
1803 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
1804 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
1805 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
1806
1807 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
1808 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
1809 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
1810 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
1811 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
1812 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
1813 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
1814 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
1815 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
1816
1817 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
1818 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
1819 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
1820 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
1821 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
1822 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
1823 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
1824 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
1825 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
1826 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
1827 render the page (in HAR format using
1828 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
1829 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
1830 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
1831 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
1832 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
1833
1834 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
1835 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
1836
1837 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
1838 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
1839 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
1840 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
1841 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
1842 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
1843 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
1844 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
1845 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
1846 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
1847 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
1848 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
1849 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
1850 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
1851
1852 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
1853 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1854
1855 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
1856 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
1857 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
1858 question.
1859 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
1860 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
1861 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
1862 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
1863 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
1864 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
1865 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
1866
1867 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
1868 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1869
1870 <p>In the process, I came across the
1871 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
1872 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
1873 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
1874 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
1875 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
1876 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
1877 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
1878 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
1879 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
1880 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
1881 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
1882 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
1883 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
1884 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
1885
1886 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
1887 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
1888
1889 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
1890 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
1891 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
1892 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
1893
1894 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
1895 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
1896 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
1897 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
1898 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
1899 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
1900 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
1901
1902 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
1903 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
1904 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
1905 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
1906 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
1907 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
1908 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
1909
1910 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
1911 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
1912 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
1913 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
1914
1915 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1916 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1917 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1918
1919       </div>
1920       <div class="tags">
1921
1922
1923         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/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</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>.
1924
1925
1926       </div>
1927     </div>
1928     <div class="padding"></div>
1929
1930     <div class="entry">
1931       <div class="title">
1932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Introducing_ical_archiver_to_split_out_old_iCalendar_entries.html">Introducing ical-archiver to split out old iCalendar entries</a>
1933       </div>
1934       <div class="date">
1935          4th January 2017
1936       </div>
1937       <div class="body">
1938         <p>Do you have a large <a href="https://icalendar.org/">iCalendar</a>
1939 file with lots of old entries, and would like to archive them to save
1940 space and resources?  At least those of us using KOrganizer know that
1941 turning on and off an event set become slower and slower the more
1942 entries are in the set.  While working on migrating our calendars to a
1943 <a href="http://radicale.org/">Radicale CalDAV server</a> on our
1944 <a href="https://freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox server</a/>, my
1945 loved one wondered if I could find a way to split up the calendar file
1946 she had in KOrganizer, and I set out to write a tool.  I spent a few
1947 days writing and polishing the system, and it is now ready for general
1948 consumption.  The
1949 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/ical-archiver">code for
1950 ical-archiver</a> is publicly available from a git repository on
1951 github.  The system is written in Python and depend on
1952 <a href="http://eventable.github.io/vobject/">the vobject Python
1953 module</a>.</p>
1954
1955 <p>To use it, locate the iCalendar file you want to operate on and
1956 give it as an argument to the ical-archiver script.  This will
1957 generate a set of new files, one file per component type per year for
1958 all components expiring more than two years in the past.  The vevent,
1959 vtodo and vjournal entries are handled by the script.  The remaining
1960 entries are stored in a 'remaining' file.</p>
1961
1962 <p>This is what a test run can look like:
1963
1964 <p><pre>
1965 % ical-archiver t/2004-2016.ics
1966 Found 3612 vevents
1967 Found 6 vtodos
1968 Found 2 vjournals
1969 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2004.ics
1970 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2005.ics
1971 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2006.ics
1972 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2007.ics
1973 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2008.ics
1974 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2009.ics
1975 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2010.ics
1976 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2011.ics
1977 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2012.ics
1978 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2013.ics
1979 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2014.ics
1980 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vjournal-2007.ics
1981 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vjournal-2011.ics
1982 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vtodo-2012.ics
1983 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-remaining.ics
1984 %
1985 </pre></p>
1986
1987 <p>As you can see, the original file is untouched and new files are
1988 written with names derived from the original file.  If you are happy
1989 with their content, the *-remaining.ics file can replace the original
1990 the the others can be archived or imported as historical calendar
1991 collections.</p>
1992
1993 <p>The script should probably be improved a bit.  The error handling
1994 when discovering broken entries is not good, and I am not sure yet if
1995 it make sense to split different entry types into separate files or
1996 not.  The program is thus likely to change.  If you find it
1997 interesting, please get in touch. :)</p>
1998
1999 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2000 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2001 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2002
2003       </div>
2004       <div class="tags">
2005
2006
2007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
2008
2009
2010       </div>
2011     </div>
2012     <div class="padding"></div>
2013
2014     <div class="entry">
2015       <div class="title">
2016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
2017       </div>
2018       <div class="date">
2019         23rd December 2016
2020       </div>
2021       <div class="body">
2022         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
2023 readers probably know, I have been working on the
2024 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
2025 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
2026 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
2027 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
2028 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
2029 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
2030 metadata format.  And today,
2031 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
2032 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
2033 ie using fnmatch():</p>
2034
2035 <p><pre>
2036 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
2037   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
2038 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
2039 Name: pymissile
2040 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
2041 Package: pymissile
2042 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
2043 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
2044 Name: libnxt
2045 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
2046 Package: libnxt
2047 ---
2048 Identifier: t2n [generic]
2049 Name: t2n
2050 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
2051 Package: t2n
2052 ---
2053 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
2054 Name: python-nxt
2055 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
2056 Package: python-nxt
2057 ---
2058 Identifier: nbc [generic]
2059 Name: nbc
2060 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
2061 Package: nbc
2062 %
2063 </pre></p>
2064
2065 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
2066 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
2067
2068 <p><pre>
2069 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
2070 pymissile
2071 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
2072 libnxt
2073 nbc
2074 python-nxt
2075 t2n
2076 %
2077 </pre></p>
2078
2079 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
2080 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
2081
2082 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
2083 make the most of the hardware they have, please
2084 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
2085 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
2086 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
2087 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
2088 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
2089 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
2090 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
2091 part of my involvement in
2092 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
2093 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
2094 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
2095 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
2096 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
2097 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
2098 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
2099 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
2100 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
2101
2102 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2103 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2104 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2105
2106       </div>
2107       <div class="tags">
2108
2109
2110         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>.
2111
2112
2113       </div>
2114     </div>
2115     <div class="padding"></div>
2116
2117     <div class="entry">
2118       <div class="title">
2119         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
2120       </div>
2121       <div class="date">
2122         20th December 2016
2123       </div>
2124       <div class="body">
2125         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2126 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
2127 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
2128 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
2129 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
2130 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
2131 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
2132 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
2133 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
2134 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
2135
2136 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
2137
2138 <p><pre>
2139 % isenkram-lookup
2140 bluez
2141 cheese
2142 ethtool
2143 fprintd
2144 fprintd-demo
2145 gkrellm-thinkbat
2146 hdapsd
2147 libpam-fprintd
2148 pidgin-blinklight
2149 thinkfan
2150 tlp
2151 tp-smapi-dkms
2152 tp-smapi-source
2153 tpb
2154 %
2155 </pre></p>
2156
2157 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
2158 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
2159 I have all the firmware my machine need:
2160
2161 <p><pre>
2162 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2163 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
2164 %
2165 </pre></p>
2166
2167 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
2168 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
2169 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
2170 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
2171 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
2172 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
2173 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
2174 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
2175
2176 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
2177 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
2178 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
2179
2180 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
2181 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
2182 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
2183 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
2184 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
2185 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
2186 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
2187 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
2188 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
2189 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
2190 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
2191 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
2192 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
2193 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
2194 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
2195 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
2196 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
2197 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
2198 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
2199 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
2200 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
2201 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
2202 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
2203 zd1211-firmware</p>
2204
2205 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
2206 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
2207 maintainer to
2208 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
2209 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
2210 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
2211 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
2212
2213 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
2214 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
2215 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
2216 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
2217 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
2218
2219       </div>
2220       <div class="tags">
2221
2222
2223         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>.
2224
2225
2226       </div>
2227     </div>
2228     <div class="padding"></div>
2229
2230     <div class="entry">
2231       <div class="title">
2232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
2233       </div>
2234       <div class="date">
2235         11th December 2016
2236       </div>
2237       <div class="body">
2238         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
2239
2240 <p>In my early years, I played
2241 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
2242 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
2243 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
2244 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
2245 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
2246 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
2247 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
2248 small.</p>
2249
2250 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
2251 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
2252 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
2253 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
2254 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
2255 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
2256 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
2257 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
2258 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
2259
2260 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
2261 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
2262 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
2263 advantages of the
2264 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
2265 where information about each planet is easily available with common
2266 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
2267 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
2268 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
2269 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
2270 after less then a week.</p>
2271
2272 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
2273 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
2274 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
2275
2276 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2277 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2278 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2279
2280       </div>
2281       <div class="tags">
2282
2283
2284         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2285
2286
2287       </div>
2288     </div>
2289     <div class="padding"></div>
2290
2291     <div class="entry">
2292       <div class="title">
2293         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
2294       </div>
2295       <div class="date">
2296         25th November 2016
2297       </div>
2298       <div class="body">
2299         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
2300 installation system, observing how using
2301 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
2302 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
2303 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
2304 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
2305 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
2306 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
2307 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
2308 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
2309 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
2310 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
2311 up the process make perfect sense.
2312
2313 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
2314 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
2315 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
2316 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
2317 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
2318 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
2319 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
2320 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
2321 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
2322 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
2323
2324 <blockquote><pre>
2325 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
2326 </pre></blockquote>
2327
2328 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
2329 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
2330 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
2331 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
2332 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
2333 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
2334 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
2335 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
2336 tested its impact.</p>
2337
2338
2339       </div>
2340       <div class="tags">
2341
2342
2343         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>.
2344
2345
2346       </div>
2347     </div>
2348     <div class="padding"></div>
2349
2350     <div class="entry">
2351       <div class="title">
2352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
2353       </div>
2354       <div class="date">
2355         13th November 2016
2356       </div>
2357       <div class="body">
2358         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
2359 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
2360 multi-threaded program, finally
2361 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
2362 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
2363 months since
2364 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
2365 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
2366 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
2367 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
2368 JavaScript libraries.</p>
2369
2370 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
2371
2372 <p><blockquote>
2373 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
2374 </blockquote></p>
2375
2376 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
2377 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
2378 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
2379 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
2380 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
2381
2382 <p><blockquote>
2383 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
2384 </blockquote></p>
2385
2386 <p>See the project home page and the
2387 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
2388 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
2389 working.</p>
2390
2391       </div>
2392       <div class="tags">
2393
2394
2395         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>.
2396
2397
2398       </div>
2399     </div>
2400     <div class="padding"></div>
2401
2402     <div class="entry">
2403       <div class="title">
2404         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_talk_with_your_loved_ones_in_private.html">How to talk with your loved ones in private</a>
2405       </div>
2406       <div class="date">
2407          7th November 2016
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="body">
2410         <p>A few days ago I ran a very biased and informal survey to get an
2411 idea about what options are being used to communicate with end to end
2412 encryption with friends and family.  I explicitly asked people not to
2413 list options only used in a work setting.  The background is the
2414 uneasy feeling I get when using Signal, a feeling shared by others as
2415 a blog post from Sander Venima about
2416 <a href="https://sandervenema.ch/2016/11/why-i-wont-recommend-signal-anymore/">why
2417 he do not recommend Signal anymore</a> (with
2418 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410">feedback from
2419 the Signal author available from ycombinator</a>).  I wanted an
2420 overview of the options being used, and hope to include those options
2421 in a less biased survey later on.  So far I have not taken the time to
2422 look into the individual proposed systems.  They range from text
2423 sharing web pages, via file sharing and email to instant messaging,
2424 VOIP and video conferencing.  For those considering which system to
2425 use, it is also useful to have a look at
2426 <a href="https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard">the EFF Secure
2427 messaging scorecard</a> which is slightly out of date but still
2428 provide valuable information.</p>
2429
2430 <p>So, on to the list.  There were some used by many, some used by a
2431 few, some rarely used ones and a few mentioned but without anyone
2432 claiming to use them.  Notice the grouping is in reality quite random
2433 given the biased self selected set of participants.  First the ones
2434 used by many:</p>
2435
2436 <ul>
2437
2438 <li><a href="https://whispersystems.org/">Signal</a></li>
2439 <li>Email w/<a href="http://openpgp.org/">OpenPGP</a> (Enigmail, GPGSuite,etc)</li>
2440 <li><a href="https://www.whatsapp.com/">Whatsapp</a></li>
2441 <li>IRC w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
2442 <li>XMPP w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
2443
2444 </ul>
2445
2446 <p>Then the ones used by a few.</p>
2447
2448 <ul>
2449
2450 <li><a href="https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page">Mumble</a></li>
2451 <li>iMessage (included in iOS from Apple)</li>
2452 <li><a href="https://telegram.org/">Telegram</a></li>
2453 <li><a href="https://jitsi.org/">Jitsi</a></li>
2454 <li><a href="https://keybase.io/download">Keybase file</a></li>
2455
2456 </ul>
2457
2458 <p>Then the ones used by even fewer people</p>
2459
2460 <ul>
2461
2462 <li><a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a></li>
2463 <li><a href="https://bitmessage.org/">Bitmessage</a></li>
2464 <li><a href="https://wire.com/">Wire</a></li>
2465 <li>VoIP w/<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP">ZRTP</a> or controlled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Protocol">SRTP</a> (e.g using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSipSimple">CSipSimple</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linphone">Linphone</a>)</li>
2466 <li><a href="https://matrix.org/">Matrix</a></li>
2467 <li><a href="https://kontalk.org/">Kontalk</a></li>
2468 <li><a href="https://0bin.net/">0bin</a> (encrypted pastebin)</li>
2469 <li><a href="https://appear.in">Appear.in</a></li>
2470 <li><a href="https://riot.im/">riot</a></li>
2471 <li><a href="https://www.wickr.com/">Wickr Me</a></li>
2472
2473 </ul>
2474
2475 <p>And finally the ones mentioned by not marked as used by
2476 anyone. This might be a mistake, perhaps the person adding the entry
2477 forgot to flag it as used?</p>
2478
2479 <ul>
2480
2481 <li>Email w/Certificates <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME">S/MIME</a></li>
2482 <li><a href="https://www.crypho.com/">Crypho</a></li>
2483 <li><a href="https://cryptpad.fr/">CryptPad</a></li>
2484 <li><a href="https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet">ricochet</a></li>
2485
2486 </ul>
2487
2488 <p>Given the network effect it seem obvious to me that we as a society
2489 have been divided and conquered by those interested in keeping
2490 encrypted and secure communication away from the masses.  The
2491 finishing remarks <a href="https://vimeo.com/97505679">from Aral Balkan
2492 in his talk "Free is a lie"</a> about the usability of free software
2493 really come into effect when you want to communicate in private with
2494 your friends and family.  We can not expect them to allow the
2495 usability of communication tool to block their ability to talk to
2496 their loved ones.</p>
2497
2498 <p>Note for example the option IRC w/OTR.  Most IRC clients do not
2499 have OTR support, so in most cases OTR would not be an option, even if
2500 you wanted to.  In my personal experience, about 1 in 20 I talk to
2501 have a IRC client with OTR.  For private communication to really be
2502 available, most people to talk to must have the option in their
2503 currently used client.  I can not simply ask my family to install an
2504 IRC client.  I need to guide them through a technical multi-step
2505 process of adding extensions to the client to get them going.  This is
2506 a non-starter for most.</p>
2507
2508 <p>I would like to be able to do video phone calls, audio phone calls,
2509 exchange instant messages and share files with my loved ones, without
2510 being forced to share with people I do not know.  I do not want to
2511 share the content of the conversations, and I do not want to share who
2512 I communicate with or the fact that I communicate with someone.
2513 Without all these factors in place, my private life is being more or
2514 less invaded.</p>
2515
2516       </div>
2517       <div class="tags">
2518
2519
2520         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2521
2522
2523       </div>
2524     </div>
2525     <div class="padding"></div>
2526
2527     <div class="entry">
2528       <div class="title">
2529         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
2530       </div>
2531       <div class="date">
2532          4th November 2016
2533       </div>
2534       <div class="body">
2535         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
2536 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
2537 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
2538 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
2539 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
2540 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
2541 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
2542 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
2543 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
2544 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
2545 and had
2546 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
2547 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
2548 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
2549 loved ones. :)</p>
2550
2551 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
2552 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
2553 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
2554 building
2555 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
2556 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
2557 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
2558 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
2559 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
2560 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
2561 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
2562 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
2563
2564 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
2565
2566 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
2567 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
2568 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
2569 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
2570 the battery status run low:</p>
2571
2572 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
2573    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
2574 </video></p>
2575
2576 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
2577 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
2578
2579 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
2580 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
2581 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
2582 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
2583 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
2584 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
2585 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
2586 should.</p>
2587
2588       </div>
2589       <div class="tags">
2590
2591
2592         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/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2593
2594
2595       </div>
2596     </div>
2597     <div class="padding"></div>
2598
2599     <div class="entry">
2600       <div class="title">
2601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
2602       </div>
2603       <div class="date">
2604         10th October 2016
2605       </div>
2606       <div class="body">
2607         <p>In July
2608 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
2609 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
2610 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
2611 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
2612
2613 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
2614 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
2615 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
2616 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
2617 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
2618 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
2619 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
2620 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
2621 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
2622 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
2623 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
2624 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
2625 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
2626 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
2627 time.</p>
2628
2629 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
2630 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
2631 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
2632 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
2633 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
2634 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
2635 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
2636
2637 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
2638 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
2639 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
2640 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
2641 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
2642 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
2643 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
2644 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
2645 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
2646 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
2647
2648 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
2649
2650 <ol>
2651
2652 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
2653 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
2654 know, so you need to install it.
2655
2656 <pre>
2657 apt install git tor chromium
2658 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
2659 </pre></li>
2660
2661 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
2662 block below.</li>
2663
2664 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
2665 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
2666
2667 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
2668 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
2669 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
2670 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
2671 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
2672
2673 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
2674 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
2675 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
2676 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
2677 a associated contact database.</li>
2678
2679 </ol>
2680
2681 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
2682 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
2683 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
2684 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
2685 example
2686 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
2687 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
2688 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
2689 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
2690 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
2691 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
2692 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
2693 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
2694 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
2695 working on Debian Stable.</p>
2696
2697 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
2698 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
2699 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
2700
2701 <pre>
2702 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
2703 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
2704 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
2705 --- a/js/background.js
2706 +++ b/js/background.js
2707 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
2708          });
2709      });
2710
2711 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
2712 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
2713      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
2714 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
2715 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
2716      var messageReceiver;
2717      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
2718          if (messageReceiver) {
2719 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
2720 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
2721 --- a/js/expire.js
2722 +++ b/js/expire.js
2723 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
2724  ;(function() {
2725      'use strict';
2726 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
2727 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
2728
2729      window.extension = window.extension || {};
2730
2731 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
2732 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
2733 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
2734 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
2735 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
2736              return {
2737                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
2738                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
2739 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
2740 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
2741 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
2742              };
2743          },
2744          clearQR: function() {
2745 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
2746 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
2747 --- a/options.html
2748 +++ b/options.html
2749 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
2750          &lt;div class='nav'>
2751            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
2752            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
2753 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
2754 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
2755 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
2756 +
2757 +         &lt;/div>
2758            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
2759            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
2760            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
2761 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
2762 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
2763 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
2764 +#!/bin/sh
2765 +set -e
2766 +cd $(dirname $0)
2767 +mkdir -p userdata
2768 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
2769 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
2770 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
2771 +fi
2772 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
2773 +exec chromium \
2774 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
2775 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
2776 EOF
2777 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
2778 </pre>
2779
2780 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2781 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2782 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2783
2784       </div>
2785       <div class="tags">
2786
2787
2788         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2789
2790
2791       </div>
2792     </div>
2793     <div class="padding"></div>
2794
2795     <div class="entry">
2796       <div class="title">
2797         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
2798       </div>
2799       <div class="date">
2800          7th October 2016
2801       </div>
2802       <div class="body">
2803         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2804 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
2805 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
2806 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
2807 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
2808 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
2809 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
2810 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
2811 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
2812 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
2813 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
2814 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
2815 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
2816
2817 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
2818 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
2819 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
2820 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
2821 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
2822 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
2823
2824 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
2825 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
2826 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
2827 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
2828 identifiers.</p>
2829
2830 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
2831 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
2832 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
2833 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
2834 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
2835 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
2836 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
2837 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
2838 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
2839 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
2840 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
2841 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
2842 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
2843 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
2844
2845 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
2846 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
2847 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
2848 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
2849 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
2850 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
2851 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
2852
2853 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
2854 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
2855 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
2856 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
2857 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
2858 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
2859 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
2860 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
2861 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
2862 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
2863 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
2864 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
2865 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
2866 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
2867 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
2868 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
2869 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
2870
2871 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
2872 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
2873 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
2874 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
2875 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
2876 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
2877 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
2878
2879 <p><pre>
2880 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
2881     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
2882 </pre></p>
2883
2884 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
2885 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
2886 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
2887 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
2888 to detect this?</p>
2889
2890 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
2891 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
2892 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
2893 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
2894 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
2895 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
2896 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
2897 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
2898 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
2899 directly if no such class exist.</p>
2900
2901 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2902 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2903 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2904
2905 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
2906 please join us on our IRC channel
2907 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
2908 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
2909 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
2910 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
2911
2912 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2913 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2914 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2915
2916       </div>
2917       <div class="tags">
2918
2919
2920         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>.
2921
2922
2923       </div>
2924     </div>
2925     <div class="padding"></div>
2926
2927     <div class="entry">
2928       <div class="title">
2929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
2930       </div>
2931       <div class="date">
2932         30th August 2016
2933       </div>
2934       <div class="body">
2935         <p>In April we
2936 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
2937 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
2938 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
2939 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
2940 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
2941 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
2942 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
2943 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
2944 contributing using
2945 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2946 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
2947 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2948 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
2949 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2950 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
2951 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
2952
2953 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
2954 electronic form.</p>
2955
2956       </div>
2957       <div class="tags">
2958
2959
2960         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2961
2962
2963       </div>
2964     </div>
2965     <div class="padding"></div>
2966
2967     <div class="entry">
2968       <div class="title">
2969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
2970       </div>
2971       <div class="date">
2972         11th August 2016
2973       </div>
2974       <div class="body">
2975         <p>This summer, I read a great article
2976 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
2977 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
2978 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
2979 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
2980 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
2981 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
2982 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
2983 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
2984 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
2985 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
2986 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
2987 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
2988
2989 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
2990 get the system into Debian.  I
2991 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
2992 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
2993 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
2994 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
2995 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
2996 profiling information included in the source package.
2997 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
2998
2999 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
3000 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
3001
3002 <p><blockquote><pre>
3003 coz run --- program-to-run
3004 </pre></blockquote></p>
3005
3006 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
3007 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
3008 most, use a web browser and either point it to
3009 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
3010 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
3011 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
3012 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
3013 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
3014 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
3015 targeted experiments.</p>
3016
3017 <p>A video published by ACM
3018 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
3019 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
3020 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
3021 titled
3022 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
3023 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
3024
3025 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
3026 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
3027 because it uses a
3028 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
3029 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
3030 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
3031 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
3032
3033 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
3034 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
3035 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
3036 C++ libraries.</p>
3037
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="tags">
3040
3041
3042         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3043
3044
3045       </div>
3046     </div>
3047     <div class="padding"></div>
3048
3049     <div class="entry">
3050       <div class="title">
3051         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sales_number_for_the_Free_Culture_translation__first_half_of_2016.html">Sales number for the Free Culture translation, first half of 2016</a>
3052       </div>
3053       <div class="date">
3054          5th August 2016
3055       </div>
3056       <div class="body">
3057         <p>As my regular readers probably remember, the last year I published
3058 a French and Norwegian translation of the classic
3059 <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book</a> by the
3060 founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig.  A bit less
3061 known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations,
3062 using docbook and po4a, I also recreated the English original.  And
3063 because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it
3064 too.  The revenue from the books are sent to the Creative Commons
3065 Corporation.  In other words, I do not earn any money from this
3066 project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available
3067 for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative
3068 Commons is needed.</p>
3069
3070 <p>Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at
3071 Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping.  Much to
3072 my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the
3073 French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been
3074 available in English since it was first published.  In total, 24 paper
3075 books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:</p>
3076
3077 <table border="0">
3078 <tr><th>Title / language</th><th>Quantity</th></tr>
3079 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td><td align="right">3</td></tr>
3080 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td><td align="right">7</td></tr>
3081 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td><td align="right">14</td></tr>
3082 </table>
3083
3084 <p>The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book
3085 stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble.  Most revenue, around $10 per
3086 book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold
3087 directly by Lulu.com.  The other channels give less revenue.  The
3088 summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10
3089 via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu.  And Lulu.com tells
3090 me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42.  No idea
3091 what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a
3092 good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not.  But it make me
3093 happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it
3094 as much as I did.</p>
3095
3096 <p>The ebook edition is available for free from
3097 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
3098
3099 <p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
3100 language, I would be happy to help make it happen.  Please get in
3101 touch.</p>
3102
3103       </div>
3104       <div class="tags">
3105
3106
3107         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3108
3109
3110       </div>
3111     </div>
3112     <div class="padding"></div>
3113
3114     <div class="entry">
3115       <div class="title">
3116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Techno_TV_broadcasting_live_across_Norway_and_the_Internet___debconf16___nuug__on__frikanalen.html">Techno TV broadcasting live across Norway and the Internet (#debconf16, #nuug) on @frikanalen</a>
3117       </div>
3118       <div class="date">
3119          1st August 2016
3120       </div>
3121       <div class="body">
3122         <p>Did you know there is a TV channel broadcasting talks from DebConf
3123 16 across an entire country?  Or that there is a TV channel
3124 broadcasting talks by or about
3125 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625529/">Linus Torvalds</a>,
3126 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599/">Tor</a>,
3127 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/624019/">OpenID</A>,
3128 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625624/">Common Lisp</a>,
3129 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625446/">Civic Tech</a>,
3130 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625090/">EFF founder John Barlow</a>,
3131 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625432/">how to make 3D
3132 printer electronics</a> and many more fascinating topics?  It works
3133 using only free software (all of it
3134 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from Github</a>), and
3135 is administrated using a web browser and a web API.</p>
3136
3137 <p>The TV channel is the Norwegian open channel
3138 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, and I am involved
3139 via <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG member association</a> in
3140 running and developing the software for the channel.  The channel is
3141 organised as a member organisation where its members can upload and
3142 broadcast what they want (think of it as Youtube for national
3143 broadcasting television).  Individuals can broadcast too.  The time
3144 slots are handled on a first come, first serve basis.  Because the
3145 channel have almost no viewers and very few active members, we can
3146 experiment with TV technology without too much flack when we make
3147 mistakes.  And thanks to the few active members, most of the slots on
3148 the schedule are free.  I see this as an opportunity to spread
3149 knowledge about technology and free software, and have a script I run
3150 regularly to fill up all the open slots the next few days with
3151 technology related video.  The end result is a channel I like to
3152 describe as Techno TV - filled with interesting talks and
3153 presentations.</p>
3154
3155 <p>It is available on channel 50 on the Norwegian national digital TV
3156 network (RiksTV).  It is also available as a multicast stream on
3157 Uninett.  And finally, it is available as
3158 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/">a WebM unicast stream</a> from
3159 Frikanalen and NUUG.  Check it out. :)</p>
3160
3161       </div>
3162       <div class="tags">
3163
3164
3165         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3166
3167
3168       </div>
3169     </div>
3170     <div class="padding"></div>
3171
3172     <div class="entry">
3173       <div class="title">
3174         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
3175       </div>
3176       <div class="date">
3177          7th July 2016
3178       </div>
3179       <div class="body">
3180         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
3181 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
3182 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
3183 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
3184 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
3185 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
3186 microphone The initial idea had been to just
3187 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
3188 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
3189 until a few days ago.</p>
3190
3191 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
3192 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
3193 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
3194 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
3195 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
3196 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
3197 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
3198
3199 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
3200 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
3201 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
3202 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
3203 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
3204 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
3205 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
3206 him.</p>
3207
3208 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
3209 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
3210 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
3211 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
3212 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
3213 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
3214 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
3215 devices it would work for.</p>
3216
3217 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
3218 followed some instructions
3219 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
3220 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
3221 machine with Debian testing:</p>
3222
3223 <p><pre>
3224 adb reboot-bootloader
3225 fastboot oem rebootRUU
3226 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
3227 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
3228 fastboot reboot
3229 </pre></p>
3230
3231 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
3232 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
3233 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
3234 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
3235 too.</p>
3236
3237 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
3238 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
3239 like this:</p>
3240
3241 <p><pre>
3242 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
3243 </pre>
3244
3245 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
3246 this:</p>
3247
3248 <p><pre>
3249 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
3250 </pre></p>
3251
3252 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
3253 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
3254 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
3255 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
3256 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
3257
3258       </div>
3259       <div class="tags">
3260
3261
3262         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3263
3264
3265       </div>
3266     </div>
3267     <div class="padding"></div>
3268
3269     <div class="entry">
3270       <div class="title">
3271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
3272       </div>
3273       <div class="date">
3274          3rd July 2016
3275       </div>
3276       <div class="body">
3277         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
3278 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
3279 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
3280 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
3281 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
3282 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
3283 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
3284 Github source, compared it to the source in
3285 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
3286 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
3287 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
3288 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
3289 the recipe how I did it.</p>
3290
3291 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
3292
3293 <pre>
3294 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
3295 </pre>
3296
3297 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
3298 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
3299
3300 <pre>
3301 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
3302 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
3303 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
3304 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
3305 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
3306          });
3307      });
3308
3309 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
3310 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
3311 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
3312 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
3313      var messageReceiver;
3314      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
3315          if (messageReceiver) {
3316 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
3317 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
3318 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
3319 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
3320  ;(function() {
3321      'use strict';
3322 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
3323 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
3324
3325      window.extension = window.extension || {};
3326
3327 EOF
3328 </pre>
3329
3330 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
3331 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
3332 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
3333 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
3334
3335 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
3336 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
3337
3338 <pre>
3339 #!/bin/sh
3340 cd $(dirname $0)
3341 mkdir -p userdata
3342 exec chromium \
3343   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
3344   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
3345 </pre>
3346
3347 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
3348 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
3349 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
3350 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
3351 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
3352
3353 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
3354 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
3355 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
3356 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
3357 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
3358 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
3359 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
3360 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
3361 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
3362 Signal from my laptop.
3363
3364 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
3365 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
3366 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
3367 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
3368 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
3369 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
3370 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
3371 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
3372 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
3373 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
3374 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
3375 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
3376
3377 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
3378 on this topic in
3379 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
3380 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
3381 phone</a>.</p>
3382
3383       </div>
3384       <div class="tags">
3385
3386
3387         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3388
3389
3390       </div>
3391     </div>
3392     <div class="padding"></div>
3393
3394     <div class="entry">
3395       <div class="title">
3396         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
3397       </div>
3398       <div class="date">
3399          6th June 2016
3400       </div>
3401       <div class="body">
3402         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
3403 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
3404 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
3405 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
3406 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
3407 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
3408 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
3409 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
3410 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
3411
3412 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
3413 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
3414 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
3415 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
3416 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
3417 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
3418 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
3419
3420 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
3421 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
3422 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
3423 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
3424 toten and parole.</p>
3425
3426 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
3427 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
3428 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
3429 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
3430 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
3431 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
3432 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
3433 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
3434 formats.</p>
3435
3436       </div>
3437       <div class="tags">
3438
3439
3440         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>.
3441
3442
3443       </div>
3444     </div>
3445     <div class="padding"></div>
3446
3447     <div class="entry">
3448       <div class="title">
3449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
3450       </div>
3451       <div class="date">
3452          5th June 2016
3453       </div>
3454       <div class="body">
3455         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
3456 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
3457 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
3458 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
3459 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
3460 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
3461 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
3462 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
3463 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
3464 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
3465 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
3466 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
3467 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
3468 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
3469 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
3470 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
3471 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
3472 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
3473 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
3474 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
3475
3476 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
3477 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
3478 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
3479 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
3480 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
3481 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
3482 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
3483 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
3484 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
3485 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
3486 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
3487 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
3488 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
3489 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
3490
3491 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
3492 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
3493 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
3494 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
3495 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
3496 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
3497 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
3498 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
3499
3500 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
3501 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
3502 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
3503 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
3504 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
3505 information is collected from
3506 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
3507 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
3508 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
3509 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
3510 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
3511 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
3512 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
3513 type (preferably
3514 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
3515 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
3516 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
3517 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
3518
3519 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
3520 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
3521 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
3522
3523 <p><blockquote><pre>
3524 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
3525 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
3526   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
3527     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
3528     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
3529     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
3530   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
3531 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
3532 </pre></blockquote></p>
3533
3534 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
3535 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
3536 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
3537 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
3538
3539 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
3540 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
3541 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
3542
3543 <p><blockquote><pre>
3544 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
3545 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
3546 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
3547 %
3548 </pre></blockquote></p>
3549
3550 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
3551 MimeType= line.</p>
3552
3553 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
3554 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
3555 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
3556 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
3557 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
3558 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
3559 fixed. :)</p>
3560
3561       </div>
3562       <div class="tags">
3563
3564
3565         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>.
3566
3567
3568       </div>
3569     </div>
3570     <div class="padding"></div>
3571
3572     <div class="entry">
3573       <div class="title">
3574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html">Tor - from its creators mouth 11 years ago</a>
3575       </div>
3576       <div class="date">
3577         28th May 2016
3578       </div>
3579       <div class="body">
3580         <p>A little more than 11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
3581 the current President of <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">the Tor
3582 project</a>, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the
3583 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group</a> (NUUG).  A
3584 video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help
3585 from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk
3586 on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG
3587 currently publishes its talks.  You can
3588 <a href="http://frikanalen.no/se">watch the live stream using a web
3589 browser</a> with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
3590 on demand page for the talk
3591 "<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599">Tor: Anonymous
3592 communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.</a>".</p>
3593
3594 <p>Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
3595 HTML video and Ogg Theora support:</p>
3596
3597 <p><video width="70%" poster="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/large_thumb/20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg" controls>
3598   <source src="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/theora/20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv" type="video/ogg"/>
3599 </video></p>
3600
3601 <p>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you
3602 want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)</p>
3603
3604       </div>
3605       <div class="tags">
3606
3607
3608         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3609
3610
3611       </div>
3612     </div>
3613     <div class="padding"></div>
3614
3615     <div class="entry">
3616       <div class="title">
3617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
3618       </div>
3619       <div class="date">
3620         25th May 2016
3621       </div>
3622       <div class="body">
3623         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
3624 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
3625 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
3626 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
3627 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
3628 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
3629 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
3630 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
3631 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
3632 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
3633 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
3634 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
3635
3636 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
3637 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
3638 is going away and is generally being replaced by
3639 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
3640 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
3641 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
3642 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
3643 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
3644 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
3645 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
3646 and see if it is recognised.</p>
3647
3648 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
3649 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
3650 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
3651
3652 <p><blockquote><pre>
3653 % isenkram-lookup
3654 bluez
3655 cheese
3656 fprintd
3657 fprintd-demo
3658 gkrellm-thinkbat
3659 hdapsd
3660 libpam-fprintd
3661 pidgin-blinklight
3662 thinkfan
3663 tleds
3664 tp-smapi-dkms
3665 tp-smapi-source
3666 tpb
3667 %p
3668 </pre></blockquote></p>
3669
3670 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
3671 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
3672 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
3673 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
3674 See
3675 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
3676 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
3677
3678       </div>
3679       <div class="tags">
3680
3681
3682         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>.
3683
3684
3685       </div>
3686     </div>
3687     <div class="padding"></div>
3688
3689     <div class="entry">
3690       <div class="title">
3691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
3692       </div>
3693       <div class="date">
3694         23rd May 2016
3695       </div>
3696       <div class="body">
3697         <p>Yesterday I updated the
3698 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
3699 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
3700 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
3701 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
3702 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
3703 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
3704 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
3705 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
3706 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
3707 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
3708
3709 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
3710 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
3711 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
3712 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
3713 capacity.</p>
3714
3715 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
3716
3717 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
3718 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
3719 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
3720 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
3721
3722 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
3723
3724 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
3725 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
3726 shrinking. :(</p>
3727
3728 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
3729 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
3730 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
3731 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
3732 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
3733 machine.</p>
3734
3735 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
3736 check out the
3737 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
3738 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
3739 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
3740 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3741 Patches are very welcome.</p>
3742
3743 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3744 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3745 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3746
3747       </div>
3748       <div class="tags">
3749
3750
3751         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>.
3752
3753
3754       </div>
3755     </div>
3756     <div class="padding"></div>
3757
3758     <div class="entry">
3759       <div class="title">
3760         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html">French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes & Noble</a>
3761       </div>
3762       <div class="date">
3763         21st May 2016
3764       </div>
3765       <div class="body">
3766         <p>A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
3767 2004 book Cultura Libre was published.  Today I noticed that the book
3768 is now available from book stores.  You can now buy it from
3769 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018260">Amazon</a>
3770 ($19.99),
3771 <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/1123776705">Barnes
3772 & Noble</a> ($?) and as always from
3773 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Lulu.com</a>
3774 ($19.99).  The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project.  If
3775 you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $10.59, while if you buy
3776 from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
3777 and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
3778 less).</p>
3779
3780 <p>I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
3781 sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon.  Not quite sure how
3782 that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
3783 edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
3784 the paperback edition, they are
3785 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">available
3786 from github</a>.</p>
3787
3788       </div>
3789       <div class="tags">
3790
3791
3792         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3793
3794
3795       </div>
3796     </div>
3797     <div class="padding"></div>
3798
3799     <div class="entry">
3800       <div class="title">
3801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html">I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)</a>
3802       </div>
3803       <div class="date">
3804         19th May 2016
3805       </div>
3806       <div class="body">
3807         <p>I just donated to the
3808 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">NUUG defence
3809 "fond"</a> to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
3810 site popcorn-time.no tested in court.  I hope everyone that agree with
3811 me will do the same.</p>
3812
3813 <p>Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
3814 hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
3815 talking to a judge first?  I am.  What if the free software system
3816 combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
3817 and was called Popcorn Time?  Would that affect your view?  It still
3818 make me worried.</p>
3819
3820 <p>In March 2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
3821 change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
3822 police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
3823 the courts.  I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
3824 the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
3825 that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
3826 permission first.  I was even more surprised when I had a look at
3827 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no">the web
3828 site content on the Internet Archive</A>, and only found news coverage
3829 about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
3830 holders permissions.</p>
3831
3832 <p>The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
3833 example <a href="http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/2016/03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim">Hegnar Online</a> and
3834 <a href="http://itavisen.no/2016/03/08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/">ITavisen<a/>
3835 and
3836 <a href="http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-1.12842452">NRK</a>),
3837 at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
3838 on
3839 <a href="http://blogg.torvund.net/2016/03/09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/">protests
3840 from the law professor Olav Torvund</a> and
3841 <a href="http://www.klassekampen.no/article/20160311/ARTICLE/160319995">lawyer
3842 Jon Wessel-Aas</a>.  It even got some
3843 <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-160418/">coverage
3844 on TorrentFreak</a>.</p>
3845
3846 <p>I
3847 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html">
3848 wrote about the case a month ago</a>, when the
3849 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> (NUUG),
3850 where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
3851 The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
3852 given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
3853 legally challenged.  They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
3854 those that want to support the request.</p>
3855
3856 <p>If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
3857 censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
3858 applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
3859 suggest you <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">show
3860 your support by donating to NUUG</a>.</a>
3861
3862       </div>
3863       <div class="tags">
3864
3865
3866         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3867
3868
3869       </div>
3870     </div>
3871     <div class="padding"></div>
3872
3873     <div class="entry">
3874       <div class="title">
3875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
3876       </div>
3877       <div class="date">
3878         12th May 2016
3879       </div>
3880       <div class="body">
3881         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
3882 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
3883 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
3884 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
3885 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
3886 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3887 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
3888 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
3889 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
3890 great if you could help out with
3891 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
3892 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
3893
3894       </div>
3895       <div class="tags">
3896
3897
3898         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>.
3899
3900
3901       </div>
3902     </div>
3903     <div class="padding"></div>
3904
3905     <div class="entry">
3906       <div class="title">
3907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
3908       </div>
3909       <div class="date">
3910          8th May 2016
3911       </div>
3912       <div class="body">
3913         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
3914 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
3915
3916 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
3917 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
3918 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
3919 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
3920 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
3921 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
3922 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
3923 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
3924 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
3925 players.</p>
3926
3927 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
3928 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
3929 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
3930 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
3931 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
3932 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
3933 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
3934 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
3935 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
3936 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
3937 support most file formats.</p>
3938
3939 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
3940 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
3941 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
3942 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
3943 listed first in the table.</p>
3944
3945 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
3946 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
3947 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
3948 support?</p>
3949
3950       </div>
3951       <div class="tags">
3952
3953
3954         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>.
3955
3956
3957       </div>
3958     </div>
3959     <div class="padding"></div>
3960
3961     <div class="entry">
3962       <div class="title">
3963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
3964       </div>
3965       <div class="date">
3966          4th May 2016
3967       </div>
3968       <div class="body">
3969         A friend of mine made me aware of
3970 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
3971 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
3972 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
3973
3974 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
3975 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
3976 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
3977 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
3978 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
3979 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
3980 production started.</p>
3981
3982 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
3983 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
3984 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
3985
3986       </div>
3987       <div class="tags">
3988
3989
3990         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>.
3991
3992
3993       </div>
3994     </div>
3995     <div class="padding"></div>
3996
3997     <div class="entry">
3998       <div class="title">
3999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html">NUUG contests Norwegian police DNS seizure of popcorn-time.no</a>
4000       </div>
4001       <div class="date">
4002         18th April 2016
4003       </div>
4004       <div class="body">
4005         <p>It is days like today I am really happy to be a member of
4006 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User group</a>, a
4007 member association for those of us believing in free software, open
4008 standards and unix-like operating systems.  NUUG announced today it
4009 will
4010 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__NUUG_og_EFN_begj_rer_rettslig_pr_ving_for_DNS_domenebeslag_av_popcorn_time_no.shtml">try
4011 to bring the seizure of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no as
4012 unlawful</a>, to stand up for the principle that writing about a
4013 controversial topic is not infringing copyrights, and censuring web
4014 pages by hijacking DNS domain should be decided by the courts, not the
4015 police.  The DNS domain was seized by the Norwegian National Authority
4016 for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime
4017 a month ago.  I hope this bring more paying members to NUUG to give
4018 the association the financial muscle needed to bring this case as far
4019 as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.</p>
4020
4021       </div>
4022       <div class="tags">
4023
4024
4025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
4026
4027
4028       </div>
4029     </div>
4030     <div class="padding"></div>
4031
4032     <div class="entry">
4033       <div class="title">
4034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_F__Stone___an_inspiration_for_us_all.html">I.F. Stone - an inspiration for us all</a>
4035       </div>
4036       <div class="date">
4037         13th April 2016
4038       </div>
4039       <div class="body">
4040         <p>I first got to know I.F. Stone when I came across an article by Jon
4041 Schwarz on The Intercept
4042 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/new-documentary-legacy-f-stone/">about
4043 his extraordinary contribution to investigative journalism in
4044 USA</a>. The article is about a new documentary in two parts
4045 (<a href="https://vimeo.com/123974841">part one is 12 minutes</a> and
4046 <a href="https://vimeo.com/123974842">part two is 30 minutes</a>), and
4047 I found both truly fascinating.  It is amazing what he was able to
4048 find by digging up public sources and government papers.  He
4049 documented lots of government abuse and cover ups, and I find
4050 <a href="http://www.ifstone.org/weekly.php">his weekly news letters</a>
4051 inspiring to read even today.</p>
4052
4053 <p><blockquote>
4054 All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
4055 <br>- I. F. Stone
4056 </blockquote></p>
4057
4058 <p>His starting point was that reporters should not assume governments
4059 and corporations are telling the truth, but verify all their claims as
4060 much as possible.  I wonder how many Norwegian reporters can be said
4061 to follow the principles of I. F. Stone.  They are definitely in short
4062 supply.  If you, like me half a year ago, have never heard of him,
4063 check him out.</p>
4064
4065       </div>
4066       <div class="tags">
4067
4068
4069         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
4070
4071
4072       </div>
4073     </div>
4074     <div class="padding"></div>
4075
4076     <div class="entry">
4077       <div class="title">
4078         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_French_paperback_edition_of_the_book_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig_is_now_available.html">A French paperback edition of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig is now available</a>
4079       </div>
4080       <div class="date">
4081         12th April 2016
4082       </div>
4083       <div class="body">
4084         <p>I'm happy to report that
4085 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">the
4086 French paperback edition</a> of
4087 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
4088 project to translate</a> the <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free
4089 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig is now available for sale on
4090 Lulu.com.  Once I have formally verified my proof reading copy, which
4091 should be in the mail, the paperback edition should be available in
4092 book stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble too.</p>
4093
4094 <p>This French edition, Culture Libre, is the work of the
4095 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> developer Benoît
4096 Guillon, who created the PO file from the initial translation
4097 available from
4098 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">the Wikilivres
4099 wiki pages</a> and completed and corrected the translation to match
4100 the original docbook edition my project is using, as well as
4101 coordinated the proof reading of the final result.  I believe the end
4102 result look great, but I am biased and do not read French.  In
4103 addition to the paperback edition, the book is available in PDF, EPUB
4104 and Mobi format from the github project page linked to above.</p>
4105
4106 <p>When enabling book store distribution on Lulu.com, I had to nearly
4107 triple the price to allow the book stores some profit.  I also had to
4108 accept that I will get some revenue when a book is sold via Lulu.com.
4109 But because of the non-commercial clause in the book license
4110 (CC-BY-NC), this might be a problem.  To bypass the problem I
4111 discussed how to handle the revenue with the author, and we agreed
4112 that the revenue for these editions go to the
4113 <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons non-profit
4114 Corporation</a> who handle donations to the Creative Commons project.
4115 So far they have earned around USD 70 on sales of the
4116 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>
4117 and
4118 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
4119 Bokmål</a> editions, according to Lulu.com.  They will get the revenue
4120 for the French edition too.  Their revenue is higher if you buy the
4121 book directly from Lulu.com instead of via a book store, so I
4122 recommend you buy directly from Lulu.com.</p>
4123
4124 <p>Perhaps you would like to get the book published in your language?
4125 The translation is done using a web based translator service, so the
4126 technical bar to enter is fairly low.  Get in touch if you would like
4127 to make this happen.</p>
4128
4129       </div>
4130       <div class="tags">
4131
4132
4133         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
4134
4135
4136       </div>
4137     </div>
4138     <div class="padding"></div>
4139
4140     <div class="entry">
4141       <div class="title">
4142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
4143       </div>
4144       <div class="date">
4145         10th April 2016
4146       </div>
4147       <div class="body">
4148         <p>During this weekends
4149 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
4150 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
4151 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
4152 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
4153 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
4154 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
4155 contributing using
4156 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
4157 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
4158 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
4159 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
4160 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
4161 contributors</a>.</p>
4162
4163 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
4164 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
4165 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
4166 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
4167 available for many more languages.</p>
4168
4169       </div>
4170       <div class="tags">
4171
4172
4173         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4174
4175
4176       </div>
4177     </div>
4178     <div class="padding"></div>
4179
4180     <div class="entry">
4181       <div class="title">
4182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
4183       </div>
4184       <div class="date">
4185          7th April 2016
4186       </div>
4187       <div class="body">
4188         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
4189 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
4190 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
4191 But I might be wrong.</p>
4192
4193 <p>According to
4194 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
4195 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
4196 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
4197 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
4198 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
4199 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
4200 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
4201 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
4202 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
4203 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
4204
4205 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
4206 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
4207 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
4208 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
4209 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
4210 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
4211 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
4212 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4213 team status page</a>, and
4214 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
4215 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
4216
4217 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
4218 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
4219 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
4220 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
4221 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
4222 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
4223 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
4224 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
4225 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
4226 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
4227 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
4228 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
4229
4230       </div>
4231       <div class="tags">
4232
4233
4234         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>.
4235
4236
4237       </div>
4238     </div>
4239     <div class="padding"></div>
4240
4241     <div class="entry">
4242       <div class="title">
4243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/syslog_trusted_timestamp___chain_of_trusted_timestamps_for_your_syslog.html">syslog-trusted-timestamp - chain of trusted timestamps for your syslog</a>
4244       </div>
4245       <div class="date">
4246          2nd April 2016
4247       </div>
4248       <div class="body">
4249         <p>Two years ago, I had
4250 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">a
4251 look at trusted timestamping options available</a>, and among
4252 other things noted a still open
4253 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/742553">bug in the tsget script</a>
4254 included in openssl that made it harder than necessary to use openssl
4255 as a trusted timestamping client.  A few days ago I was told
4256 <a href="https:/www.difi.no/">the Norwegian government office DIFI</a> is
4257 close to releasing their own trusted timestamp service, and in the
4258 process I was happy to learn about a replacement for the tsget script
4259 using only curl:</p>
4260
4261 <p><pre>
4262 openssl ts -query -data "/etc/shells" -cert -sha256 -no_nonce \
4263   | curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/timestamp-query" \
4264          --data-binary "@-" http://zeitstempel.dfn.de > etc-shells.tsr
4265 openssl ts -reply -text -in etc-shells.tsr
4266 </pre></p>
4267
4268 <p>This produces a binary timestamp file (etc-shells.tsr) which can be
4269 used to verify that the content of the file /etc/shell with the
4270 calculated sha256 hash existed at the point in time when the request
4271 was made.  The last command extract the content of the etc-shells.tsr
4272 in human readable form.  The idea behind such timestamp is to be able
4273 to prove using cryptography that the content of a file have not
4274 changed since the file was stamped.</p>
4275
4276 <p>To verify that the file on disk match the public key signature in
4277 the timestamp file, run the following commands.  It make sure you have
4278 the required certificate for the trusted timestamp service available
4279 and use it to compare the file content with the timestamp.  In
4280 production, one should of course use a better method to verify the
4281 service certificate.</p>
4282
4283 <p><pre>
4284 wget -O ca-cert.txt https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt
4285 openssl ts -verify -data /etc/shells -in etc-shells.tsr -CAfile ca-cert.txt -text
4286 </pre></p>
4287
4288 <p>Wikipedia have a lot more information about
4289 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4290 Timestamping</a> and
4291 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping">linked
4292 timestamping</a>, and there are several trusted timestamping services
4293 around, both as commercial services and as free and public services.
4294 Among the latter is
4295 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">the
4296 zeitstempel.dfn.de service</a> mentioned above and
4297 <a href="https://freetsa.org/">freetsa.org service</a> linked to from the
4298 wikipedia web site.  I believe the DIFI service should show up on
4299 https://tsa.difi.no, but it is not available to the public at the
4300 moment.  I hope this will change when it is into production.  The
4301 <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC 3161</a> trusted
4302 timestamping protocol standard is even implemented in LibreOffice,
4303 Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, making it possible to verify when
4304 a document was created.</p>
4305
4306 <p>I would find it useful to be able to use such trusted timestamp
4307 service to make it possible to verify that my stored syslog files have
4308 not been tampered with.  This is not a new idea.  I found one example
4309 implemented on the Endian network appliances where
4310 <a href="http://help.endian.com/entries/21518508-Enabling-Timestamping-on-log-files-">the
4311 configuration of such feature was described in 2012</a>.</p>
4312
4313 <p>But I could not find any free implementation of such feature when I
4314 searched, so I decided to try to
4315 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/syslog-trusted-timestamp">build
4316 a prototype named syslog-trusted-timestamp</a>.  My idea is to
4317 generate a timestamp of the old log files after they are rotated, and
4318 store the timestamp in the new log file just after rotation.  This
4319 will form a chain that would make it possible to see if any old log
4320 files are tampered with.  But syslog is bad at handling kilobytes of
4321 binary data, so I decided to base64 encode the timestamp and add an ID
4322 and line sequence numbers to the base64 data to make it possible to
4323 reassemble the timestamp file again.  To use it, simply run it like
4324 this:
4325
4326 <p><pre>
4327 syslog-trusted-timestamp /path/to/list-of-log-files
4328 </pre></p>
4329
4330 <p>This will send a timestamp from one or more timestamp services (not
4331 yet decided nor implemented) for each listed file to the syslog using
4332 logger(1).  To verify the timestamp, the same program is used with the
4333 --verify option:</p>
4334
4335 <p><pre>
4336 syslog-trusted-timestamp --verify /path/to/log-file /path/to/log-with-timestamp
4337 </pre></p>
4338
4339 <p>The verification step is not yet well designed.  The current
4340 implementation depend on the file path being unique and unchanging,
4341 and this is not a solid assumption.  It also uses process number as
4342 timestamp ID, and this is bound to create ID collisions.  I hope to
4343 have time to come up with a better way to handle timestamp IDs and
4344 verification later.</p>
4345
4346 <p>Please check out
4347 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/syslog-trusted-timestamp">the
4348 prototype for syslog-trusted-timestamp on github</a> and send
4349 suggestions and improvement, or let me know if there already exist a
4350 similar system for timestamping logs already to allow me to join
4351 forces with others with the same interest.</p>
4352
4353 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4354 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4355 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4356
4357       </div>
4358       <div class="tags">
4359
4360
4361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4362
4363
4364       </div>
4365     </div>
4366     <div class="padding"></div>
4367
4368     <div class="entry">
4369       <div class="title">
4370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
4371       </div>
4372       <div class="date">
4373         23rd March 2016
4374       </div>
4375       <div class="body">
4376         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
4377 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
4378 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
4379 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
4380 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
4381 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
4382 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
4383 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
4384
4385 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
4386 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
4387 and lifetime prediction by running:
4388
4389 <p><pre>
4390 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
4391 </pre></p>
4392
4393 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
4394
4395 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
4396 entry yet):</p>
4397
4398 <p><pre>
4399 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
4400 </pre></p>
4401
4402 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
4403 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
4404 few years of data.</p>
4405
4406 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
4407 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
4408 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
4409 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
4410 know.  The issue is reported as
4411 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
4412 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
4413 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
4414 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
4415 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
4416
4417 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
4418 check out the
4419 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
4420 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
4421 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
4422 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
4423 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
4424
4425       </div>
4426       <div class="tags">
4427
4428
4429         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>.
4430
4431
4432       </div>
4433     </div>
4434     <div class="padding"></div>
4435
4436     <div class="entry">
4437       <div class="title">
4438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html">UsingQR - "Electronic" paper invoices using JSON and QR codes</a>
4439       </div>
4440       <div class="date">
4441         19th March 2016
4442       </div>
4443       <div class="body">
4444         <p>Back in 2013 I proposed
4445 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">a
4446 way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
4447 adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice</a>.  I
4448 suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
4449 for name and address, but any format would work.  I did not do
4450 anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
4451 something like it.  It would make it possible to efficiently send
4452 machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.</p>
4453
4454 <p>This was the background when I came across a proposal and
4455 specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
4456 <a href="http://www.visma.com/">Visma</a> in Sweden called
4457 <a href="http://usingqr.com/">UsingQR</a>.  Their PDF invoices contain
4458 a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
4459 This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
4460 specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
4461 get a more bogus entry).  I've reformatted the JSON to make it easier
4462 to read.  Normally this is all on one long line:</p>
4463
4464 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-19-qr-invoice.png" align="right"><pre>
4465 {
4466  "vh":500.00,
4467  "vm":0,
4468  "vl":0,
4469  "uqr":1,
4470  "tp":1,
4471  "nme":"Din Leverandør",
4472  "cc":"NO",
4473  "cid":"997912345 MVA",
4474  "iref":"12300001",
4475  "idt":"20151022",
4476  "ddt":"20151105",
4477  "due":2500.0000,
4478  "cur":"NOK",
4479  "pt":"BBAN",
4480  "acc":"17202612345",
4481  "bc":"BIENNOK1",
4482  "adr":"0313 OSLO"
4483 }
4484 </pre></p>
4485
4486 </p>The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
4487 <a href="http://usingqr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UsingQR_specification1.pdf">format
4488 specification</a> (revision 2 from june 2014).  The format seem to
4489 have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
4490 of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
4491 Norway.</p>
4492
4493 <p>Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
4494 the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
4495 specification.  Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
4496 November to clarify.  Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
4497 visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
4498 protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
4499 usage limitations for the format.  I urged her to make sure this was
4500 explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
4501 unfortunately this has not happened yet.  So I guess if there is
4502 submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
4503 infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
4504 risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
4505 the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so.  At least
4506 with patents, there is always
4507 <a href="http://www.paperspecs.com/paper-news/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/">a
4508 chance of getting sued...</a></p>
4509
4510 <p>I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
4511 independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
4512 they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
4513 with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this.  Their plan was
4514 to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
4515 evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular.  I hope
4516 they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
4517 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> is the correct place to
4518 maintain such specification.</p>
4519
4520 <p><strong>Update 2016-03-20</strong>: Via Twitter I became aware of
4521 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319492">some comments
4522 about this blog post</a> that had several useful links and references to
4523 similar systems.  In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association
4524 standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment
4525 information.  More information is available from the Wikipedia page on
4526 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor">Short
4527 Payment Descriptor</a>.  And in Germany, there is a system named
4528 <a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/">BezahlCode</a>,
4529 (<a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/wp-content/uploads/BezahlCode_TechDok.pdf">specification
4530 v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF</a>), which uses QR codes with
4531 URL-like formatting using "bank:" as the URI schema/protocol to
4532 provide the payment information.  There is also the
4533 <a href="http://www.ferd-net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231">ZUGFeRD</a>
4534 file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am
4535 not sure if it is done already.  Last, in Bolivia there are reports
4536 that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR
4537 format on invoices.  I have not been able to track down a
4538 specification for this format, because of my limited language skill
4539 sets.</p>
4540
4541       </div>
4542       <div class="tags">
4543
4544
4545         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
4546
4547
4548       </div>
4549     </div>
4550     <div class="padding"></div>
4551
4552     <div class="entry">
4553       <div class="title">
4554         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
4555       </div>
4556       <div class="date">
4557         15th March 2016
4558       </div>
4559       <div class="body">
4560         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
4561 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
4562 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
4563 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
4564 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
4565 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
4566 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
4567 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
4568 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
4569 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
4570 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
4571
4572 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
4573 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
4574 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
4575 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
4576 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
4577 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
4578 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
4579 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
4580 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
4581 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
4582 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
4583
4584 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
4585
4586 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
4587 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
4588 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
4589 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
4590 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
4591 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
4592
4593 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
4594 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
4595 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
4596 and graphing.</p>
4597
4598 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
4599 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
4600 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
4601 on
4602 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
4603 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
4604
4605       </div>
4606       <div class="tags">
4607
4608
4609         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>.
4610
4611
4612       </div>
4613     </div>
4614     <div class="padding"></div>
4615
4616     <div class="entry">
4617       <div class="title">
4618         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
4619       </div>
4620       <div class="date">
4621         19th February 2016
4622       </div>
4623       <div class="body">
4624         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
4625 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
4626 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
4627 the code in the package in question, preferably in
4628 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
4629 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
4630
4631 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
4632 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
4633 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
4634 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
4635 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
4636 out what was wrong with
4637 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
4638 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
4639 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
4640 semi-automatically.</p>
4641
4642 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
4643 file based on the code in the source package,
4644 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
4645 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
4646 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
4647 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
4648 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
4649 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
4650 option in
4651 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
4652 blog posts from 2014</a>.
4653
4654 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
4655
4656 <p><pre>
4657 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
4658 </pre></p>
4659
4660 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
4661 this might not be the best option.</p>
4662
4663 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
4664 this approach in
4665 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
4666 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
4667 dpkg-copyright' option:
4668
4669 <p><pre>
4670 cme update dpkg-copyright
4671 </pre></p>
4672
4673 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
4674 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
4675
4676 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
4677 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
4678 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
4679 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
4680 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
4681 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
4682 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
4683 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
4684 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
4685 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
4686
4687 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
4688 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
4689 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
4690 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
4691
4692 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
4693 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
4694 planet.debian.org.</p>
4695
4696 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4697 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4698 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4699
4700 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
4701 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
4702
4703 <p><pre>
4704 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
4705   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
4706 </pre></p>
4707
4708 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
4709 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
4710 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
4711 with my packages in the future.</p>
4712
4713 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
4714 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
4715 command line.</p>
4716
4717       </div>
4718       <div class="tags">
4719
4720
4721         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>.
4722
4723
4724       </div>
4725     </div>
4726     <div class="padding"></div>
4727
4728     <div class="entry">
4729       <div class="title">
4730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
4731       </div>
4732       <div class="date">
4733          4th February 2016
4734       </div>
4735       <div class="body">
4736         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
4737 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
4738 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
4739 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
4740 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
4741 about. :)</p>
4742
4743 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
4744 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
4745 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
4746 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
4747 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
4748 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
4749
4750 <blockquote><pre>
4751 % apt install appstream
4752 [...]
4753 % apt update
4754 [...]
4755 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
4756   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
4757 firmware-qlogic
4758 %
4759 </pre></blockquote>
4760
4761 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
4762 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
4763 a way appstream can use.</p>
4764
4765 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
4766 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
4767 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
4768 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
4769 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
4770 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
4771
4772 <blockquote><pre>
4773 % apt install appstream
4774 [...]
4775 % apt update
4776 [...]
4777 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
4778   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
4779 bkchem
4780 phototonic
4781 inkscape
4782 shutter
4783 tetzle
4784 geeqie
4785 xia
4786 pinta
4787 gthumb
4788 karbon
4789 comix
4790 mirage
4791 viewnior
4792 postr
4793 ristretto
4794 kolourpaint4
4795 eog
4796 eom
4797 gimagereader
4798 midori
4799 %
4800 </pre></blockquote>
4801
4802 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
4803 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
4804
4805       </div>
4806       <div class="tags">
4807
4808
4809         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>.
4810
4811
4812       </div>
4813     </div>
4814     <div class="padding"></div>
4815
4816     <div class="entry">
4817       <div class="title">
4818         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
4819       </div>
4820       <div class="date">
4821         24th January 2016
4822       </div>
4823       <div class="body">
4824         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
4825 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
4826 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
4827 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
4828 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
4829 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
4830 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
4831 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
4832 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
4833 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
4834 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
4835 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
4836 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
4837 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
4838 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
4839 entities.</p>
4840
4841 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
4842
4843 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
4844 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
4845 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
4846 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
4847 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
4848 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
4849 tool to do so is called
4850 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
4851 discovered it when I read
4852 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
4853 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
4854 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
4855 The python program was in Debian, but
4856 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
4857 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
4858 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
4859 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
4860 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
4861 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
4862 are now included
4863 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
4864
4865 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
4866 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
4867 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
4868 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
4869 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
4870 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
4871 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
4872 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
4873 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
4874 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
4875 about yourself with the services.</p>
4876
4877 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
4878 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
4879 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
4880 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
4881 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
4882 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
4883 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
4884 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
4885 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
4886 things.  A similar technique have been
4887 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
4888 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
4889 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
4890 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
4891 public.</p>
4892
4893 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
4894 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
4895 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
4896 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
4897
4898 <p>(I have uploaded
4899 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
4900 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
4901 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
4902
4903       </div>
4904       <div class="tags">
4905
4906
4907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4908
4909
4910       </div>
4911     </div>
4912     <div class="padding"></div>
4913
4914     <div class="entry">
4915       <div class="title">
4916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
4917       </div>
4918       <div class="date">
4919         15th January 2016
4920       </div>
4921       <div class="body">
4922         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
4923 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
4924 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
4925 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
4926 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
4927 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
4928 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
4929 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
4930 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
4931 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
4932 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
4933 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
4934 was not the first to propose this, as the
4935 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
4936 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
4937 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
4938 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
4939
4940 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
4941 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
4942 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
4943 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
4944 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
4945
4946 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
4947 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
4948 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
4949 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
4950 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
4951 done in /etc/.</p>
4952
4953 <blockquote><pre>
4954 apt install apt-transport-tor
4955 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
4956 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
4957 </pre></blockquote>
4958
4959 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
4960 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
4961 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
4962 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
4963
4964 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
4965 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
4966 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
4967 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
4968 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
4969 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
4970
4971 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
4972 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
4973 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
4974 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
4975 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
4976
4977 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
4978 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
4979 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
4980 system.</p>
4981
4982       </div>
4983       <div class="tags">
4984
4985
4986         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>.
4987
4988
4989       </div>
4990     </div>
4991     <div class="padding"></div>
4992
4993     <div class="entry">
4994       <div class="title">
4995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
4996       </div>
4997       <div class="date">
4998         23rd December 2015
4999       </div>
5000       <div class="body">
5001         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
5002 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
5003 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
5004 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
5005 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
5006 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
5007
5008 <p>A few days I came across
5009 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
5010 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
5011 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
5012 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
5013 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
5014 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
5015 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
5016 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
5017 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
5018 discovered the developer
5019 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
5020 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
5021 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
5022 archive.</p>
5023
5024 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
5025 it into Debian, where it currently
5026 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
5027 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
5028
5029 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
5030 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
5031 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
5032 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
5033 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
5034 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
5035 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
5036 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
5037 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
5038 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
5039 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
5040 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
5041
5042 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
5043 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
5044 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
5045 package show up in unstable.</p>
5046
5047       </div>
5048       <div class="tags">
5049
5050
5051         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
5052
5053
5054       </div>
5055     </div>
5056     <div class="padding"></div>
5057
5058     <div class="entry">
5059       <div class="title">
5060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
5061       </div>
5062       <div class="date">
5063         20th December 2015
5064       </div>
5065       <div class="body">
5066         <p>Around three years ago, I created
5067 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
5068 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
5069 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
5070 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
5071 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
5072 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
5073 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
5074 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
5075 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
5076 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
5077 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
5078 with.</p>
5079
5080 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
5081 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
5082 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
5083 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
5084 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
5085 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
5086 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
5087 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
5088 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
5089 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
5090 Debian version of appstream.</p>
5091
5092 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
5093 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
5094 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
5095 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
5096 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
5097 how do add the required
5098 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
5099 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
5100 this content:</p>
5101
5102 <blockquote><pre>
5103 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
5104 &lt;component&gt;
5105   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
5106   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
5107   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
5108   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
5109   &lt;description&gt;
5110     &lt;p&gt;
5111       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
5112       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
5113       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
5114       launcher.
5115     &lt;/p&gt;
5116   &lt;/description&gt;
5117   &lt;provides&gt;
5118     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
5119   &lt;/provides&gt;
5120 &lt;/component&gt;
5121 </pre></blockquote>
5122
5123 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
5124 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
5125 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
5126 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
5127 0202.</p>
5128
5129 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
5130 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
5131 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
5132 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
5133 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
5134 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
5135 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
5136 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
5137
5138 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
5139 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
5140 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
5141 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
5142 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
5143
5144 <blockquote><pre>
5145 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
5146 </pre></blockquote>
5147
5148 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
5149 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
5150 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
5151 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
5152 question.</p>
5153
5154 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
5155 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
5156
5157 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
5158 try running this command on the command line:</p>
5159
5160 <blockquote><pre>
5161 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
5162 </pre></blockquote>
5163
5164 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
5165 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
5166 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
5167
5168       </div>
5169       <div class="tags">
5170
5171
5172         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>.
5173
5174
5175       </div>
5176     </div>
5177     <div class="padding"></div>
5178
5179     <div class="entry">
5180       <div class="title">
5181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
5182       </div>
5183       <div class="date">
5184         30th November 2015
5185       </div>
5186       <div class="body">
5187         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
5188 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
5189 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
5190 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
5191 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
5192
5193 <blockquote>
5194
5195 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
5196
5197 <blockquote>
5198 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
5199
5200 The first step is to choose a
5201 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
5202 code.<br/>
5203
5204 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
5205 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
5206
5207 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
5208 work<br/>
5209
5210 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
5211 </blockquote>
5212
5213 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
5214 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
5215 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
5216 0x57</a></small></p>
5217
5218 <p>As the Debian Website
5219 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
5220 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
5221 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
5222 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
5223 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
5224 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
5225 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
5226 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
5227 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
5228 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
5229 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
5230 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
5231 Freedom">FaiF</a>
5232 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
5233 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
5234 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
5235 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
5236 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
5237 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
5238 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
5239 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
5240 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
5241 In March the SFC supported a
5242 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
5243 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
5244 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
5245 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
5246 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
5247 conferences
5248 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
5249 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
5250 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
5251 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
5252 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
5253 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
5254 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
5255 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
5256 Software.</p>
5257
5258 <p>If you support Free Software,
5259 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
5260 what the SFC do, agree with their
5261 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
5262 principles</a>, are happy about their
5263 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
5264 work on a project that is an SFC
5265 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
5266 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
5267 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
5268 Allan Webber</a>,
5269 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
5270 Smith</a>,
5271 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
5272 Bacon</a>, myself and
5273 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
5274 becoming a
5275 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
5276 next week your donation will be
5277 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
5278 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
5279 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
5280 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
5281 social media accounts.</p>
5282
5283 </blockquote>
5284
5285 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
5286 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
5287 supporter too?</p>
5288
5289       </div>
5290       <div class="tags">
5291
5292
5293         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5294
5295
5296       </div>
5297     </div>
5298     <div class="padding"></div>
5299
5300     <div class="entry">
5301       <div class="title">
5302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
5303       </div>
5304       <div class="date">
5305         17th November 2015
5306       </div>
5307       <div class="body">
5308         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
5309 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
5310 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
5311 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
5312 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
5313 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
5314 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
5315 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
5316 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
5317 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
5318
5319 <pre>
5320 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
5321       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
5322 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
5323 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
5324 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5325 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5326 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5327 </pre>
5328
5329 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
5330 my old key.</p>
5331
5332 <p>If you signed my old key
5333 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
5334 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
5335 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
5336 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
5337
5338       </div>
5339       <div class="tags">
5340
5341
5342         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>.
5343
5344
5345       </div>
5346     </div>
5347     <div class="padding"></div>
5348
5349     <div class="entry">
5350       <div class="title">
5351         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html">Is Pentagon deciding the Norwegian negotiating position on Internet governance?</a>
5352       </div>
5353       <div class="date">
5354          3rd November 2015
5355       </div>
5356       <div class="body">
5357         <p>In Norway, all government offices are required by law to keep a
5358 list of every document or letter arriving and leaving their offices.
5359 Internal notes should also be documented.  The document list (called a mail
5360 journal - "postjournal" in Norwegian) is public information and thanks
5361 to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) the mail
5362 journal is available for everyone.  Most offices even publish the mail
5363 journal on their web pages, as PDFs or tables in web pages.  The state-level offices even have a shared web based search service (called
5364 <a href="https://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
5365 OEP</a>) to make it possible to search the entries in the list.  Not
5366 all journal entries show up on OEP, and the search service is hard to
5367 use, but OEP does make it easier to find at least some interesting
5368 journal entries .</p>
5369
5370 <p>In 2012 I came across a document in the mail journal for the
5371 Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications on OEP that
5372 piqued my interest.  The title of the document was
5373 "<a href="https://www.oep.no/search/resultSingle.html?journalPostId=4192362">Internet
5374 Governance and how it affects national security</a>" (Norwegian:
5375 "Internet Governance og påvirkning på nasjonal sikkerhet").  The
5376 document date was 2012-05-22, and it was said to be sent from the
5377 "Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations".  I asked for a
5378 copy, but my request was rejected with a reference to a legal clause said to authorize them to reject it
5379 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20,
5380 letter c</a>) and an explanation that the document was exempt because
5381 of foreign policy interests as it contained information related to the
5382 Norwegian negotiating position, negotiating strategies or similar.  I
5383 was told the information in the document related to the ongoing
5384 negotiation in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).  The
5385 explanation made sense to me in early January 2013, as a ITU
5386 conference in Dubay discussing Internet Governance
5387 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29">World
5388 Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12</a>) had just
5389 ended,
5390 <a href="http://www.digi.no/kommentarer/2012/12/18/tvil-om-usas-rolle-pa-teletoppmote">reportedly
5391 in chaos</a> when USA walked out of the negotiations and 25 countries
5392 including Norway refused to sign the new treaty.  It seemed
5393 reasonable to believe talks were still going on a few weeks later.
5394 Norway was represented at the ITU meeting by two authorities, the
5395 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/">Norwegian Communications Authority</a>
5396 and the <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dep/sd/">Ministry of
5397 Transport and Communications</a>.  This might be the reason the letter
5398 was sent to the ministry.  As I was unable to find the document in the
5399 mail journal of any Norwegian UN mission, I asked the ministry who had
5400 sent the document to the ministry, and was told that it was the Deputy
5401 Permanent Representative with the Permanent Mission of Norway in
5402 Geneva.</p>
5403
5404 <p>Three years later, I was still curious about the content of that
5405 document, and again asked for a copy, believing the negotiation was
5406 over now.  This time
5407 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/kopi_av_dokumenter_i_sak_2012914">I
5408 asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
5409 receiver</a> and
5410 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/brev_om_internet_governance_og_p">asked
5411 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender</a> for a
5412 copy, to see if they both agreed that it should be withheld from the
5413 public.  The ministry upheld its rejection quoting the same law
5414 reference as before, while the permanent mission rejected it quoting a
5415 different clause
5416 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20
5417 letter b</a>), claiming that they were required to keep the
5418 content of the document from the public because it contained
5419 information given to Norway with the expressed or implied expectation
5420 that the information should not be made public.  I asked the permanent
5421 mission for an explanation, and was told that the document contained
5422 an account from a meeting held in the Pentagon for a limited group of NATO
5423 nations where the organiser of the meeting did not intend the content
5424 of the meeting to be publicly known.  They explained that giving me a
5425 copy might cause Norway to not get access to similar information in
5426 the future and thus hurt the future foreign interests of Norway.  They
5427 also explained that the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was not
5428 the author of the document, they only got a copy of it, and because of
5429 this had not listed it in their mail journal.</p>
5430
5431 <p>Armed with this
5432 knowledge I asked the Ministry to reconsider and asked who was the
5433 author of the document, now realising that it was not same as the
5434 "sender" according to Ministry of Transport and Communications.  The
5435 ministry upheld its rejection but told me the name of the author of
5436 the document.  According to
5437 <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/unga69_rapport1/id2001204/">a
5438 government report</a> the author was with the Permanent Mission of
5439 Norway in New York a bit more than a year later (2014-09-22), so I
5440 guessed that might be the office responsible for writing and sending
5441 the report initially and
5442 <a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/mote_2012_i_pentagon_om_itu">asked
5443 them for a copy</a> but I was obviously wrong as I was told that the
5444 document was unknown to them and that the author did not work there
5445 when the document was written.  Next, I asked the Permanent Mission of
5446 Norway in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider and at least
5447 tell me who sent the document to Deputy Permanent Representative with
5448 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva.  The Foreign Ministry also
5449 upheld its rejection, but told me that the person sending the document
5450 to Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was the defence attaché with
5451 the Norwegian Embassy in Washington.  I do not know if this is the
5452 same person as the author of the document.</p>
5453
5454 <p>If I understand the situation correctly, someone capable of
5455 inviting selected NATO nations to a meeting in Pentagon organised a
5456 meeting where someone representing the Norwegian defence attaché in
5457 Washington attended, and the account from this meeting is interpreted
5458 by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to expose Norways
5459 negotiating position, negotiating strategies and similar regarding the
5460 ITU negotiations on Internet Governance.  It is truly amazing what can
5461 be derived from mere meta-data.</p>
5462
5463 <p>I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
5464 And what exactly was said and done at the meeting?  Anyone know?</p>
5465
5466       </div>
5467       <div class="tags">
5468
5469
5470         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
5471
5472
5473       </div>
5474     </div>
5475     <div class="padding"></div>
5476
5477     <div class="entry">
5478       <div class="title">
5479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_book___Fri_kultur__by__lessig__a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of__Free_Culture__from_2004.html">New book, "Fri kultur" by @lessig, a Norwegian Bokmål translation of "Free Culture" from 2004</a>
5480       </div>
5481       <div class="date">
5482         31st October 2015
5483       </div>
5484       <div class="body">
5485         <p>People keep asking me where to get the various forms of the book I
5486 published last week, the Norwegian Bokmål edition of Lawrence Lessigs
5487 book <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>.  It was
5488 published on paper via lulu.com, and is also available in PDF, ePub
5489 and MOBI format.  I currently sell the paper edition for self cost
5490 from lulu.com, but might extend the distribution to book stores like
5491 Amazon and Barnes & Noble later.  This will double the price and force
5492 me to make a profit from selling the book.  Anyway, here are links to
5493 get the book in different formats:</p>
5494
5495 <ul>
5496
5497   <li><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22406445.html">Buy
5498     paper edition from lulu.com</a></li>
5499
5500   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf">Download
5501     PDF, size 7.9 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
5502
5503   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub">Download
5504     ePub, size 11 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
5505
5506   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi">Download
5507     MOBI, size 3.8 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
5508
5509 </ul>
5510
5511 <p>Note that the MOBI version have problems with the table of content,
5512 at least with the viewers I have been able to test.  And the ePub file
5513 have several problems according to
5514 <a href="https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck">epubcheck</a>, but seem
5515 to display fine in the viewers I have tested.  All the files needed to
5516 create the book in various forms are available from
5517 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">the
5518 github project page</a>.</p>
5519
5520 <p>The project got press coverage from the Norwegian IT news site
5521 digi.no.  Check out the article
5522 "<a href="http://www.digi.no/juss_og_samfunn/2015/10/29/vil-apne-politikernes-oyne-for-creative-commons">Vil
5523 åpne politikernes øyne for Creative Commons</a>".</li>
5524
5525 <p>I've <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">blogged
5526 about the project</a> as it moved along.  The blogs document the translation
5527 progress and insights I had along the way.</p>
5528
5529       </div>
5530       <div class="tags">
5531
5532
5533         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5534
5535
5536       </div>
5537     </div>
5538     <div class="padding"></div>
5539
5540     <div class="entry">
5541       <div class="title">
5542         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Free_Culture__by__lessig___The_background_story_for_Creative_Commons___new_edition_available.html">"Free Culture" by @lessig - The background story for Creative Commons - new edition available</a>
5543       </div>
5544       <div class="date">
5545         23rd October 2015
5546       </div>
5547       <div class="body">
5548         <p><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">Click
5549 here to buy the book</a>.</p>
5550
5551 <p>In 2004, as the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons
5552 movement</a> gained momentum, its creator Lawrence Lessig wrote the
5553 book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)">Free
5554 Culture</a> to explain the problems with increasing copyright
5555 regulation and suggest some solutions.  I read the book back then and
5556 was very moved by it.  Reading the book inspired me and changed the
5557 way I looked on copyright law, and I would love it if more people
5558 would read it too.</p>
5559
5560 <p>Because of this, I decided in the summer of 2012 to translate it to
5561 Norwegian Bokmål and publish it for those of my friends and family
5562 that prefer to read books in Norwegian.  I translated the book using
5563 docbook and a gettext PO file, and a byproduct of this process is a
5564 new edition of the English original.  I've been in touch with the
5565 author during by work, and he said it was fine with him if I also
5566 published an English version.  So I decided to do so.  Today, I made
5567 this edition
5568 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">available
5569 for sale on Lulu.com</a>, for those interested in a paper book.  This
5570 is the cover:
5571
5572 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-10-23-free-culture-english-published-cover.png"/></a></p>
5573
5574 <p>The Norwegian Bokmål version will be available for purchase in a
5575 few days.  I also plan to publish a French version in a few weeks or
5576 months, depending on the amount of people with knowledge of French to
5577 join the translation project.  So far there is only one active
5578 person, but the French book is almost completely translated but
5579 need some proof reading.</p>
5580
5581 <p>The book is also available in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats from
5582 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
5583 github project page</a>.  Note the ePub and MOBI versions have some
5584 formatting problems I believe is due to bugs in the docbook tool
5585 dbtoepub (Debian BTS issues
5586 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795842">#795842</a>
5587 and
5588 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796871">#796871</a>),
5589 but I have not taken the time to investigate.  I recommend the PDF and
5590 ePub version for now, as they seem to show up fine in the viewers I
5591 have available.</p>
5592
5593 <p>After the translation to Norwegian Bokmål was complete, I was able
5594 to secure some sponsoring from
5595 <a href="http://www.nuugfoundation.no/">the NUUG Foundation</a> to
5596 print the book.  This is the reason their logo is located on the back
5597 cover. I am very grateful for their contribution, and will use it to
5598 give a copy of the Norwegian edition to members of the Norwegian
5599 Parliament and other decision makers here in Norway.</p>
5600
5601       </div>
5602       <div class="tags">
5603
5604
5605         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5606
5607
5608       </div>
5609     </div>
5610     <div class="padding"></div>
5611
5612     <div class="entry">
5613       <div class="title">
5614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html">Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago</a>
5615       </div>
5616       <div class="date">
5617         19th October 2015
5618       </div>
5619       <div class="body">
5620         <p>Last year, <a href="https://lessig2016.us/">US president candidate
5621 in the Democratic Party</a> Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden.  The
5622 one hour interview was
5623 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE">published by
5624 Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube</a>, and the meeting took
5625 place 2014-10-20.</p>
5626
5627 <p>The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful
5628 information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about
5629 being raised.  Please check it out.</p>
5630
5631 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o_Sr96TFQQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5632
5633 <p>I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try
5634 to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any
5635 luck.  It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the
5636 Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament,
5637 <a href="https://tale.holderdeord.no/speeches/s131106/68">claiming
5638 Snowden is no Whistle-Blower</a> because he should have taken up his
5639 concerns internally and using official channels.  It make me sad
5640 that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.</p>
5641
5642       </div>
5643       <div class="tags">
5644
5645
5646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5647
5648
5649       </div>
5650     </div>
5651     <div class="padding"></div>
5652
5653     <div class="entry">
5654       <div class="title">
5655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html">The Story of Aaron Swartz - Let us all weep!</a>
5656       </div>
5657       <div class="date">
5658          8th October 2015
5659       </div>
5660       <div class="body">
5661         <p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
5662 Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
5663 and depressing at the same time.  The work of Aaron Swartz has
5664 inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
5665 was able to initiate or complete.  I wish I am able to do as much good
5666 in my life as he did in his.  Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
5667 inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
5668 improving the society and this world.  And it is depressing in
5669 documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
5670 corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
5671 downloading too many scientific articles.  Aaron is dead.  Let us all
5672 weep.</p>
5673
5674 <p>The movie is also available on
5675 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>.  I
5676 wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
5677 my parents.</p>
5678
5679       </div>
5680       <div class="tags">
5681
5682
5683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5684
5685
5686       </div>
5687     </div>
5688     <div class="padding"></div>
5689
5690     <div class="entry">
5691       <div class="title">
5692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
5693       </div>
5694       <div class="date">
5695          1st October 2015
5696       </div>
5697       <div class="body">
5698         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
5699 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
5700 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
5701 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
5702 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
5703 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
5704 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
5705 French translation available from the
5706 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
5707 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
5708 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
5709 to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition.  We meet
5710 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
5711 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
5712 edition, check out
5713 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
5714 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
5715 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
5716 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
5717
5718       </div>
5719       <div class="tags">
5720
5721
5722         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5723
5724
5725       </div>
5726     </div>
5727     <div class="padding"></div>
5728
5729     <div class="entry">
5730       <div class="title">
5731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
5732       </div>
5733       <div class="date">
5734         24th September 2015
5735       </div>
5736       <div class="body">
5737         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
5738 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
5739 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
5740 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
5741 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
5742 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
5743 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
5744
5745 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
5746
5747 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
5748 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
5749 by someone else.  I found
5750 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
5751 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
5752 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
5753 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
5754 from him.  Via
5755 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
5756 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
5757 discovered
5758 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
5759 available in Debian.</p>
5760
5761 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
5762 battery stats ever since. Now my
5763 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
5764 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
5765 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
5766 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
5767
5768 <pre>
5769 #!/bin/sh
5770 # Inspired by
5771 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
5772 # See also
5773 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
5774 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
5775
5776 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
5777     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
5778
5779 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
5780     (
5781         printf "timestamp,"
5782         for f in $files; do
5783             printf "%s," $f
5784         done
5785         echo
5786     ) > "$logfile"
5787 fi
5788
5789 log_battery() {
5790     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
5791     # when several log processes run in parallel.
5792     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
5793         for f in $files; do \
5794             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
5795         done)
5796     echo "$msg"
5797 }
5798
5799 cd /sys/class/power_supply
5800
5801 for bat in BAT*; do
5802     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
5803 done
5804 </pre>
5805
5806 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
5807 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
5808 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
5809 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
5810 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
5811 The code for the Debian package
5812 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
5813 available on github</a>.</p>
5814
5815 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
5816
5817 <pre>
5818 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
5819 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
5820 [...]
5821 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
5822 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
5823 </pre>
5824
5825 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
5826 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
5827 battery.</p>
5828
5829 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
5830 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
5831 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
5832 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
5833 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
5834 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
5835 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
5836 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
5837 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
5838 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
5839 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
5840 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
5841 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
5842 Linux too.</p>
5843
5844 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
5845 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
5846 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
5847 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
5848 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
5849 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
5850 load).</p>
5851
5852 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
5853 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
5854 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
5855 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
5856 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
5857 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
5858 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
5859 those.</p>
5860
5861 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
5862 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
5863 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
5864 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
5865 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
5866 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
5867 specific.</p>
5868
5869       </div>
5870       <div class="tags">
5871
5872
5873         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>.
5874
5875
5876       </div>
5877     </div>
5878     <div class="padding"></div>
5879
5880     <div class="entry">
5881       <div class="title">
5882         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
5883       </div>
5884       <div class="date">
5885          3rd September 2015
5886       </div>
5887       <div class="body">
5888         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
5889 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
5890 the
5891 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
5892 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
5893 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
5894 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
5895
5896 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
5897 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
5898 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
5899 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
5900 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
5901 version.  Not only did he create a
5902 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
5903 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
5904 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
5905 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
5906 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
5907 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
5908 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
5909 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
5910 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
5911 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
5912
5913 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
5914 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
5915 current english version look like this:</p>
5916
5917 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
5918
5919 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
5920 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
5921 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
5922 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
5923 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
5924
5925 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
5926 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
5927 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
5928 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
5929 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
5930 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
5931
5932       </div>
5933       <div class="tags">
5934
5935
5936         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5937
5938
5939       </div>
5940     </div>
5941     <div class="padding"></div>
5942
5943     <div class="entry">
5944       <div class="title">
5945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
5946       </div>
5947       <div class="date">
5948         19th August 2015
5949       </div>
5950       <div class="body">
5951         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
5952 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
5953 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
5954 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
5955 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
5956 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
5957 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
5958 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
5959 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
5960 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
5961 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
5962 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
5963 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
5964 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
5965 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
5966 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
5967 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
5968
5969 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
5970 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
5971 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
5972 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
5973 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
5974 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
5975
5976       </div>
5977       <div class="tags">
5978
5979
5980         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5981
5982
5983       </div>
5984     </div>
5985     <div class="padding"></div>
5986
5987     <div class="entry">
5988       <div class="title">
5989         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
5990       </div>
5991       <div class="date">
5992          9th August 2015
5993       </div>
5994       <div class="body">
5995         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
5996 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
5997 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
5998 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
5999 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
6000 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
6001 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
6002 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
6003 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
6004
6005 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
6006 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
6007 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
6008 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
6009 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
6010
6011 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
6012 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
6013 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
6014 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
6015 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
6016 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
6017
6018 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
6019 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
6020 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
6021 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
6022 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
6023 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
6024 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
6025 bring the prize down further.</p>
6026
6027 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
6028 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
6029 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
6030 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
6031 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
6032 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
6033 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
6034 to the task.</p>
6035
6036 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
6037 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
6038 status can as usual be found on
6039 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
6040 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
6041 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
6042 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
6043 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
6044 formatting.</p>
6045
6046 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
6047 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
6048 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
6049 result in a few months.</p>
6050
6051       </div>
6052       <div class="tags">
6053
6054
6055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6056
6057
6058       </div>
6059     </div>
6060     <div class="padding"></div>
6061
6062     <div class="entry">
6063       <div class="title">
6064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
6065       </div>
6066       <div class="date">
6067         16th July 2015
6068       </div>
6069       <div class="body">
6070         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
6071 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
6072 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
6073 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
6074 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
6075 chapter.  Based on the
6076 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
6077 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
6078 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
6079 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
6080 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
6081 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
6082 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
6083 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
6084
6085 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
6086 and add this text there:</p>
6087
6088 <pre>
6089 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
6090 </pre>
6091
6092 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
6093 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
6094 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
6095
6096 <pre>
6097 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6098 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6099   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
6100     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
6101 \usepackage{endnotes}
6102 \let\footnote=\endnote
6103 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
6104 \begin{document}
6105     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
6106   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
6107 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6108 </pre>
6109
6110 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
6111 this:</p>
6112
6113 <pre>
6114 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
6115 </pre>
6116
6117 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
6118 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
6119 book project</a> is located.</p>
6120
6121       </div>
6122       <div class="tags">
6123
6124
6125         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6126
6127
6128       </div>
6129     </div>
6130     <div class="padding"></div>
6131
6132     <div class="entry">
6133       <div class="title">
6134         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
6135       </div>
6136       <div class="date">
6137          7th July 2015
6138       </div>
6139       <div class="body">
6140         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
6141 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
6142 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
6143 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
6144 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
6145 does not.</p>
6146
6147 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
6148 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
6149 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
6150 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
6151
6152 <p><blockquote>
6153
6154 <p>According to
6155 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
6156 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
6157 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
6158 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
6159 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
6160 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
6161
6162 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
6163 PDF named
6164 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
6165 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
6166 fees:</p>
6167
6168 <ul>
6169  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
6170   <ul>
6171    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
6172      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
6173      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
6174      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
6175
6176    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
6177      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
6178   </ul></li>
6179
6180  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
6181   <ul>
6182    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
6183      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
6184      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
6185
6186    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
6187      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
6188   </ul></li>
6189 </ul>
6190
6191 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
6192 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
6193 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
6194 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
6195 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
6196 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
6197
6198 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
6199 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
6200 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
6201 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
6202 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
6203 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
6204 access to personalized services?</p>
6205
6206 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
6207 Internet.</p>
6208 </blockquote></p>
6209
6210 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
6211 with the MPEG LA:</p>
6212
6213 <p><blockquote>
6214 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
6215 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
6216
6217 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
6218 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
6219 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
6220 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
6221 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
6222 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
6223 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
6224
6225 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
6226 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
6227 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
6228 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
6229 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
6230 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
6231 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
6232 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
6233 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
6234 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
6235 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
6236 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
6237
6238 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
6239 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
6240 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
6241 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
6242 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
6243 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
6244 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
6245
6246 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
6247 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
6248 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
6249 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
6250
6251 <p>For your reference, I have attached
6252 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
6253 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
6254 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
6255 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
6256 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
6257 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
6258 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
6259 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
6260 be used for execution.</p>
6261
6262 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
6263 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
6264 free to contact me directly.</p>
6265 </blockquote></p>
6266
6267 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
6268 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
6269 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
6270 But I still had a few questions:</p>
6271
6272 <p><blockquote>
6273 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
6274 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
6275 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
6276 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
6277 typically look similar to this:
6278
6279 <p><blockquote>
6280   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
6281   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
6282   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
6283   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
6284   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
6285   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
6286   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
6287   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
6288 </blockquote></p>
6289
6290 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
6291 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
6292 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
6293 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
6294 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
6295 </blockquote></p>
6296
6297 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
6298 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
6299
6300 <p><blockquote>
6301
6302 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
6303 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
6304 reads:</p>
6305
6306 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
6307 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
6308 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
6309 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
6310 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
6311 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
6312 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
6313 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
6314
6315 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
6316 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
6317 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
6318 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
6319 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
6320 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
6321 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
6322 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
6323
6324 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
6325 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
6326 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
6327 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
6328 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
6329 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
6330 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
6331 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
6332 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
6333
6334 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
6335 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
6336 Norway.</p>
6337
6338 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
6339 assistance, just let me know.</p>
6340 </blockquote></p>
6341
6342 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
6343 asked for more information:</p>
6344
6345 <p><blockquote>
6346
6347 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
6348 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
6349 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
6350 list available from &lt;URL:
6351 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
6352 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
6353 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
6354 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
6355 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
6356
6357 </blockquote></p>
6358
6359 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
6360 in that list:</p>
6361
6362 <p><blockquote>
6363
6364 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
6365 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
6366 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
6367 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
6368 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
6369 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
6370 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
6371 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
6372 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
6373
6374 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
6375 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
6376 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
6377 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
6378 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
6379 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
6380 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
6381 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
6382 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
6383 Portfolio Patents.</p>
6384 </blockquote></p>
6385
6386 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
6387 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
6388 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
6389 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
6390 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
6391 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
6392 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
6393 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
6394 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
6395
6396       </div>
6397       <div class="tags">
6398
6399
6400         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6401
6402
6403       </div>
6404     </div>
6405     <div class="padding"></div>
6406
6407     <div class="entry">
6408       <div class="title">
6409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
6410       </div>
6411       <div class="date">
6412          5th July 2015
6413       </div>
6414       <div class="body">
6415         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
6416 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
6417 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
6418 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
6419 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
6420 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
6421 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
6422 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
6423 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
6424 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
6425 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
6426
6427 <p>One tip I got was to use the
6428 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
6429 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
6430 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
6431 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
6432 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
6433 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
6434
6435 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
6436 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
6437 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
6438 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
6439 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
6440 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
6441 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
6442 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
6443 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
6444 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
6445 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
6446 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
6447 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
6448 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
6449 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
6450
6451 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
6452 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
6453 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
6454 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
6455
6456 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
6457 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
6458
6459 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
6460 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
6461 different
6462 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
6463 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
6464
6465       </div>
6466       <div class="tags">
6467
6468
6469         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>.
6470
6471
6472       </div>
6473     </div>
6474     <div class="padding"></div>
6475
6476     <div class="entry">
6477       <div class="title">
6478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
6479       </div>
6480       <div class="date">
6481          3rd July 2015
6482       </div>
6483       <div class="body">
6484         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
6485 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
6486 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
6487 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
6488 flickering.</p>
6489
6490 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
6491 still as
6492 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
6493 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
6494 good help from
6495 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
6496 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
6497 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
6498 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
6499 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
6500 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
6501 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
6502 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
6503 deteriorated since X41.</p>
6504
6505 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
6506 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
6507 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
6508 have suggestions.</p>
6509
6510 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
6511 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
6512 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
6513
6514       </div>
6515       <div class="tags">
6516
6517
6518         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>.
6519
6520
6521       </div>
6522     </div>
6523     <div class="padding"></div>
6524
6525     <div class="entry">
6526       <div class="title">
6527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
6528       </div>
6529       <div class="date">
6530          2nd July 2015
6531       </div>
6532       <div class="body">
6533         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
6534 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
6535 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
6536 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
6537 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
6538 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
6539 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
6540 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
6541 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
6542 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
6543 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
6544 Youtube too</a>.</p>
6545
6546 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
6547 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
6548 pages</a> to view them.</p>
6549
6550 <ul>
6551
6552   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
6553       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
6554
6555   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
6556
6557   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
6558       (Olav Helland)</li>
6559
6560   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
6561       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
6562
6563   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
6564
6565   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
6566
6567   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
6568       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
6569
6570   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
6571
6572   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
6573
6574   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
6575
6576   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
6577
6578   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
6579       Sevens)</li>
6580
6581   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
6582       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
6583
6584   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
6585       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
6586
6587   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
6588       Dyvik)</li>
6589
6590   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
6591
6592 </ul>
6593
6594 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
6595 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
6596 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
6597 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
6598 which sent me on a detour to
6599 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
6600 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
6601 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
6602
6603       </div>
6604       <div class="tags">
6605
6606
6607         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6608
6609
6610       </div>
6611     </div>
6612     <div class="padding"></div>
6613
6614     <div class="entry">
6615       <div class="title">
6616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
6617       </div>
6618       <div class="date">
6619         15th June 2015
6620       </div>
6621       <div class="body">
6622         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
6623 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
6624 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
6625 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
6626 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
6627 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
6628 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
6629 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
6630 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
6631
6632 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
6633 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
6634 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
6635 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
6636
6637 <pre>
6638 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
6639
6640 real    0m2.841s
6641 user    0m0.184s
6642 sys     0m0.036s
6643 %
6644 </pre>
6645
6646 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
6647 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
6648 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
6649 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
6650 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
6651
6652 <pre>
6653 digraph ownership {
6654 rankdir = LR;
6655 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
6656 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
6657 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
6658 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
6659 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
6660 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
6661 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
6662 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
6663 }
6664 </pre>
6665
6666 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
6667 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
6668 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
6669
6670 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
6671
6672 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
6673 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
6674 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
6675 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
6676 of the ownership links.</p>
6677
6678 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
6679 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
6680
6681 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
6682 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
6683 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
6684 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
6685 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
6686 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
6687 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
6688
6689       </div>
6690       <div class="tags">
6691
6692
6693         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
6694
6695
6696       </div>
6697     </div>
6698     <div class="padding"></div>
6699
6700     <div class="entry">
6701       <div class="title">
6702         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
6703       </div>
6704       <div class="date">
6705         11th June 2015
6706       </div>
6707       <div class="body">
6708         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
6709 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
6710 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
6711 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
6712 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
6713 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
6714 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
6715 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
6716 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
6717 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
6718 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
6719 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
6720 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
6721
6722 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
6723 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
6724 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
6725 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
6726 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
6727 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
6728 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
6729 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
6730 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
6731 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
6732
6733 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
6734 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
6735 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
6736 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
6737 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
6738 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
6739 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
6740 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
6741 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
6742
6743 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
6744 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
6745 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
6746 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
6747 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
6748 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
6749 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
6750 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
6751 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
6752 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
6753 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
6754
6755       </div>
6756       <div class="tags">
6757
6758
6759         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6760
6761
6762       </div>
6763     </div>
6764     <div class="padding"></div>
6765
6766     <div class="entry">
6767       <div class="title">
6768         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
6769       </div>
6770       <div class="date">
6771         10th May 2015
6772       </div>
6773       <div class="body">
6774         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
6775 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
6776 criminal or not, are
6777 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
6778 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
6779 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
6780 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
6781 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
6782 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
6783 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
6784 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
6785 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
6786 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
6787 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
6788 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
6789 the police.</p>
6790
6791 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
6792 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
6793 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
6794 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
6795 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
6796 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
6797 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
6798 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
6799 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
6800 is good to know that
6801 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
6802 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
6803 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
6804 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
6805 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
6806 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
6807 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
6808 business getting access to that information.</p>
6809
6810 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
6811 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
6812 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
6813 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
6814 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
6815 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
6816 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
6817
6818 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
6819 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
6820 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
6821 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
6822
6823 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
6824 really could make such decision, I wrote
6825 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
6826 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
6827 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
6828
6829       </div>
6830       <div class="tags">
6831
6832
6833         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6834
6835
6836       </div>
6837     </div>
6838     <div class="padding"></div>
6839
6840     <div class="entry">
6841       <div class="title">
6842         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
6843       </div>
6844       <div class="date">
6845          1st May 2015
6846       </div>
6847       <div class="body">
6848         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
6849 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
6850 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
6851 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
6852 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
6853 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
6854 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
6855
6856 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
6857 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
6858 the 2012 numbers are from
6859 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
6860 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
6861 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
6862 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
6863 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
6864
6865 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
6866 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
6867 enough.  See for example a
6868 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
6869 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
6870 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
6871 to get the storage requirements.</p>
6872
6873 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
6874 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
6875 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
6876 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
6877 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
6878
6879 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
6880 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
6881 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
6882 and large organisations:</p>
6883
6884 <table border="1">
6885 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
6886 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
6887 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
6888 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
6889 </table>
6890
6891 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
6892 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
6893 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
6894 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
6895 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
6896 collecting the data?</p>
6897
6898       </div>
6899       <div class="tags">
6900
6901
6902         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6903
6904
6905       </div>
6906     </div>
6907     <div class="padding"></div>
6908
6909     <div class="entry">
6910       <div class="title">
6911         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
6912       </div>
6913       <div class="date">
6914         26th April 2015
6915       </div>
6916       <div class="body">
6917         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
6918 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
6919 announcement today</a>:</p>
6920
6921 <pre>
6922 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
6923 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
6924 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
6925 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
6926
6927 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
6928 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
6929 later today ;)
6930
6931 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
6932 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
6933 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
6934 be possible and encouraged!
6935
6936 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
6937 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
6938
6939 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
6940 operating system for schools, universities and other
6941 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
6942 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
6943 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
6944 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
6945 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
6946 days.
6947
6948 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
6949 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
6950 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
6951 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
6952
6953 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
6954 installation instructions are available, including detailed
6955 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
6956 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
6957 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
6958 least 5 characters!
6959
6960 == Where to download ==
6961
6962 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
6963 can be downloaded at the following locations:
6964
6965     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
6966     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
6967
6968 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
6969
6970 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
6971 available, with more software included (saving additional download
6972 time):
6973
6974     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
6975     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
6976
6977 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
6978
6979 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
6980 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
6981 options.
6982
6983 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
6984
6985 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
6986 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
6987
6988 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
6989 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
6990 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
6991 online version of the translated manual.
6992
6993 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
6994 release notes and the installation manual:
6995 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
6996 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
6997
6998
6999 == Errata / known problems ==
7000
7001     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
7002     DHCP (#780461).
7003
7004     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
7005
7006 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
7007 hostname immediately.
7008
7009 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
7010 more current and complete list.
7011
7012 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
7013
7014 === Software updates ===
7015
7016 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
7017
7018  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
7019    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
7020    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
7021
7022  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
7023    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
7024    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
7025    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
7026      the others see the manual.
7027  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
7028  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
7029  * GOsa 2.7.4
7030  * LTSP 5.5.4
7031  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
7032  * new boot framework: systemd
7033  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
7034  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
7035  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
7036  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
7037  * golearn 0.9
7038  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
7039  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
7040  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
7041  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
7042    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
7043
7044 === Installation changes ===
7045
7046     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
7047     for the hardware present.
7048
7049 === Fixed bugs ===
7050
7051 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
7052 from a user perspective:
7053
7054  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
7055    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
7056    information is corrected (710362)
7057
7058  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
7059
7060 === Sugar desktop removed ===
7061
7062 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
7063 available in Debian Edu jessie.
7064
7065
7066 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
7067
7068 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
7069 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
7070 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
7071 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
7072 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
7073 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
7074 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
7075 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
7076 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
7077 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
7078 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
7079 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
7080 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
7081 environment.
7082
7083 == About Debian ==
7084
7085 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
7086 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
7087 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
7088 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
7089 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
7090 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
7091 operating system.
7092
7093 == Thanks ==
7094
7095 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
7096 You rock.
7097 </pre>
7098
7099       </div>
7100       <div class="tags">
7101
7102
7103         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7104
7105
7106       </div>
7107     </div>
7108     <div class="padding"></div>
7109
7110     <div class="entry">
7111       <div class="title">
7112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
7113       </div>
7114       <div class="date">
7115         15th April 2015
7116       </div>
7117       <div class="body">
7118         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
7119 computer system for schools I've involved in,
7120 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
7121 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
7122 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
7123 Agarwal.</p>
7124
7125 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7126
7127 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
7128 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
7129 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
7130 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
7131 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
7132 few software start-ups as well.</p>
7133
7134 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7135 project?</strong></p>
7136
7137 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
7138 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
7139 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
7140 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
7141 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
7142 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
7143 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
7144
7145 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7146 Edu?</strong></p>
7147
7148 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
7149 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
7150 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
7151 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
7152 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
7153 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
7154 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
7155 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
7156
7157 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
7158 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
7159 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
7160 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
7161 for the developer per-se.</p>
7162
7163 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7164 Edu?</strong></p>
7165
7166 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
7167 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
7168 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
7169
7170 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
7171 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
7172 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
7173 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
7174 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
7175 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
7176 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
7177
7178 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
7179 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
7180 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
7181
7182 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
7183 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
7184 interactive manner. While sites such as the
7185 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
7186 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
7187 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
7188 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
7189 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
7190 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
7191 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
7192 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
7193 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
7194 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
7195 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
7196
7197 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
7198 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
7199 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
7200 also be used.</p>
7201
7202 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
7203 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
7204 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
7205 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
7206 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
7207 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
7208 the user's input.</p>
7209
7210 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
7211 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
7212 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
7213 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
7214 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
7215 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
7216 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
7217 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
7218
7219 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
7220 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
7221 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
7222 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
7223 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
7224 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
7225 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
7226 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
7227
7228 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7229
7230 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
7231 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
7232 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
7233 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
7234 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
7235
7236 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7237 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7238
7239 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
7240 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
7241 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
7242 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
7243 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
7244 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
7245
7246 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
7247 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
7248 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
7249 well.</p>
7250
7251 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
7252 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
7253 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
7254 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
7255
7256 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
7257 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
7258 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
7259 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
7260 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
7261 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
7262 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
7263 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
7264 releases.</p>
7265
7266 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
7267 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
7268 is aimed at.
7269
7270 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
7271 around 2 years, and
7272 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
7273 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
7274 there was :</p>
7275
7276 <ol>
7277
7278   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
7279    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
7280    portion/syllabus given.</li>
7281
7282   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
7283    is in the syllabus.</li>
7284
7285   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
7286    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
7287    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
7288    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
7289    as recognizable as say a
7290    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
7291    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
7292    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
7293    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
7294    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
7295    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
7296
7297 </ol>
7298
7299       </div>
7300       <div class="tags">
7301
7302
7303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7304
7305
7306       </div>
7307     </div>
7308     <div class="padding"></div>
7309
7310     <div class="entry">
7311       <div class="title">
7312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
7313       </div>
7314       <div class="date">
7315          7th April 2015
7316       </div>
7317       <div class="body">
7318         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
7319 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
7320 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
7321
7322 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
7323 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
7324 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
7325 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
7326 part of my involvement with the
7327 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
7328 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
7329 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
7330 Hackathon with our friends
7331 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
7332 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
7333 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
7334 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
7335
7336 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
7337 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
7338
7339       </div>
7340       <div class="tags">
7341
7342
7343         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
7344
7345
7346       </div>
7347     </div>
7348     <div class="padding"></div>
7349
7350     <div class="entry">
7351       <div class="title">
7352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
7353       </div>
7354       <div class="date">
7355          4th April 2015
7356       </div>
7357       <div class="body">
7358         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
7359 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7360 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7361 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
7362 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
7363 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
7364 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
7365 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
7366 project pages.  You can also check out the
7367 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
7368 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7369 and HTML version available in the
7370 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
7371 directory</a>.</p>
7372
7373 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
7374 you find any.</p>
7375
7376       </div>
7377       <div class="tags">
7378
7379
7380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7381
7382
7383       </div>
7384     </div>
7385     <div class="padding"></div>
7386
7387     <div class="entry">
7388       <div class="title">
7389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
7390       </div>
7391       <div class="date">
7392          9th March 2015
7393       </div>
7394       <div class="body">
7395         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
7396 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
7397 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
7398 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
7399 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
7400 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
7401 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
7402 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
7403 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
7404 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
7405 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
7406 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
7407 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
7408 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
7409
7410 <p>The list of NUUG videos
7411 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
7412 include things like a
7413 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
7414 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
7415 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
7416 re-implementation</a>, the
7417 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
7418 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
7419 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
7420 video</A> and many others.</p>
7421
7422 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
7423 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
7424 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
7425 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
7426 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
7427 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
7428 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
7429 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
7430 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
7431 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
7432
7433 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
7434 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
7435 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
7436 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
7437 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
7438 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
7439 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
7440 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
7441 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
7442 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
7443
7444       </div>
7445       <div class="tags">
7446
7447
7448         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7449
7450
7451       </div>
7452     </div>
7453     <div class="padding"></div>
7454
7455     <div class="entry">
7456       <div class="title">
7457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
7458       </div>
7459       <div class="date">
7460         28th February 2015
7461       </div>
7462       <div class="body">
7463         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
7464 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
7465 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
7466 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
7467 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
7468 made for
7469 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
7470 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
7471 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
7472 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
7473 a friend have
7474 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
7475 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
7476 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
7477 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
7478 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
7479 it happen ourselves.
7480 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
7481 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
7482 is.</p>
7483
7484 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
7485 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
7486
7487       </div>
7488       <div class="tags">
7489
7490
7491         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7492
7493
7494       </div>
7495     </div>
7496     <div class="padding"></div>
7497
7498     <div class="entry">
7499       <div class="title">
7500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
7501       </div>
7502       <div class="date">
7503         25th February 2015
7504       </div>
7505       <div class="body">
7506         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
7507 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
7508 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
7509 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
7510 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
7511 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
7512 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
7513 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
7514 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
7515 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
7516 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
7517 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
7518 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
7519 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
7520 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
7521 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
7522 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
7523
7524 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
7525 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
7526 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
7527 with VLC.</p>
7528
7529 <ul>
7530   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
7531   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
7532 </ul>
7533
7534 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
7535 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
7536 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
7537 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
7538 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
7539 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
7540 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
7541
7542 <blockquote><pre>
7543 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
7544  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
7545  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
7546 </pre></blockquote>
7547
7548 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
7549 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
7550 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
7551 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
7552
7553       </div>
7554       <div class="tags">
7555
7556
7557         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7558
7559
7560       </div>
7561     </div>
7562     <div class="padding"></div>
7563
7564     <div class="entry">
7565       <div class="title">
7566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
7567       </div>
7568       <div class="date">
7569         10th February 2015
7570       </div>
7571       <div class="body">
7572         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
7573 that
7574 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
7575 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
7576 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
7577 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
7578 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
7579 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
7580 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
7581 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
7582 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
7583 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
7584 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
7585 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
7586 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
7587 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
7588 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
7589
7590 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
7591 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
7592 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
7593 controversy about these scanners.</p>
7594
7595 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
7596 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
7597 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
7598
7599       </div>
7600       <div class="tags">
7601
7602
7603         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
7604
7605
7606       </div>
7607     </div>
7608     <div class="padding"></div>
7609
7610     <div class="entry">
7611       <div class="title">
7612         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
7613       </div>
7614       <div class="date">
7615          8th February 2015
7616       </div>
7617       <div class="body">
7618         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
7619 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
7620 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
7621 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
7622 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
7623 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
7624 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
7625 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
7626 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
7627 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
7628 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
7629 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
7630
7631 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
7632 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
7633 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
7634 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
7635
7636 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
7637 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
7638 distribute the TV content.  The
7639 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
7640 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
7641 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
7642 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
7643 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
7644 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
7645 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
7646 following activity, we now have the schedule
7647 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
7648 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
7649 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
7650 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
7651
7652 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
7653 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
7654 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
7655 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
7656 streams are working as they should.</p>
7657
7658       </div>
7659       <div class="tags">
7660
7661
7662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7663
7664
7665       </div>
7666     </div>
7667     <div class="padding"></div>
7668
7669     <div class="entry">
7670       <div class="title">
7671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
7672       </div>
7673       <div class="date">
7674         12th January 2015
7675       </div>
7676       <div class="body">
7677         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
7678 Foundation</a> announced a new video
7679 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
7680 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
7681 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
7682 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
7683 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
7684 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
7685
7686 <p>But today I was told that
7687 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
7688 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
7689 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
7690 available in
7691 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
7692 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
7693 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
7694
7695 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
7696 Libreplanet
7697 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
7698 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
7699
7700       </div>
7701       <div class="tags">
7702
7703
7704         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7705
7706
7707       </div>
7708     </div>
7709     <div class="padding"></div>
7710
7711     <div class="entry">
7712       <div class="title">
7713         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
7714       </div>
7715       <div class="date">
7716         30th December 2014
7717       </div>
7718       <div class="body">
7719         <p>I am very happy that we in the
7720 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
7721 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
7722 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
7723 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
7724 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
7725 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
7726 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
7727 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
7728 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
7729 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
7730
7731 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
7732 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
7733 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
7734 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
7735 reports in public.</p>
7736
7737       </div>
7738       <div class="tags">
7739
7740
7741         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7742
7743
7744       </div>
7745     </div>
7746     <div class="padding"></div>
7747
7748     <div class="entry">
7749       <div class="title">
7750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
7751       </div>
7752       <div class="date">
7753         19th December 2014
7754       </div>
7755       <div class="body">
7756         <p>So, Sony caved in
7757 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
7758 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
7759 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
7760 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
7761 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
7762 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
7763 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
7764 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
7765 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
7766 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
7767 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
7768 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
7769 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
7770
7771 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
7772 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
7773 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
7774 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
7775
7776 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
7777 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
7778 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
7779 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
7780 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
7781 income. :)</p>
7782
7783       </div>
7784       <div class="tags">
7785
7786
7787         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7788
7789
7790       </div>
7791     </div>
7792     <div class="padding"></div>
7793
7794     <div class="entry">
7795       <div class="title">
7796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
7797       </div>
7798       <div class="date">
7799         22nd November 2014
7800       </div>
7801       <div class="body">
7802         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
7803 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
7804 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
7805 courtesy of
7806 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
7807 Schubert</a> and
7808 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
7809 McVittie</a>.
7810
7811 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
7812 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
7813 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
7814 you upgrade:</p>
7815
7816 <p><blockquote><pre>
7817 Package: systemd-sysv
7818 Pin: release o=Debian
7819 Pin-Priority: -1
7820 </pre></blockquote><p>
7821
7822 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
7823 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
7824 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
7825 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
7826 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
7827
7828 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
7829 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
7830 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
7831 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
7832 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
7833 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
7834
7835 <p><blockquote><pre>
7836 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
7837 </pre></blockquote><p>
7838
7839 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
7840
7841 <p><blockquote><pre>
7842 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
7843 </pre></blockquote><p>
7844
7845 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
7846 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
7847
7848 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
7849 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
7850 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
7851 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
7852 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
7853 Jessie is released.</p>
7854
7855 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
7856 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
7857 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
7858 line.</p>
7859
7860       </div>
7861       <div class="tags">
7862
7863
7864         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>.
7865
7866
7867       </div>
7868     </div>
7869     <div class="padding"></div>
7870
7871     <div class="entry">
7872       <div class="title">
7873         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
7874       </div>
7875       <div class="date">
7876         10th November 2014
7877       </div>
7878       <div class="body">
7879         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
7880 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
7881 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
7882
7883 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
7884 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
7885 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
7886 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
7887 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
7888 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
7889 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
7890 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
7891 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
7892 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
7893 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
7894 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
7895 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
7896 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
7897 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
7898
7899 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
7900 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
7901 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
7902 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
7903 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
7904 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
7905 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
7906 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
7907 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
7908 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
7909 were fairly easy, and
7910 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
7911 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
7912 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
7913 useful approach.</p>
7914
7915 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
7916 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
7917 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
7918 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
7919 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
7920 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
7921 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
7922 this:</p>
7923
7924 <p><blockquote><pre>
7925 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
7926   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
7927 </pre></blockquote></p>
7928
7929 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
7930 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
7931
7932 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
7933 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
7934 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
7935 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
7936 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
7937 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
7938 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
7939 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
7940 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
7941 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
7942 system.</p>
7943
7944 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
7945 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
7946 SMTorP. :)</p>
7947
7948       </div>
7949       <div class="tags">
7950
7951
7952         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7953
7954
7955       </div>
7956     </div>
7957     <div class="padding"></div>
7958
7959     <div class="entry">
7960       <div class="title">
7961         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
7962       </div>
7963       <div class="date">
7964         27th October 2014
7965       </div>
7966       <div class="body">
7967         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
7968 sent out
7969 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
7970 announcement</a>:</p>
7971
7972 <pre>
7973 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
7974 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
7975
7976 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
7977 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
7978 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
7979 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
7980 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
7981 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
7982 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
7983
7984 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
7985 installation instructions are available, including detailed
7986 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
7987 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
7988 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
7989 of at least 5 characters!
7990
7991  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
7992
7993 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
7994 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
7995 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
7996 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
7997 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
7998
7999 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
8000 mostly in Germany and Norway.
8001
8002 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
8003 ===============================
8004
8005 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
8006 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
8007 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
8008 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
8009 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
8010 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
8011 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
8012 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
8013 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
8014 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
8015 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
8016 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
8017 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
8018 environment.
8019
8020  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
8021  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
8022
8023 Full release notes and manual
8024 =============================
8025
8026 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
8027 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
8028 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
8029 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
8030 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
8031
8032  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
8033  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
8034
8035 Where to get it
8036 ---------------
8037
8038 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
8039
8040  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
8041  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
8042  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
8043
8044 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
8045
8046 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
8047 ===============================================================================
8048
8049
8050 Installation changes
8051 --------------------
8052
8053  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
8054
8055 Software updates
8056 ----------------
8057
8058 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
8059
8060  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
8061  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
8062    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
8063    choose one of the others see manual.)
8064  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
8065  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
8066  * GOsa 2.7.4
8067  * LTSP 5.5.4
8068  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
8069  * new boot framework: systemd
8070  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
8071  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
8072  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
8073  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
8074  * golearn 0.9
8075  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
8076  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
8077  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
8078    installation.
8079  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
8080    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
8081
8082  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
8083  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
8084
8085 Fixed bugs
8086 ----------
8087
8088  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
8089    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
8090    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
8091  * and many others.
8092
8093 Documentation and translation updates
8094 -------------------------------------
8095
8096  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
8097    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
8098    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
8099
8100 Other changes
8101 -------------
8102
8103  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
8104    server takes more time.
8105  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
8106    doesn't work.
8107
8108 Regressions / known problems
8109 ----------------------------
8110
8111  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
8112    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
8113    and Debian bug #762103).
8114  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
8115    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
8116  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
8117    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
8118    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
8119
8120 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
8121
8122  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
8123
8124 How to report bugs
8125 ------------------
8126
8127 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
8128
8129 About Debian
8130 ============
8131
8132 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
8133 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
8134 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
8135 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
8136 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
8137 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
8138 operating system.
8139
8140 Contact Information
8141 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
8142 mail to press@debian.org.
8143
8144  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
8145 </pre>
8146
8147       </div>
8148       <div class="tags">
8149
8150
8151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8152
8153
8154       </div>
8155     </div>
8156     <div class="padding"></div>
8157
8158     <div class="entry">
8159       <div class="title">
8160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
8161       </div>
8162       <div class="date">
8163         23rd October 2014
8164       </div>
8165       <div class="body">
8166         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
8167 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
8168 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
8169 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
8170 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
8171 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
8172 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
8173 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
8174 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
8175 live.</p>
8176
8177 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
8178 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
8179 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
8180 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
8181 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
8182 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
8183 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
8184 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
8185
8186       </div>
8187       <div class="tags">
8188
8189
8190         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8191
8192
8193       </div>
8194     </div>
8195     <div class="padding"></div>
8196
8197     <div class="entry">
8198       <div class="title">
8199         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
8200       </div>
8201       <div class="date">
8202         22nd October 2014
8203       </div>
8204       <div class="body">
8205         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
8206 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
8207 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
8208 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
8209 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
8210 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
8211 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
8212 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
8213 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
8214 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
8215 lists I recently took over:</p>
8216
8217 <p><blockquote><pre>
8218 % time listadmin xiph
8219 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
8220 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
8221
8222 real    0m1.709s
8223 user    0m0.232s
8224 sys     0m0.012s
8225 %
8226 </pre></blockquote></p>
8227
8228 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
8229 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
8230 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
8231 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
8232 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
8233 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
8234 program.</p>
8235
8236 <p>If you install
8237 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
8238 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
8239 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
8240
8241 <p><blockquote><pre>
8242 username username@example.org
8243 spamlevel 23
8244 default discard
8245 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
8246
8247 password secret
8248 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
8249 mailman-list@lists.example.com
8250
8251 password hidden
8252 other-list@otherserver.example.org
8253 </pre></blockquote></p>
8254
8255 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
8256 learn the details.</p>
8257
8258 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
8259 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
8260 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
8261 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
8262
8263 <p><blockquote><pre>
8264 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
8265 </pre></blockquote></p>
8266
8267 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
8268 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
8269 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
8270 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
8271 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
8272 email.</p>
8273
8274 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
8275 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
8276 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
8277 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
8278 software.</p>
8279
8280 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8281 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8282 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8283
8284 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
8285 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
8286 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
8287 sure why.</p>
8288
8289       </div>
8290       <div class="tags">
8291
8292
8293         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
8294
8295
8296       </div>
8297     </div>
8298     <div class="padding"></div>
8299
8300     <div class="entry">
8301       <div class="title">
8302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
8303       </div>
8304       <div class="date">
8305         17th October 2014
8306       </div>
8307       <div class="body">
8308         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
8309 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
8310 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
8311 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
8312 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
8313 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
8314 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
8315
8316 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
8317 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
8318 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
8319 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
8320 of this story.)</p>
8321
8322 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
8323 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
8324 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
8325 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
8326 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
8327 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
8328 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
8329 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
8330 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
8331 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
8332
8333 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
8334 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
8335 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
8336 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
8337
8338 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
8339 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
8340
8341 <p><blockquote><pre>
8342 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
8343 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
8344 </pre></blockquote></p>
8345
8346 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
8347 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
8348 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
8349 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
8350 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
8351 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
8352 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
8353 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
8354
8355 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
8356 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
8357
8358 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
8359 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
8360 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
8361 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
8362 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
8363
8364 <p><blockquote><pre>
8365 Task: isenkram-packages
8366 Section: hardware
8367 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8368  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
8369  proposed.
8370 Test-new-install: show show
8371 Relevance: 8
8372 Packages: for-current-hardware
8373
8374 Task: isenkram-firmware
8375 Section: hardware
8376 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8377  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
8378  packages are proposed.
8379 Test-new-install: mark show
8380 Relevance: 8
8381 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
8382 </pre></blockquote></p>
8383
8384 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
8385 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
8386 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
8387 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
8388 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
8389
8390 <p><blockquote><pre>
8391 #!/bin/sh
8392 #
8393 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
8394 export PATH
8395 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
8396 </pre></blockquote></p>
8397
8398 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
8399 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
8400
8401 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
8402 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
8403 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
8404 install.</p>
8405
8406 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
8407 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
8408 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
8409
8410       </div>
8411       <div class="tags">
8412
8413
8414         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
8415
8416
8417       </div>
8418     </div>
8419     <div class="padding"></div>
8420
8421     <div class="entry">
8422       <div class="title">
8423         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
8424       </div>
8425       <div class="date">
8426          4th October 2014
8427       </div>
8428       <div class="body">
8429         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
8430 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
8431 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
8432 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
8433
8434 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
8435
8436 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
8437 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
8438 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
8439
8440       </div>
8441       <div class="tags">
8442
8443
8444         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>.
8445
8446
8447       </div>
8448     </div>
8449     <div class="padding"></div>
8450
8451     <div class="entry">
8452       <div class="title">
8453         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
8454       </div>
8455       <div class="date">
8456          4th October 2014
8457       </div>
8458       <div class="body">
8459         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
8460 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
8461 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
8462 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
8463 Dibb.</p>
8464
8465 <p>I just wrapped up
8466 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
8467 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
8468 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
8469 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
8470 0.17.</p>
8471
8472 <ul>
8473
8474  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
8475  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
8476    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
8477  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
8478  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
8479  <li>Fix include orders</li>
8480  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
8481  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
8482  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
8483    the palette size is the same.</li>
8484  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
8485  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
8486  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
8487  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
8488    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
8489
8490 </ul>
8491
8492 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
8493 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
8494 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
8495
8496       </div>
8497       <div class="tags">
8498
8499
8500         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8501
8502
8503       </div>
8504     </div>
8505     <div class="padding"></div>
8506
8507     <div class="entry">
8508       <div class="title">
8509         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
8510       </div>
8511       <div class="date">
8512         26th September 2014
8513       </div>
8514       <div class="body">
8515         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8516 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
8517 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
8518 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
8519 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
8520 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
8521 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
8522 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
8523 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
8524 future.  The
8525 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
8526 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
8527 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
8528 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
8529 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
8530
8531 <p>First, download the test ISO via
8532 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
8533 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
8534 or rsync (use
8535 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
8536 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
8537 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
8538 install with some tweaking.</p>
8539
8540 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
8541 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
8542
8543 <p><blockquote><pre>
8544 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
8545 </pre></blockquote></p>
8546
8547 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
8548 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
8549 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
8550 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
8551
8552 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
8553 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
8554 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
8555 your need.</p>
8556
8557 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
8558 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
8559 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
8560 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
8561 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
8562 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
8563 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
8564 days.</p>
8565
8566 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
8567 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
8568 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
8569 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
8570 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
8571 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
8572 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
8573 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
8574 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
8575
8576 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
8577 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
8578 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
8579
8580       </div>
8581       <div class="tags">
8582
8583
8584         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>.
8585
8586
8587       </div>
8588     </div>
8589     <div class="padding"></div>
8590
8591     <div class="entry">
8592       <div class="title">
8593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
8594       </div>
8595       <div class="date">
8596         25th September 2014
8597       </div>
8598       <div class="body">
8599         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
8600 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
8601 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
8602 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
8603 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
8604 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
8605 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
8606 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
8607 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
8608 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
8609 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
8610 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
8611 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
8612
8613 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
8614 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
8615 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
8616 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
8617 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
8618 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
8619 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
8620 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
8621 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
8622 list</a>. :)</p>
8623
8624       </div>
8625       <div class="tags">
8626
8627
8628         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8629
8630
8631       </div>
8632     </div>
8633     <div class="padding"></div>
8634
8635     <div class="entry">
8636       <div class="title">
8637         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
8638       </div>
8639       <div class="date">
8640         16th September 2014
8641       </div>
8642       <div class="body">
8643         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
8644 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
8645 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
8646 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
8647 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
8648 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
8649 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
8650 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
8651 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
8652 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
8653 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
8654 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
8655 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
8656 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
8657
8658 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
8659 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
8660 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
8661 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
8662 depend on the small and clever package
8663 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
8664 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
8665 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
8666 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
8667 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
8668 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
8669 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
8670 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
8671 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
8672 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
8673 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
8674
8675 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
8676 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
8677 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
8678 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
8679 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
8680 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
8681 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
8682 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
8683 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
8684 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
8685 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
8686 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
8687 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
8688 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
8689 dialog.</p>
8690
8691 <p><table>
8692
8693 <tr>
8694 <th>Machine/setup</th>
8695 <th>Original tasksel</th>
8696 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
8697 <th>Reduction</th>
8698 </tr>
8699
8700 <tr>
8701 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
8702 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
8703 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
8704 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
8705 </tr>
8706
8707 <tr>
8708 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
8709 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
8710 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
8711 <td>23 min 40%</td>
8712 </tr>
8713
8714 <tr>
8715 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
8716 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
8717 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
8718 <td>11 min 50%</td>
8719 </tr>
8720
8721 <tr>
8722 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
8723 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
8724 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
8725 <td>2 min 33%</td>
8726 </tr>
8727
8728 <tr>
8729 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
8730 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
8731 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
8732 <td>4 min 21%</td>
8733 </tr>
8734
8735 </table></p>
8736
8737 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
8738 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
8739 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
8740 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
8741 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
8742 installed.</p>
8743
8744 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
8745 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
8746 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
8747 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
8748 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
8749 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
8750 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
8751 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
8752 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
8753 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
8754 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
8755 for the entire installation.</p>
8756
8757 <p>I've implemented this in the
8758 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
8759 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
8760 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
8761 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
8762 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
8763
8764 <p><blockquote><pre>
8765 #!/bin/sh
8766 set -e
8767 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8768 info() {
8769     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
8770 }
8771 error() {
8772     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
8773 }
8774 override_install() {
8775     apt-install eatmydata || true
8776     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
8777         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8778             file=/usr/bin/$bin
8779             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
8780             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
8781                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
8782                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
8783                     > /target$file.edu
8784                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
8785                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8786                     --rename --quiet --add $file
8787                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
8788             else
8789                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
8790             fi
8791         done
8792     else
8793         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
8794     fi
8795 }
8796
8797 override_install
8798 </pre></blockquote></p>
8799
8800 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
8801 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
8802
8803 <p><blockquote><pre>
8804 #! /bin/sh -e
8805 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8806 error() {
8807     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
8808 }
8809 remove_install_override() {
8810     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8811         file=/usr/bin/$bin
8812         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
8813             rm /target$file
8814             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8815                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
8816             rm /target$file.edu
8817         else
8818             error "Missing divert for $file."
8819         fi
8820     done
8821     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
8822 }
8823
8824 remove_install_override
8825 </pre></blockquote></p>
8826
8827 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
8828 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
8829 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
8830
8831 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
8832 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
8833 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
8834 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
8835 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
8836 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
8837 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
8838 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
8839 everyone.</p>
8840
8841 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
8842 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
8843 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
8844 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
8845
8846 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
8847 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
8848 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
8849 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
8850 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
8851
8852 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
8853 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
8854 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
8855 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
8856 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
8857
8858       </div>
8859       <div class="tags">
8860
8861
8862         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8863
8864
8865       </div>
8866     </div>
8867     <div class="padding"></div>
8868
8869     <div class="entry">
8870       <div class="title">
8871         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
8872       </div>
8873       <div class="date">
8874         10th September 2014
8875       </div>
8876       <div class="body">
8877         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
8878 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
8879 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
8880 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
8881 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
8882 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
8883 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
8884 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
8885 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
8886 those problems are gone now.</p>
8887
8888 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
8889 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
8890 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
8891 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
8892 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
8893
8894 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
8895 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
8896 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
8897
8898 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
8899 line:</p>
8900
8901 <p><blockquote><pre>
8902 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
8903 </pre></blockquote></p>
8904
8905 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
8906 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
8907 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
8908 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
8909
8910 <p><blockquote><pre>
8911 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
8912 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
8913 %
8914 </pre></blockquote></p>
8915
8916 <p>Now if only
8917 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
8918 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
8919 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
8920 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
8921 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
8922 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
8923 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
8924 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
8925 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
8926
8927       </div>
8928       <div class="tags">
8929
8930
8931         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8932
8933
8934       </div>
8935     </div>
8936     <div class="padding"></div>
8937
8938     <div class="entry">
8939       <div class="title">
8940         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
8941       </div>
8942       <div class="date">
8943         25th August 2014
8944       </div>
8945       <div class="body">
8946         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
8947 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
8948 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
8949 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
8950 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
8951 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
8952 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
8953 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
8954 am not sure.
8955 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
8956 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
8957 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
8958 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
8959 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
8960 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
8961 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
8962 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
8963 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
8964 licenses are.</p>
8965
8966 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
8967 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
8968 end user</a>
8969 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
8970 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
8971
8972 <p><blockquote>
8973 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
8974 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
8975
8976 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
8977 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
8978 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
8979 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
8980 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
8981 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
8982 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
8983 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
8984 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
8985 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
8986 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
8987 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
8988 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
8989 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
8990 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
8991 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
8992 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
8993 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
8994
8995 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
8996 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
8997
8998 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
8999 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
9000 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
9001 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
9002 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
9003 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
9004 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
9005 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
9006 </blockquote></p>
9007
9008 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
9009 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
9010
9011 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
9012 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
9013
9014 <p><blockquote>
9015
9016 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
9017 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
9018 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
9019 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
9020 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
9021 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
9022 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
9023 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
9024 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
9025 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
9026 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
9027 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
9028
9029 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
9030 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
9031 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
9032 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
9033 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
9034 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
9035 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
9036 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
9037 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
9038 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
9039 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
9040 additional details.</p>
9041
9042 </blockquote></p>
9043
9044 <p>Some free software like
9045 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
9046 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
9047 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
9048 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
9049
9050       </div>
9051       <div class="tags">
9052
9053
9054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9055
9056
9057       </div>
9058     </div>
9059     <div class="padding"></div>
9060
9061     <div class="entry">
9062       <div class="title">
9063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
9064       </div>
9065       <div class="date">
9066         31st July 2014
9067       </div>
9068       <div class="body">
9069         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
9070 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9071 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
9072 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
9073 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
9074 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
9075
9076 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9077
9078 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
9079 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
9080 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
9081 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
9082 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
9083 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
9084 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
9085 works with Windows . :-(</p>
9086
9087 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
9088 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
9089 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
9090 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
9091 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
9092 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
9093
9094 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9095 project?</strong></p>
9096
9097 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
9098 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
9099 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
9100 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
9101 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
9102 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
9103 with this job.</p>
9104
9105 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9106 Edu?</strong></p>
9107
9108 <p>The independence.</p>
9109
9110 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
9111 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
9112 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
9113
9114 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
9115 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
9116 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
9117 working reliable. </p>
9118
9119 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
9120 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
9121 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
9122 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
9123 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
9124 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
9125 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
9126 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
9127
9128 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9129 Edu?</strong></p>
9130
9131 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
9132 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
9133 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
9134
9135 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9136
9137 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
9138 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
9139
9140 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9141 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9142
9143 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
9144 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
9145 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
9146 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
9147 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
9148 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
9149 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
9150
9151       </div>
9152       <div class="tags">
9153
9154
9155         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9156
9157
9158       </div>
9159     </div>
9160     <div class="padding"></div>
9161
9162     <div class="entry">
9163       <div class="title">
9164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
9165       </div>
9166       <div class="date">
9167         23rd July 2014
9168       </div>
9169       <div class="body">
9170         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
9171 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
9172 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
9173 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
9174 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
9175 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
9176 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
9177 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
9178 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
9179 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
9180 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
9181 the translation show this very well:</p>
9182
9183 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
9184
9185 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
9186 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
9187 project pages and the
9188 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
9189 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
9190 and HTML version available in the
9191 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
9192 directory</a>.</p>
9193
9194 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
9195 you find any.</p>
9196
9197       </div>
9198       <div class="tags">
9199
9200
9201         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9202
9203
9204       </div>
9205     </div>
9206     <div class="padding"></div>
9207
9208     <div class="entry">
9209       <div class="title">
9210         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
9211       </div>
9212       <div class="date">
9213         17th June 2014
9214       </div>
9215       <div class="body">
9216         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9217 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
9218 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
9219 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
9220 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
9221
9222 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
9223 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
9224 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
9225 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
9226 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
9227 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
9228 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
9229 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
9230 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
9231 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
9232 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
9233 goals.</p>
9234
9235 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
9236 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
9237 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
9238 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
9239 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
9240 chapters together into one large web page (aka
9241 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
9242 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
9243 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
9244 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
9245 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
9246 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
9247 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
9248 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
9249 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
9250 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
9251 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
9252 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
9253 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
9254 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
9255 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
9256 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
9257 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
9258 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
9259
9260 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
9261 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
9262 track the English original.  For this we use the
9263 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
9264 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
9265 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
9266 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
9267 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
9268 files), which the translations update with the native language
9269 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
9270 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
9271 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
9272 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
9273 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
9274 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
9275 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
9276 of the documentation.</p>
9277
9278 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
9279 recommend using
9280 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
9281 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
9282 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
9283 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
9284 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
9285 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
9286 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
9287 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
9288
9289 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
9290 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
9291 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
9292 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
9293 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
9294 translated images by storing translated versions in
9295 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
9296 package maintainers know more.</p>
9297
9298 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
9299 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
9300 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
9301 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
9302 PDF version</a> or the
9303 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
9304 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
9305 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
9306
9307 <p>To learn more, check out
9308 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
9309 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
9310 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
9311 manual on the wiki</a> and
9312 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
9313 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
9314
9315       </div>
9316       <div class="tags">
9317
9318
9319         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9320
9321
9322       </div>
9323     </div>
9324     <div class="padding"></div>
9325
9326     <div class="entry">
9327       <div class="title">
9328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
9329       </div>
9330       <div class="date">
9331         29th May 2014
9332       </div>
9333       <div class="body">
9334         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
9335 in my car, connected to
9336 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
9337 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
9338 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
9339 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
9340 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
9341 such car computer.</p>
9342
9343 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
9344
9345 <ul>
9346
9347  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
9348
9349  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
9350    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
9351    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
9352    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
9353    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
9354
9355  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
9356    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
9357    route.</li>
9358
9359  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
9360
9361  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
9362    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
9363    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
9364    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
9365    connection do not work.</li>
9366
9367  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
9368    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
9369
9370  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
9371    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
9372
9373  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
9374    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
9375
9376 </ul>
9377
9378 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
9379 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
9380
9381       </div>
9382       <div class="tags">
9383
9384
9385         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9386
9387
9388       </div>
9389     </div>
9390     <div class="padding"></div>
9391
9392     <div class="entry">
9393       <div class="title">
9394         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
9395       </div>
9396       <div class="date">
9397         29th April 2014
9398       </div>
9399       <div class="body">
9400         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
9401 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
9402 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
9403 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
9404 newer AVM2 format - see
9405 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
9406 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
9407 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
9408 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
9409 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
9410 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
9411 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
9412 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
9413 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
9414 sites do not work yet.</p>
9415
9416 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
9417 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
9418 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
9419 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
9420 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
9421 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
9422 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
9423 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
9424 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
9425 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
9426 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
9427
9428 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
9429 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
9430 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
9431 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
9432 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
9433 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
9434 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
9435
9436 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
9437 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
9438 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
9439 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
9440 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
9441
9442       </div>
9443       <div class="tags">
9444
9445
9446         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9447
9448
9449       </div>
9450     </div>
9451     <div class="padding"></div>
9452
9453     <div class="entry">
9454       <div class="title">
9455         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
9456       </div>
9457       <div class="date">
9458         23rd April 2014
9459       </div>
9460       <div class="body">
9461         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
9462 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
9463 So I implemented one, using
9464 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
9465 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
9466 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
9467 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
9468 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
9469 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
9470
9471 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
9472 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
9473 packages to install.  The first part is in
9474 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
9475 this:</p>
9476
9477 <p><blockquote><pre>
9478 Task: isenkram
9479 Section: hardware
9480 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
9481  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
9482  proposed.
9483 Test-new-install: mark show
9484 Relevance: 8
9485 Packages: for-current-hardware
9486 </pre></blockquote></p>
9487
9488 <p>The second part is in
9489 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
9490 this:</p>
9491
9492 <p><blockquote><pre>
9493 #!/bin/sh
9494 #
9495 (
9496     isenkram-lookup
9497     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
9498 ) | sort -u
9499 </pre></blockquote></p>
9500
9501 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
9502 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
9503 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
9504 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
9505 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
9506 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
9507
9508 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
9509 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
9510 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
9511 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
9512 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
9513 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
9514 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
9515 the python-apt code (bug
9516 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
9517 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
9518 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
9519 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
9520 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
9521 unstable today.</p>
9522
9523 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
9524 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
9525 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
9526 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
9527 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
9528 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
9529 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
9530 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
9531 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
9532
9533 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
9534 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
9535 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
9536 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
9537 package.  See also
9538 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
9539 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
9540 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
9541 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
9542
9543       </div>
9544       <div class="tags">
9545
9546
9547         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>.
9548
9549
9550       </div>
9551     </div>
9552     <div class="padding"></div>
9553
9554     <div class="entry">
9555       <div class="title">
9556         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
9557       </div>
9558       <div class="date">
9559         15th April 2014
9560       </div>
9561       <div class="body">
9562         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
9563 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
9564 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
9565 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
9566 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
9567 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
9568
9569 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
9570 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
9571 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
9572 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
9573 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
9574 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
9575 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
9576
9577 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
9578 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
9579 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
9580 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
9581 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
9582 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
9583 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
9584 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
9585 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
9586 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
9587 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
9588 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
9589
9590 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
9591 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
9592 become root:</p>
9593
9594 <p><pre>
9595 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
9596   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
9597   u-boot-tools
9598 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
9599   freedom-maker
9600 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
9601 </pre></p>
9602
9603 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
9604 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
9605 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
9606 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
9607 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
9608 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
9609 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
9610 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
9611
9612 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
9613 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
9614 the preseed values:</p>
9615
9616 <p><pre>
9617 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
9618 </pre></p>
9619
9620 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
9621 it still work.</p>
9622
9623 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
9624 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
9625 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
9626 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
9627 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
9628 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
9629 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
9630
9631 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
9632 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
9633 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
9634 irc.debian.org)</a> and
9635 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9636 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
9637
9638       </div>
9639       <div class="tags">
9640
9641
9642         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>.
9643
9644
9645       </div>
9646     </div>
9647     <div class="padding"></div>
9648
9649     <div class="entry">
9650       <div class="title">
9651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
9652       </div>
9653       <div class="date">
9654          9th April 2014
9655       </div>
9656       <div class="body">
9657         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
9658 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
9659 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
9660 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
9661 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
9662 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
9663 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
9664 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
9665 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
9666 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
9667 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
9668 have looked at a system called
9669 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
9670 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
9671
9672 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
9673 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
9674 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
9675 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
9676 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
9677 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
9678 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
9679 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
9680 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
9681 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
9682 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
9683 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
9684 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
9685
9686 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
9687 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
9688 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
9689 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
9690 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
9691 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
9692 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
9693 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
9694 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
9695 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
9696 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
9697 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
9698 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
9699 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
9700 account.</p>
9701
9702 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
9703 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
9704 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
9705 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
9706 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
9707 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
9708 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
9709
9710 <p><blockquote><pre>
9711 [s3c]
9712 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9713 backend-login: API-login
9714 backend-password: API-password
9715 fs-passphrase: local-password
9716 </pre></blockquote></p>
9717
9718 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
9719 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
9720 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
9721 details and password to create it:</p>
9722
9723 <p><blockquote><pre>
9724 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
9725 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9726   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9727 Enter backend login:
9728 Enter backend password:
9729 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
9730 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
9731 Enter encryption password:
9732 Confirm encryption password:
9733 Generating random encryption key...
9734 Creating metadata tables...
9735 Dumping metadata...
9736 ..objects..
9737 ..blocks..
9738 ..inodes..
9739 ..inode_blocks..
9740 ..symlink_targets..
9741 ..names..
9742 ..contents..
9743 ..ext_attributes..
9744 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9745 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
9746 # </pre></blockquote></p>
9747
9748 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
9749
9750 <p><blockquote><pre>
9751 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9752   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
9753 Using 4 upload threads.
9754 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
9755 Reading metadata...
9756 ..objects..
9757 ..blocks..
9758 ..inodes..
9759 ..inode_blocks..
9760 ..symlink_targets..
9761 ..names..
9762 ..contents..
9763 ..ext_attributes..
9764 Mounting filesystem...
9765 # df -h /s3ql
9766 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
9767 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
9768 #
9769 </pre></blockquote></p>
9770
9771 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
9772 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
9773 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
9774 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
9775 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
9776 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
9777
9778 <p><blockquote><pre>
9779 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
9780 #
9781 </pre></blockquote></p>
9782
9783 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
9784 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
9785 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
9786 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
9787 file system:</p>
9788
9789 <p><blockquote><pre>
9790 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9791 Using cached metadata.
9792 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
9793 Checking DB integrity...
9794 Creating temporary extra indices...
9795 Checking lost+found...
9796 Checking cached objects...
9797 Checking names (refcounts)...
9798 Checking contents (names)...
9799 Checking contents (inodes)...
9800 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
9801 Checking objects (reference counts)...
9802 Checking objects (backend)...
9803 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
9804 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
9805 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
9806 Checking objects (sizes)...
9807 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
9808 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
9809 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
9810 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
9811 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
9812 Checking inodes (sizes)...
9813 Checking extended attributes (names)...
9814 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
9815 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
9816 Checking directory reachability...
9817 Checking unix conventions...
9818 Checking referential integrity...
9819 Dropping temporary indices...
9820 Backing up old metadata...
9821 Dumping metadata...
9822 ..objects..
9823 ..blocks..
9824 ..inodes..
9825 ..inode_blocks..
9826 ..symlink_targets..
9827 ..names..
9828 ..contents..
9829 ..ext_attributes..
9830 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9831 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
9832 #
9833 </pre></blockquote></p>
9834
9835 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
9836 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
9837 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
9838 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
9839 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
9840 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
9841 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
9842 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
9843 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
9844 working set.</p>
9845
9846 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
9847 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
9848 busy:</p>
9849
9850 <p><blockquote><pre>
9851 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9852   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
9853 Using 8 upload threads.
9854 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
9855 #
9856 </pre></blockquote></p>
9857
9858 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
9859 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
9860 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
9861 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
9862 s3qlctrl:
9863
9864 <p><blockquote><pre>
9865 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
9866 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
9867 #
9868 </pre></blockquote></p>
9869
9870 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
9871 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
9872 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
9873 a report:</p>
9874
9875 <p><blockquote><pre>
9876 # s3qlstat /s3ql
9877 Directory entries:    9141
9878 Inodes:               9143
9879 Data blocks:          8851
9880 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
9881 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
9882 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
9883 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
9884 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
9885 #
9886 </pre></blockquote></p>
9887
9888 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
9889 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
9890 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
9891 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
9892 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
9893 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
9894 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
9895 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
9896 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
9897 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
9898 best.</p>
9899
9900 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
9901 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
9902 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
9903 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
9904 poster is titled
9905 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
9906 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
9907 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
9908 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
9909 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
9910
9911 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
9912 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
9913 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
9914 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
9915 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
9916 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
9917 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
9918 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
9919
9920 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
9921 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
9922 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
9923 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
9924 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
9925 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
9926 only read from it.</p>
9927
9928 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9929 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9930 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9931
9932       </div>
9933       <div class="tags">
9934
9935
9936         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9937
9938
9939       </div>
9940     </div>
9941     <div class="padding"></div>
9942
9943     <div class="entry">
9944       <div class="title">
9945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
9946       </div>
9947       <div class="date">
9948          1st April 2014
9949       </div>
9950       <div class="body">
9951         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
9952 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
9953 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
9954 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
9955 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
9956 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
9957 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
9958 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
9959 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
9960 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
9961 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
9962 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
9963 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
9964
9965 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
9966 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
9967 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
9968 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
9969 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
9970 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
9971 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
9972 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
9973 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
9974 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
9975 Linux.</p>
9976
9977 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
9978 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
9979 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
9980 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
9981 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
9982 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
9983 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
9984 Windows before metro).</p>
9985
9986 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
9987 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
9988 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
9989 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
9990 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
9991 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
9992 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
9993 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
9994 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
9995 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
9996 old Windows binaries, check it out by
9997 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
9998 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
9999 image.</p>
10000
10001       </div>
10002       <div class="tags">
10003
10004
10005         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
10006
10007
10008       </div>
10009     </div>
10010     <div class="padding"></div>
10011
10012     <div class="entry">
10013       <div class="title">
10014         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
10015       </div>
10016       <div class="date">
10017         30th March 2014
10018       </div>
10019       <div class="body">
10020         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10021 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
10022 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
10023 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
10024 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
10025
10026 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10027
10028 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
10029 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
10030 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
10031 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
10032 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
10033
10034 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
10035 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
10036 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
10037
10038 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
10039 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
10040 hunger.</p>
10041
10042 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
10043 project?</strong></p>
10044
10045 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
10046 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
10047 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
10048 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
10049 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
10050 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
10051 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
10052 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
10053 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
10054 running.  I just loved it.</p>
10055
10056 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10057 Edu?</strong></p>
10058
10059 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
10060 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
10061 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
10062 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
10063 be made of steel.</p>
10064
10065 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10066 Edu?</strong></p>
10067
10068 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
10069
10070 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
10071 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
10072 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
10073 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
10074 or dropped.</p>
10075
10076 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
10077 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
10078 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
10079 discourage many people too.</p>
10080
10081 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10082
10083 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
10084 Virtualbox.</p>
10085
10086
10087 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10088 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10089
10090 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
10091 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
10092 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
10093 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
10094 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
10095 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
10096 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
10097 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
10098 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
10099
10100       </div>
10101       <div class="tags">
10102
10103
10104         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10105
10106
10107       </div>
10108     </div>
10109     <div class="padding"></div>
10110
10111     <div class="entry">
10112       <div class="title">
10113         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
10114       </div>
10115       <div class="date">
10116         25th March 2014
10117       </div>
10118       <div class="body">
10119         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
10120 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
10121 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
10122 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
10123 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
10124 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
10125 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
10126 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
10127 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
10128
10129 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
10130 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
10131 looked a given way.  Such
10132 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
10133 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
10134 called a
10135 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
10136 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
10137 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
10138 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
10139 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
10140 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
10141 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
10142 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
10143 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
10144 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
10145 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
10146 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
10147 There are several commercial services around providing such
10148 timestamping.  A quick search for
10149 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
10150 service</a>" pointed me to at least
10151 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
10152 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
10153 Vadis</a>,
10154 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
10155 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
10156 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
10157 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
10158
10159 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
10160 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
10161 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
10162 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
10163 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
10164 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
10165 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
10166 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
10167 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
10168 Greifswald.</p>
10169
10170 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
10171 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
10172 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
10173 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
10174 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
10175
10176 <p><blockquote><pre>
10177 #!/bin/sh
10178 set -e
10179 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
10180 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
10181 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
10182 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
10183 cafile=chain.txt
10184 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
10185     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
10186 fi
10187 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
10188     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
10189 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
10190 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
10191 base64 < "$resfile"
10192 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
10193 </pre></blockquote></p>
10194
10195 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
10196 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
10197 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
10198 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
10199 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
10200 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
10201 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
10202 changed.</p>
10203
10204 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
10205 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
10206 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
10207 to set up?</p>
10208
10209       </div>
10210       <div class="tags">
10211
10212
10213         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10214
10215
10216       </div>
10217     </div>
10218     <div class="padding"></div>
10219
10220     <div class="entry">
10221       <div class="title">
10222         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
10223       </div>
10224       <div class="date">
10225         21st March 2014
10226       </div>
10227       <div class="body">
10228         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
10229 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
10230 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
10231 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
10232 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
10233 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
10234 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
10235
10236 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
10237 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
10238 tried using
10239 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
10240 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
10241 and program
10242 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
10243 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
10244 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
10245 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
10246 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
10247 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
10248 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
10249 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
10250 this method.</p>
10251
10252 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
10253 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
10254 problem is
10255 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
10256 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
10257 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
10258 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
10259 DVD structures, as the python library
10260 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
10261 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
10262 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
10263 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
10264 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
10265 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
10266
10267 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
10268 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
10269
10270       </div>
10271       <div class="tags">
10272
10273
10274         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10275
10276
10277       </div>
10278     </div>
10279     <div class="padding"></div>
10280
10281     <div class="entry">
10282       <div class="title">
10283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
10284       </div>
10285       <div class="date">
10286         14th March 2014
10287       </div>
10288       <div class="body">
10289         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
10290 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
10291 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
10292 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
10293 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
10294 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
10295 release (0.2).</p>
10296
10297 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
10298 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
10299 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
10300 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
10301 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
10302 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
10303 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
10304 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
10305 and build using
10306 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
10307 with a user with sudo access to become root:
10308
10309 <pre>
10310 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
10311   freedom-maker
10312 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
10313   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
10314   u-boot-tools
10315 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
10316 </pre>
10317
10318 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
10319 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
10320 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
10321 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
10322 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
10323 kpartx call.</p>
10324
10325 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
10326 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
10327 the preseed values:</p>
10328
10329 <pre>
10330 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
10331 </pre>
10332
10333 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
10334 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
10335 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
10336 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
10337 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
10338 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
10339
10340 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
10341 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
10342 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
10343 irc.debian.org)</a> and
10344 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
10345 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
10346
10347       </div>
10348       <div class="tags">
10349
10350
10351         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>.
10352
10353
10354       </div>
10355     </div>
10356     <div class="padding"></div>
10357
10358     <div class="entry">
10359       <div class="title">
10360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10361       </div>
10362       <div class="date">
10363         12th March 2014
10364       </div>
10365       <div class="body">
10366         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
10367 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
10368 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
10369 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
10370 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
10371 document this better when one of the customers of
10372 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
10373 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
10374 get this working are the following:</p>
10375
10376 <p><ol>
10377
10378 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
10379 example host here.</li>
10380
10381 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
10382 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
10383
10384 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
10385 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
10386
10387 </ol></p>
10388
10389 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
10390 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
10391 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
10392 started).</p>
10393
10394 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
10395 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
10396
10397 <p><blockquote><pre>
10398 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
10399 Export list for nas-server:
10400 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
10401 root@tjener:~#
10402 </pre></blockquote></p>
10403
10404 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
10405 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
10406 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
10407 NFS access.</p>
10408
10409 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
10410 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
10411 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
10412
10413 <p><blockquote><pre>
10414 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10415 </pre></blockquote></p>
10416
10417 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
10418 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
10419 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
10420 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
10421
10422 <p><blockquote><pre>
10423 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10424 objectClass: automount
10425 cn: nas-server
10426 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10427
10428 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10429 objectClass: top
10430 objectClass: automountMap
10431 ou: auto.nas-server
10432
10433 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10434 objectClass: automount
10435 cn: /
10436 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
10437 </pre></blockquote></p>
10438
10439 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
10440 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
10441 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
10442
10443 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
10444 the storage server directly by just visiting the
10445 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
10446 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
10447
10448       </div>
10449       <div class="tags">
10450
10451
10452         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10453
10454
10455       </div>
10456     </div>
10457     <div class="padding"></div>
10458
10459     <div class="entry">
10460       <div class="title">
10461         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
10462       </div>
10463       <div class="date">
10464         22nd February 2014
10465       </div>
10466       <div class="body">
10467         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
10468 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
10469 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
10470 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
10471 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
10472 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
10473 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
10474 proper home since then.</p>
10475
10476 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
10477 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
10478 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
10479 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
10480 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
10481
10482 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
10483 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
10484 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
10485 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
10486 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
10487 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
10488 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
10489 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
10490 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
10491
10492       </div>
10493       <div class="tags">
10494
10495
10496         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>.
10497
10498
10499       </div>
10500     </div>
10501     <div class="padding"></div>
10502
10503     <div class="entry">
10504       <div class="title">
10505         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
10506       </div>
10507       <div class="date">
10508          3rd February 2014
10509       </div>
10510       <div class="body">
10511         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
10512 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
10513 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
10514 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
10515 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
10516 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
10517 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
10518 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
10519 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
10520
10521 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
10522 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
10523 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
10524 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
10525 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
10526 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
10527
10528 <p><blockquote><pre>
10529 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
10530 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
10531 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
10532 dhclient /dev/eth0
10533 </pre></blockquote></p>
10534
10535 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
10536 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
10537 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
10538
10539 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
10540 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
10541 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
10542 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
10543 side.</p>
10544
10545 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
10546 stuff:</p>
10547
10548 <p><blockquote><pre>
10549 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
10550 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
10551 EOF
10552 apt-get update
10553 apt-get dist-upgrade
10554 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
10555     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
10556 update-alternatives --config runsystem
10557 </pre></blockquote></p>
10558
10559 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
10560 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
10561 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
10562 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
10563 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
10564 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
10565 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
10566 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
10567 ssh instead.
10568
10569 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
10570 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
10571 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
10572 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
10573 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
10574 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
10575
10576 <p><blockquote><pre>
10577 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
10578 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
10579 EOF
10580 </pre></blockquote></p>
10581
10582 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
10583 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
10584 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
10585 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
10586
10587 <p><blockquote><pre>
10588 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
10589 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
10590 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
10591 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
10592 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
10593 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
10594 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
10595 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
10596 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
10597 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
10598 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
10599 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
10600 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
10601 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
10602 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
10603 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
10604 #
10605 </pre></blockquote></p>
10606
10607 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
10608 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
10609 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
10610 command line stuff.<p>
10611
10612       </div>
10613       <div class="tags">
10614
10615
10616         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>.
10617
10618
10619       </div>
10620     </div>
10621     <div class="padding"></div>
10622
10623     <div class="entry">
10624       <div class="title">
10625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
10626       </div>
10627       <div class="date">
10628         29th January 2014
10629       </div>
10630       <div class="body">
10631         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
10632 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
10633 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
10634 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
10635 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
10636 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
10637 investigated in
10638 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
10639 from December 2013, in the article
10640 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
10641 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
10642 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
10643 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
10644 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
10645 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
10646 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
10647 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
10648
10649 <p><blockquote>
10650 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
10651 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
10652 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
10653 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
10654 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
10655 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
10656 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
10657 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
10658 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
10659 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
10660 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
10661 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
10662
10663 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
10664 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
10665 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
10666 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
10667 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
10668 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
10669 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
10670 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
10671 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
10672 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
10673 </blockquote><p>
10674
10675 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
10676 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
10677 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
10678 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
10679 summarized like this:</p>
10680
10681 <p><blockquote>
10682 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
10683 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
10684 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
10685 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
10686 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
10687 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
10688 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
10689 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
10690 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
10691 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
10692 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
10693 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
10694 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
10695 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
10696 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
10697 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
10698 </blockquote></p>
10699
10700 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
10701 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
10702 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
10703 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
10704
10705 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10706 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10707 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10708
10709       </div>
10710       <div class="tags">
10711
10712
10713         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
10714
10715
10716       </div>
10717     </div>
10718     <div class="padding"></div>
10719
10720     <div class="entry">
10721       <div class="title">
10722         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
10723       </div>
10724       <div class="date">
10725         14th January 2014
10726       </div>
10727       <div class="body">
10728         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
10729 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
10730 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
10731 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
10732 the source.  The company behind it provide
10733 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
10734 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
10735 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
10736 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
10737 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
10738 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
10739 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
10740 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
10741 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
10742 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
10743 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
10744 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
10745 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
10746 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
10747 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
10748 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
10749 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
10750 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
10751 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
10752
10753 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
10754
10755 <ul>
10756
10757   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
10758   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
10759   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
10760
10761 </ul>
10762
10763 <p>You can
10764 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
10765 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
10766 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
10767 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
10768 include a test suite check.</p>
10769
10770       </div>
10771       <div class="tags">
10772
10773
10774         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10775
10776
10777       </div>
10778     </div>
10779     <div class="padding"></div>
10780
10781     <div class="entry">
10782       <div class="title">
10783         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
10784       </div>
10785       <div class="date">
10786         25th December 2013
10787       </div>
10788       <div class="body">
10789         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10790 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
10791 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
10792 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
10793 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
10794 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
10795 George</a>.</p>
10796
10797 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
10798
10799 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10800
10801 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
10802 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
10803 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
10804 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
10805 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
10806 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
10807
10808 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
10809 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
10810 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
10811 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
10812 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
10813 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
10814 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
10815 to help building another school's informational education concept from
10816 scratch.</p>
10817
10818 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
10819 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
10820 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
10821
10822 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
10823 and cycling.</p>
10824
10825 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
10826 project?</strong></p>
10827
10828 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
10829 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
10830 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
10831 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
10832 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
10833 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
10834
10835 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
10836 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
10837 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
10838 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
10839 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
10840 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
10841 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
10842 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
10843 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
10844
10845 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
10846 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
10847 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
10848 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
10849
10850 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10851 Edu?</strong></p>
10852
10853 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
10854 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
10855 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
10856 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
10857 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
10858 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
10859 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
10860 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
10861 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
10862 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
10863 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
10864 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
10865 that it rocks!</p>
10866
10867 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
10868 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
10869 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
10870 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
10871 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
10872 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
10873 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
10874
10875 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10876 Edu?</strong></p>
10877
10878 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
10879 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
10880 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
10881 can list a few points about that:</p>
10882
10883 <ul>
10884
10885  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
10886  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
10887  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
10888
10889 </ul>
10890
10891 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
10892
10893 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10894
10895 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
10896 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
10897 year.</p>
10898
10899 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
10900 run text tools. I use
10901 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
10902 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
10903 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
10904 based full-featured student management software with the two),
10905 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
10906 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
10907 coloured world called the WWW, I use
10908 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
10909 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
10910 e-mail.</p>
10911
10912 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
10913 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
10914 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
10915 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
10916 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
10917 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
10918 Facebook now ;).</p>
10919
10920 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10921 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10922
10923 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
10924 side is what I have experienced.</p>
10925
10926 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
10927 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
10928 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
10929 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
10930 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
10931 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
10932 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
10933 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
10934 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
10935 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
10936 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
10937 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
10938 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
10939 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
10940 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
10941 plain criminal.</p>
10942
10943 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
10944 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
10945 founded an association named
10946 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
10947 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
10948 area of free and open source software, for example the
10949 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
10950 Teckids and are the youth programme of
10951 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
10952 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
10953 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
10954 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
10955 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
10956 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
10957
10958 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
10959 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
10960 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
10961 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
10962 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
10963 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
10964 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
10965 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
10966 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
10967 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
10968 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
10969 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
10970
10971 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
10972 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
10973 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
10974 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
10975
10976 <!--
10977
10978 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
10979
10980 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
10981 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
10982
10983  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
10984    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
10985    of the decision makers above;
10986  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
10987    knowledge about free software
10988
10989 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
10990
10991 -->
10992
10993       </div>
10994       <div class="tags">
10995
10996
10997         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10998
10999
11000       </div>
11001     </div>
11002     <div class="padding"></div>
11003
11004     <div class="entry">
11005       <div class="title">
11006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
11007       </div>
11008       <div class="date">
11009          6th December 2013
11010       </div>
11011       <div class="body">
11012         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
11013 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11014 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
11015 had a new school administrator show up on
11016 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
11017 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
11018 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
11019 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
11020 Germany a few years ago.</p>
11021
11022 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11023
11024 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
11025 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
11026 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
11027 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
11028
11029 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
11030 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
11031 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
11032 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
11033 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
11034 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
11035 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
11036 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
11037 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
11038
11039 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11040 project?</strong></p>
11041
11042 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
11043 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
11044 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
11045 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
11046
11047 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11048 Edu?</strong></p>
11049
11050 <ul>
11051   <li>Quick installation,</li>
11052   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
11053   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
11054   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
11055     single company,</li>
11056   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
11057     experience and problem solutions.</li>
11058 </ul>
11059
11060 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11061 Edu?</strong></p>
11062
11063 <ul>
11064   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
11065   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
11066   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
11067   working again reliably.
11068
11069   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
11070   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
11071   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
11072   as their base.
11073
11074   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
11075   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
11076   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
11077   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
11078   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
11079   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
11080
11081   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
11082   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
11083   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
11084   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
11085   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
11086   schemes.</li>
11087
11088   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
11089   compared to Debian.</li>
11090
11091 </ul>
11092
11093 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
11094 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
11095 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
11096 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
11097
11098 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11099
11100 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
11101 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
11102 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
11103 programming languages for teaching.</p>
11104
11105 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11106 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11107
11108 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
11109
11110 <ul>
11111
11112   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
11113     teaching and learning.</li>
11114
11115   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
11116     home, and at their working place without running into license or
11117     conversion problems.</li>
11118
11119   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
11120     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
11121     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
11122     science, not products.</li>
11123
11124   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
11125     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
11126
11127 </ul>
11128
11129       </div>
11130       <div class="tags">
11131
11132
11133         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11134
11135
11136       </div>
11137     </div>
11138     <div class="padding"></div>
11139
11140     <div class="entry">
11141       <div class="title">
11142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
11143       </div>
11144       <div class="date">
11145         30th November 2013
11146       </div>
11147       <div class="body">
11148         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
11149 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
11150 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
11151 experiment with interesting network technology, the
11152 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
11153 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
11154 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
11155 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
11156 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
11157 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
11158 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
11159 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
11160 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
11161 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
11162 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
11163 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
11164 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
11165 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
11166 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
11167 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
11168
11169       </div>
11170       <div class="tags">
11171
11172
11173         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11174
11175
11176       </div>
11177     </div>
11178     <div class="padding"></div>
11179
11180     <div class="entry">
11181       <div class="title">
11182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
11183       </div>
11184       <div class="date">
11185         24th November 2013
11186       </div>
11187       <div class="body">
11188         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
11189 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
11190 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
11191 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
11192 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
11193 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
11194 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
11195 is working on.  I checked the
11196 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
11197 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
11198 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
11199 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
11200 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
11201 These are the release notes:</p>
11202
11203 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
11204
11205 <ul>
11206
11207   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
11208    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
11209    up.</li>
11210
11211   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
11212
11213   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
11214    Matthias Klose.</li>
11215
11216   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
11217    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
11218
11219   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
11220    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
11221    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
11222
11223 </ul>
11224
11225 <p>You can
11226 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
11227 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
11228 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
11229 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
11230 include a testsuite check.</p>
11231
11232       </div>
11233       <div class="tags">
11234
11235
11236         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11237
11238
11239       </div>
11240     </div>
11241     <div class="padding"></div>
11242
11243     <div class="entry">
11244       <div class="title">
11245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
11246       </div>
11247       <div class="date">
11248         21st November 2013
11249       </div>
11250       <div class="body">
11251         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
11252 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
11253 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
11254 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
11255 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
11256 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
11257 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
11258 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
11259 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
11260 TED talk
11261 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
11262 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
11263 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
11264
11265 <blockquote>
11266
11267 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
11268 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
11269 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
11270 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
11271 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
11272 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
11273 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
11274 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
11275 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
11276 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
11277 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
11278
11279 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
11280 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
11281 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
11282
11283 </blockquote>
11284
11285 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
11286 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
11287 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
11288 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
11289 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
11290 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
11291 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
11292 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
11293 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
11294
11295       </div>
11296       <div class="tags">
11297
11298
11299         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
11300
11301
11302       </div>
11303     </div>
11304     <div class="padding"></div>
11305
11306     <div class="entry">
11307       <div class="title">
11308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
11309       </div>
11310       <div class="date">
11311         13th November 2013
11312       </div>
11313       <div class="body">
11314         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
11315 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
11316 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
11317 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
11318 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
11319 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
11320 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
11321 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
11322 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
11323 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
11324 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
11325 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
11326 right away. :)</p>
11327
11328       </div>
11329       <div class="tags">
11330
11331
11332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11333
11334
11335       </div>
11336     </div>
11337     <div class="padding"></div>
11338
11339     <div class="entry">
11340       <div class="title">
11341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
11342       </div>
11343       <div class="date">
11344         10th November 2013
11345       </div>
11346       <div class="body">
11347         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
11348 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
11349 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
11350 MR3040 as a mesh node using
11351 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
11352
11353 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
11354 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
11355 and downloaded
11356 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
11357 recommended firmware image</a>
11358 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
11359 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
11360 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
11361 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
11362 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
11363
11364 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
11365 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
11366 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
11367 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
11368 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
11369 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
11370 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
11371 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
11372 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
11373 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
11374 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
11375 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
11376 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
11377
11378 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
11379 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
11380 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
11381 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
11382 them:</p>
11383
11384 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
11385
11386 <pre>
11387
11388 config interface 'loopback'
11389         option ifname 'lo'
11390         option proto 'static'
11391         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
11392         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
11393
11394 config globals 'globals'
11395         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
11396
11397 config interface 'lan'
11398         option ifname 'eth0'
11399         option type 'bridge'
11400         option proto 'dhcp'
11401         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
11402         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
11403         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
11404         option ip6assign '60'
11405
11406 config interface 'mesh'
11407         option ifname 'adhoc0'
11408         option mtu '1528'
11409         option proto 'batadv'
11410         option mesh 'bat0'
11411 </pre>
11412
11413 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
11414 <pre>
11415
11416 config wifi-device 'radio0'
11417         option type 'mac80211'
11418         option channel '11'
11419         option hwmode '11ng'
11420         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
11421         option htmode 'HT20'
11422         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
11423         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
11424         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
11425         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
11426         option disabled '0'
11427
11428 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
11429         option device 'radio0'
11430         option ifname 'adhoc0'
11431         option network 'mesh'
11432         option encryption 'none'
11433         option mode 'adhoc'
11434         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
11435         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
11436 </pre>
11437 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
11438 <pre>
11439
11440 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
11441         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
11442         option 'aggregated_ogms'
11443         option 'ap_isolation'
11444         option 'bonding'
11445         option 'fragmentation'
11446         option 'gw_bandwidth'
11447         option 'gw_mode'
11448         option 'gw_sel_class'
11449         option 'log_level'
11450         option 'orig_interval'
11451         option 'vis_mode'
11452         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
11453         option 'distributed_arp_table'
11454         option 'network_coding'
11455         option 'hop_penalty'
11456
11457 # yet another batX instance
11458 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
11459 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
11460 </pre>
11461
11462 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
11463 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
11464 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
11465
11466       </div>
11467       <div class="tags">
11468
11469
11470         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11471
11472
11473       </div>
11474     </div>
11475     <div class="padding"></div>
11476
11477     <div class="entry">
11478       <div class="title">
11479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
11480       </div>
11481       <div class="date">
11482          2nd November 2013
11483       </div>
11484       <div class="body">
11485         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
11486 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
11487 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
11488 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
11489 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
11490
11491 <p><pre>
11492 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
11493 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
11494 # Provides:          rsyslog
11495 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
11496 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
11497 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
11498 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
11499 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
11500 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
11501 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
11502 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
11503 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
11504 ### END INIT INFO
11505 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
11506 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
11507 </pre></p>
11508
11509 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
11510 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
11511 info/comments.</p>
11512
11513 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
11514 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
11515
11516 <p><pre>
11517 #!/bin/sh
11518
11519 # Define LSB log_* functions.
11520 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
11521 # and status_of_proc is working.
11522 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
11523
11524 #
11525 # Function that starts the daemon/service
11526
11527 #
11528 do_start()
11529 {
11530         # Return
11531         #   0 if daemon has been started
11532         #   1 if daemon was already running
11533         #   2 if daemon could not be started
11534         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
11535                 || return 1
11536         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
11537                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
11538                 || return 2
11539         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
11540         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
11541         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
11542 }
11543
11544 #
11545 # Function that stops the daemon/service
11546 #
11547 do_stop()
11548 {
11549         # Return
11550         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
11551         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
11552         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
11553         #   other if a failure occurred
11554         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
11555         RETVAL="$?"
11556         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
11557         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
11558         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
11559         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
11560         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
11561         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
11562         # sleep for some time.
11563         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
11564         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
11565         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
11566         rm -f $PIDFILE
11567         return "$RETVAL"
11568 }
11569
11570 #
11571 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
11572 #
11573 do_reload() {
11574         #
11575         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
11576         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
11577         # then implement that here.
11578         #
11579         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
11580         return 0
11581 }
11582
11583 SCRIPTNAME=$1
11584 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
11585 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
11586 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
11587     script="$1"
11588     shift
11589     . $script
11590 else
11591     exit 0
11592 fi
11593
11594 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
11595 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
11596
11597 # Exit if the package is not installed
11598 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
11599
11600 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
11601 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
11602
11603 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
11604 . /lib/init/vars.sh
11605
11606 case "$1" in
11607   start)
11608         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
11609         do_start
11610         case "$?" in
11611                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
11612                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
11613         esac
11614         ;;
11615   stop)
11616         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
11617         do_stop
11618         case "$?" in
11619                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
11620                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
11621         esac
11622         ;;
11623   status)
11624         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
11625         ;;
11626   #reload|force-reload)
11627         #
11628         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
11629         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
11630         #
11631         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
11632         #do_reload
11633         #log_end_msg $?
11634         #;;
11635   restart|force-reload)
11636         #
11637         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
11638         # 'force-reload' alias
11639         #
11640         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
11641         do_stop
11642         case "$?" in
11643           0|1)
11644                 do_start
11645                 case "$?" in
11646                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
11647                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
11648                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
11649                 esac
11650                 ;;
11651           *)
11652                 # Failed to stop
11653                 log_end_msg 1
11654                 ;;
11655         esac
11656         ;;
11657   *)
11658         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
11659         exit 3
11660         ;;
11661 esac
11662
11663 :
11664 </pre></p>
11665
11666 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
11667 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
11668 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
11669 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
11670
11671 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
11672 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
11673 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
11674 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
11675 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
11676
11677       </div>
11678       <div class="tags">
11679
11680
11681         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>.
11682
11683
11684       </div>
11685     </div>
11686     <div class="padding"></div>
11687
11688     <div class="entry">
11689       <div class="title">
11690         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
11691       </div>
11692       <div class="date">
11693          1st November 2013
11694       </div>
11695       <div class="body">
11696         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
11697 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
11698 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
11699 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
11700 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
11701 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
11702 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
11703 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
11704 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
11705 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
11706 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
11707 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
11708
11709 <p>The source is now available from
11710 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
11711
11712       </div>
11713       <div class="tags">
11714
11715
11716         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11717
11718
11719       </div>
11720     </div>
11721     <div class="padding"></div>
11722
11723     <div class="entry">
11724       <div class="title">
11725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
11726       </div>
11727       <div class="date">
11728         27th October 2013
11729       </div>
11730       <div class="body">
11731         <p>The
11732 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
11733 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
11734 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
11735 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
11736 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
11737 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
11738 of a plan to simplify the build system for
11739 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
11740 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
11741 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
11742 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
11743 Raspberry Pi.</p>
11744
11745 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
11746 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
11747 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
11748 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
11749 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
11750 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
11751 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
11752 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
11753 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
11754 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
11755 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
11756 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
11757 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
11758 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
11759 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
11760 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
11761 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
11762 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
11763 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
11764 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
11765 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
11766 available from
11767 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
11768 upstream project page</a>.</p>
11769
11770 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
11771 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
11772 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
11773 list:</p>
11774
11775 <p><pre>
11776 #!/bin/sh
11777 set -e # Exit on first error
11778 rootdir="$1"
11779 cd "$rootdir"
11780 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
11781 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
11782 EOF
11783 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
11784 # install a kernel somewhere too.
11785 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
11786     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
11787 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
11788 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
11789 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
11790 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
11791 </pre></p>
11792
11793 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
11794 to build the image:</p>
11795
11796 <pre>
11797 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
11798     --variant minbase \
11799     --arch armel \
11800     --distribution jessie \
11801     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
11802     --image test.img \
11803     --size 600M \
11804     --bootsize 64M \
11805     --boottype vfat \
11806     --log-level debug \
11807     --verbose \
11808     --no-kernel \
11809     --no-extlinux \
11810     --root-password raspberry \
11811     --hostname raspberrypi \
11812     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
11813     --customize `pwd`/customize \
11814     --package netbase \
11815     --package git-core \
11816     --package binutils \
11817     --package ca-certificates \
11818     --package wget \
11819     --package kmod
11820 </pre></p>
11821
11822 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
11823 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
11824 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
11825 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
11826 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
11827 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
11828 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
11829
11830 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
11831 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
11832 build dependency list.</p>
11833
11834 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
11835 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
11836 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
11837 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
11838
11839       </div>
11840       <div class="tags">
11841
11842
11843         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
11844
11845
11846       </div>
11847     </div>
11848     <div class="padding"></div>
11849
11850     <div class="entry">
11851       <div class="title">
11852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
11853       </div>
11854       <div class="date">
11855         21st October 2013
11856       </div>
11857       <div class="body">
11858         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
11859 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
11860 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
11861 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
11862 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
11863 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
11864 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
11865 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
11866
11867 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
11868 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
11869 instead, I started playing with a
11870 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
11871 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
11872 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
11873 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
11874 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
11875 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
11876 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
11877 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
11878 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
11879 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
11880 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
11881 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
11882 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
11883 every client on the local network.</p>
11884
11885 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
11886 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
11887 and a script
11888 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
11889 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
11890 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
11891 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
11892 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
11893 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
11894 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
11895 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
11896 support.</p>
11897
11898 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
11899 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
11900
11901 <p><pre>
11902 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
11903     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
11904 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
11905 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
11906 %
11907 </pre></p>
11908
11909 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
11910 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
11911 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
11912 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
11913 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
11914 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
11915
11916 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
11917 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
11918 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
11919
11920 <p><table>
11921
11922 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
11923 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
11924 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
11925 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
11926 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
11927 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
11928
11929 </table></p>
11930
11931 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
11932 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
11933 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
11934 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
11935 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
11936 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
11937 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
11938
11939       </div>
11940       <div class="tags">
11941
11942
11943         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11944
11945
11946       </div>
11947     </div>
11948     <div class="padding"></div>
11949
11950     <div class="entry">
11951       <div class="title">
11952         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
11953       </div>
11954       <div class="date">
11955         19th October 2013
11956       </div>
11957       <div class="body">
11958         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
11959 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
11960 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
11961 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
11962 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
11963 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
11964 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
11965 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
11966
11967       </div>
11968       <div class="tags">
11969
11970
11971         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11972
11973
11974       </div>
11975     </div>
11976     <div class="padding"></div>
11977
11978     <div class="entry">
11979       <div class="title">
11980         <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>
11981       </div>
11982       <div class="date">
11983         15th October 2013
11984       </div>
11985       <div class="body">
11986         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
11987 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
11988 these. :)</p>
11989
11990 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
11991 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
11992 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
11993 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
11994 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
11995 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
11996 hope you will to. :)</p>
11997
11998 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
11999 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
12000 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
12001 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
12002 donated.  Are you next?</p>
12003
12004 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
12005 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
12006 statement under the heading
12007 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
12008 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
12009 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
12010 too.</p>
12011
12012       </div>
12013       <div class="tags">
12014
12015
12016         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>.
12017
12018
12019       </div>
12020     </div>
12021     <div class="padding"></div>
12022
12023     <div class="entry">
12024       <div class="title">
12025         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
12026       </div>
12027       <div class="date">
12028         11th October 2013
12029       </div>
12030       <div class="body">
12031         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
12032 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
12033 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
12034 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
12035 successful examples like
12036 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
12037 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
12038 (see
12039 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
12040 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
12041 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
12042 can be seen from their
12043 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
12044 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
12045 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
12046 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
12047 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
12048
12049 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
12050 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
12051 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
12052 my recent involvement in
12053 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
12054 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
12055 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
12056 when possible, given that most communication between people are
12057 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
12058 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
12059 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
12060 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
12061 important over the years.</p>
12062
12063 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
12064 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
12065 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
12066 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
12067 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
12068 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
12069 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
12070 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
12071 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
12072 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
12073 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
12074 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
12075 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
12076 speakers about this talk (from
12077 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
12078
12079 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
12080
12081 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
12082 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
12083 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
12084 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
12085 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
12086 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
12087 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
12088 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
12089 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
12090 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
12091 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
12092 that project (from
12093 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
12094
12095 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
12096
12097 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
12098 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
12099 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
12100 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
12101 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
12102 based community mesh networks.</p>
12103
12104 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
12105 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
12106 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
12107 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
12108 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
12109 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
12110 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
12111 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
12112 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
12113
12114 <p><table>
12115 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
12116 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
12117 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
12118 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
12119 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
12120 </table></p>
12121
12122 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
12123 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
12124 VillageTelco about
12125 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
12126 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
12127 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
12128 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
12129 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
12130 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
12131
12132 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
12133 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
12134 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
12135 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
12136
12137 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
12138 us on IRC, either channel
12139 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
12140 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
12141 irc.freenode.net.</p>
12142
12143 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
12144 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
12145 and Innovation called
12146 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
12147 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
12148 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
12149 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
12150 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
12151 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
12152 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
12153 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
12154
12155 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
12156 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
12157 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
12158 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
12159 mesh system.</p>
12160
12161       </div>
12162       <div class="tags">
12163
12164
12165         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12166
12167
12168       </div>
12169     </div>
12170     <div class="padding"></div>
12171
12172     <div class="entry">
12173       <div class="title">
12174         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
12175       </div>
12176       <div class="date">
12177          8th October 2013
12178       </div>
12179       <div class="body">
12180         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
12181 Salvador had published a
12182 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
12183 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
12184 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
12185 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
12186 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
12187 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
12188 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
12189 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
12190 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
12191 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
12192 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
12193 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
12194 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
12195 computers without hard drives by installing one central
12196 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
12197
12198 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
12199
12200 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
12201
12202 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
12203 me know. :)</p>
12204
12205       </div>
12206       <div class="tags">
12207
12208
12209         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12210
12211
12212       </div>
12213     </div>
12214     <div class="padding"></div>
12215
12216     <div class="entry">
12217       <div class="title">
12218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
12219       </div>
12220       <div class="date">
12221         29th September 2013
12222       </div>
12223       <div class="body">
12224         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
12225 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
12226 complete announcement text can be found at
12227 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
12228 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
12229
12230 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
12231 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
12232 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
12233 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
12234
12235       </div>
12236       <div class="tags">
12237
12238
12239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12240
12241
12242       </div>
12243     </div>
12244     <div class="padding"></div>
12245
12246     <div class="entry">
12247       <div class="title">
12248         <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>
12249       </div>
12250       <div class="date">
12251         27th September 2013
12252       </div>
12253       <div class="body">
12254         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
12255 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
12256 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
12257 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
12258
12259 <ul>
12260
12261 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
12262 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
12263
12264 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
12265 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
12266
12267 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
12268 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
12269 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
12270 (Youtube)</li>
12271
12272 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
12273 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
12274
12275 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
12276 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
12277
12278 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
12279 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
12280 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
12281
12282 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
12283 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
12284 (Youtube)</li>
12285
12286 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
12287 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
12288
12289 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
12290 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
12291
12292 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
12293 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
12294 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
12295
12296 </ul>
12297
12298 <p>A larger list is available from
12299 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
12300 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
12301
12302 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
12303 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
12304 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
12305 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
12306 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
12307 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
12308 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
12309 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
12310 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
12311 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
12312 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
12313
12314       </div>
12315       <div class="tags">
12316
12317
12318         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>.
12319
12320
12321       </div>
12322     </div>
12323     <div class="padding"></div>
12324
12325     <div class="entry">
12326       <div class="title">
12327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
12328       </div>
12329       <div class="date">
12330         16th September 2013
12331       </div>
12332       <div class="body">
12333         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
12334 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
12335
12336 <blockquote>
12337 <p>Hi,</p>
12338
12339 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
12340 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12341 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
12342
12343 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
12344 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
12345 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
12346 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
12347
12348 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
12349 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
12350
12351 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
12352 compared to beta1:</p>
12353
12354 <ul>
12355
12356 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
12357 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
12358 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
12359 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
12360 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
12361 main server.</li>
12362 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
12363 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
12364 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
12365 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
12366 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
12367
12368 </ul>
12369
12370 <p>Where to get it:</p>
12371
12372 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12373
12374 <ul>
12375 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
12376 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
12377 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
12378 </ul>
12379
12380 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
12381
12382 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
12383 <ul>
12384 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
12385 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
12386 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
12387 </ul>
12388
12389 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
12390
12391 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
12392 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
12393 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
12394 as the other isos.</p>
12395
12396 <p>How to report bugs</p>
12397
12398 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
12399 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
12400
12401
12402 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
12403
12404 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
12405 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
12406 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
12407 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
12408 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
12409 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
12410 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
12411 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
12412 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
12413 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
12414 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
12415 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
12416 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
12417
12418 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
12419 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
12420 Squeeze release.</p>
12421
12422 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
12423
12424 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
12425 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
12426 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
12427 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
12428 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
12429 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
12430 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
12431 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
12432 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
12433 directory.</p>
12434
12435
12436 <p>cheers,
12437 <br>        Holger</p>
12438 </blockquote>
12439
12440       </div>
12441       <div class="tags">
12442
12443
12444         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12445
12446
12447       </div>
12448     </div>
12449     <div class="padding"></div>
12450
12451     <div class="entry">
12452       <div class="title">
12453         <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>
12454       </div>
12455       <div class="date">
12456         10th September 2013
12457       </div>
12458       <div class="body">
12459         <p>I was introduced to the
12460 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
12461 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
12462 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
12463 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
12464 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
12465 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
12466 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
12467 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
12468
12469 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
12470 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
12471 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
12472 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
12473 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
12474
12475 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
12476 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
12477 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
12478 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
12479 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
12480 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
12481 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
12482 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
12483 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
12484 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
12485 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
12486 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
12487 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
12488 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
12489 missing in Debian).</p>
12490
12491 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
12492 scripts
12493 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
12494 and a administrative web interface
12495 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
12496 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
12497 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
12498 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
12499 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
12500 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
12501 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
12502 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
12503 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
12504 this is really working yet, see
12505 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
12506 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
12507 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
12508 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
12509 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
12510 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
12511 with lots of half baked features.</p>
12512
12513 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
12514 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
12515 at.</p>
12516
12517 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
12518
12519 <ol>
12520
12521 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
12522 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
12523 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
12524 to the Debian installer:<p>
12525 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
12526
12527 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
12528 install on.</li>
12529
12530 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
12531 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
12532
12533 </ol>
12534
12535 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
12536
12537 <ol>
12538
12539 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
12540 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
12541 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
12542 <pre>
12543 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
12544 </pre></li>
12545 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
12546 <pre>
12547 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
12548    apt-key add -
12549 apt-get update
12550 apt-get install freedombox-setup
12551 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
12552 </pre></li>
12553 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
12554
12555 </ol>
12556
12557 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
12558 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
12559 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
12560 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
12561 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
12562
12563 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
12564 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
12565 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
12566 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
12567
12568 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
12569 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
12570 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
12571 irc.debian.org and the
12572 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
12573 mailing list</a>.</p>
12574
12575 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
12576 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
12577 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
12578 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
12579 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
12580 default password is 'secret'.</p>
12581
12582       </div>
12583       <div class="tags">
12584
12585
12586         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>.
12587
12588
12589       </div>
12590     </div>
12591     <div class="padding"></div>
12592
12593     <div class="entry">
12594       <div class="title">
12595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
12596       </div>
12597       <div class="date">
12598         22nd August 2013
12599       </div>
12600       <div class="body">
12601         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
12602 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
12603 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
12604
12605 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
12606
12607 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12608 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
12609
12610 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12611
12612 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
12613 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
12614 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
12615 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
12616 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
12617 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
12618 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
12619 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
12620 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
12621 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
12622 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
12623 desktop contains
12624 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
12625 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
12626 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
12627 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
12628
12629 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
12630 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
12631 release.</p>
12632
12633 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
12634 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
12635 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
12636 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
12637 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
12638 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
12639 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
12640 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
12641 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
12642 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
12643 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
12644
12645 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12646
12647 <ul>
12648
12649 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
12650     work also without a attached tty.</li>
12651 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
12652     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
12653     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
12654     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
12655     required).</li>
12656
12657 </ul>
12658
12659 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
12660
12661 <ul>
12662
12663 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
12664 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
12665 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
12666 stick ISO image.</li>
12667 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
12668 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
12669 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
12670     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
12671     cope with this.</li>
12672 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
12673 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
12674     empty password hashes.</li>
12675 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
12676     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
12677     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
12678
12679 </ul>
12680
12681 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
12682
12683 <ul>
12684
12685 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
12686     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
12687 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
12688     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
12689
12690 </ul>
12691
12692 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
12693
12694 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12695
12696 <ul>
12697
12698 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
12699
12700 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
12701
12702 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
12703
12704 </ul>
12705
12706 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
12707 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
12708
12709 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
12710
12711 <ul>
12712
12713 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
12714 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
12715 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
12716
12717 </ul>
12718
12719 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
12720 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
12721
12722
12723 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
12724
12725 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
12726
12727       </div>
12728       <div class="tags">
12729
12730
12731         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12732
12733
12734       </div>
12735     </div>
12736     <div class="padding"></div>
12737
12738     <div class="entry">
12739       <div class="title">
12740         <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>
12741       </div>
12742       <div class="date">
12743         18th August 2013
12744       </div>
12745       <div class="body">
12746         <p>Earlier, I reported about
12747 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
12748 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
12749 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
12750 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
12751 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
12752 currently on the disk.</p>
12753
12754 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
12755 <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>
12756 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
12757 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
12758 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
12759 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
12760 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
12761 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
12762 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
12763 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
12764 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
12765 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
12766 the broken disks.</p>
12767
12768       </div>
12769       <div class="tags">
12770
12771
12772         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>.
12773
12774
12775       </div>
12776     </div>
12777     <div class="padding"></div>
12778
12779     <div class="entry">
12780       <div class="title">
12781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
12782       </div>
12783       <div class="date">
12784          2nd August 2013
12785       </div>
12786       <div class="body">
12787         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
12788 have worked on a Norwegian
12789 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12790 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12791 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
12792 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
12793 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
12794 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
12795 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
12796 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
12797 progress of the translation:</p>
12798
12799 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
12800
12801 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
12802 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
12803 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
12804 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
12805 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
12806 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
12807 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
12808 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
12809 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
12810 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
12811 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
12812
12813 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12814 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12815 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12816 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12817 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12818 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
12819 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
12820 project files currently available from
12821 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12822
12823 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12824 the updated
12825 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12826 and
12827 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12828 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12829 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12830 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12831
12832       </div>
12833       <div class="tags">
12834
12835
12836         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12837
12838
12839       </div>
12840     </div>
12841     <div class="padding"></div>
12842
12843     <div class="entry">
12844       <div class="title">
12845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
12846       </div>
12847       <div class="date">
12848         27th July 2013
12849       </div>
12850       <div class="body">
12851         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
12852 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
12853
12854 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
12855 2013-07-27</strong></p>
12856
12857 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12858 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
12859
12860 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12861
12862 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
12863 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
12864 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
12865 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
12866 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
12867 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
12868 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
12869 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
12870 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
12871 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
12872 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
12873 desktop contains
12874 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
12875 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
12876 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
12877 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
12878
12879 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
12880 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
12881 Squeeze release.</p>
12882
12883 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
12884 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
12885 release.</p>
12886
12887 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12888
12889 <ul>
12890
12891 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
12892    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
12893 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
12894    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
12895    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
12896    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
12897    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
12898 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
12899 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
12900 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
12901    crash bugs.</li>
12902
12903 </ul>
12904
12905 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
12906
12907 <ul>
12908
12909 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
12910    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
12911 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
12912    netinst CD.</li>
12913 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
12914    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
12915 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
12916    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
12917    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
12918 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
12919    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
12920    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
12921 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
12922    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
12923    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
12924 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
12925    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
12926 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
12927
12928 </ul>
12929
12930 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
12931
12932 <ul>
12933
12934 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
12935 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
12936     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
12937 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
12938
12939 </ul>
12940
12941 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
12942
12943 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12944
12945 <ul>
12946
12947 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
12948
12949 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
12950
12951 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
12952
12953 </ul>
12954
12955 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
12956 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
12957
12958 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
12959
12960 <ul>
12961
12962 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
12963 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
12964 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
12965
12966 </ul>
12967
12968 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
12969 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
12970
12971
12972 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
12973
12974 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
12975
12976       </div>
12977       <div class="tags">
12978
12979
12980         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12981
12982
12983       </div>
12984     </div>
12985     <div class="padding"></div>
12986
12987     <div class="entry">
12988       <div class="title">
12989         <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>
12990       </div>
12991       <div class="date">
12992         17th July 2013
12993       </div>
12994       <div class="body">
12995         <p>Today I switched to
12996 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
12997 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
12998 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
12999 <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
13000 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
13001 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
13002 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
13003 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
13004 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
13005 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
13006 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
13007 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
13008 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
13009 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
13010 station from now on.</p>
13011
13012 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
13013 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
13014 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
13015 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
13016 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
13017 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
13018 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
13019 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
13020 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
13021 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
13022 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
13023 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
13024
13025 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
13026 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
13027 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
13028 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
13029 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
13030 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
13031 parameters are tuned:</p>
13032
13033 <ul>
13034
13035 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
13036     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
13037
13038 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
13039     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
13040     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
13041
13042 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
13043     systems.</li>
13044
13045 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
13046     /etc/fstab.</li>
13047
13048 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
13049
13050 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
13051     cron.daily).</li>
13052
13053 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
13054     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
13055
13056 </ul>
13057
13058 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
13059 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
13060 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
13061 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
13062 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
13063 from getting the data on the disk (see
13064 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
13065 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
13066 right thing to do.</p>
13067
13068 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
13069 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
13070 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
13071
13072 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
13073 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
13074 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
13075 instead of during my work.</p>
13076
13077 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
13078 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
13079
13080 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
13081 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
13082 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
13083
13084 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
13085 there.</p>
13086
13087 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
13088 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
13089 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
13090 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
13091 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
13092 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
13093 back.</p>
13094
13095       </div>
13096       <div class="tags">
13097
13098
13099         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>.
13100
13101
13102       </div>
13103     </div>
13104     <div class="padding"></div>
13105
13106     <div class="entry">
13107       <div class="title">
13108         <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>
13109       </div>
13110       <div class="date">
13111         10th July 2013
13112       </div>
13113       <div class="body">
13114         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
13115 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
13116 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
13117 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
13118 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
13119 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
13120 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
13121 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
13122
13123 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
13124 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
13125 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
13126 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
13127 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
13128 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
13129 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
13130 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
13131 lock up when I download a new
13132 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
13133 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
13134 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
13135
13136 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
13137 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
13138 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
13139 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
13140 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
13141 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
13142
13143 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
13144 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
13145 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
13146 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
13147 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
13148 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
13149
13150 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
13151 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
13152 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
13153 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
13154 exist).</p>
13155
13156       </div>
13157       <div class="tags">
13158
13159
13160         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>.
13161
13162
13163       </div>
13164     </div>
13165     <div class="padding"></div>
13166
13167     <div class="entry">
13168       <div class="title">
13169         <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>
13170       </div>
13171       <div class="date">
13172          9th July 2013
13173       </div>
13174       <div class="body">
13175         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
13176 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
13177 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
13178 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
13179 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13180 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
13181 Bitraf</a>.</p>
13182
13183 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
13184 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
13185 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
13186 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
13187 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
13188
13189       </div>
13190       <div class="tags">
13191
13192
13193         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>.
13194
13195
13196       </div>
13197     </div>
13198     <div class="padding"></div>
13199
13200     <div class="entry">
13201       <div class="title">
13202         <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>
13203       </div>
13204       <div class="date">
13205          5th July 2013
13206       </div>
13207       <div class="body">
13208         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
13209 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
13210 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
13211 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
13212 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
13213 ended up picking a
13214 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
13215 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
13216 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
13217 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
13218 on that below.</p>
13219
13220 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
13221 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
13222 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
13223 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
13224 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
13225 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
13226 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
13227 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
13228 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
13229
13230 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
13231 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
13232 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
13233 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
13234 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
13235 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
13236 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
13237
13238 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
13239 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
13240
13241 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
13242 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
13243 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
13244 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
13245 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
13246 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
13247 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
13248 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
13249 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
13250 kernel developers as
13251 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
13252 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
13253 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
13254 Lenovo forums, both for
13255 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
13256 2012-11-10</a> and for
13257 <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
13258 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
13259 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
13260 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
13261 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
13262 There is even a
13263 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
13264 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
13265 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
13266
13267 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
13268 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
13269 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
13270 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
13271 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
13272 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
13273 fixed. :)</p>
13274
13275       </div>
13276       <div class="tags">
13277
13278
13279         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>.
13280
13281
13282       </div>
13283     </div>
13284     <div class="padding"></div>
13285
13286     <div class="entry">
13287       <div class="title">
13288         <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>
13289       </div>
13290       <div class="date">
13291          4th July 2013
13292       </div>
13293       <div class="body">
13294         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
13295 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
13296 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
13297 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
13298 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
13299 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
13300 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
13301 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
13302 with an expencive door stop.</p>
13303
13304 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
13305 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
13306 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
13307 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
13308 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
13309 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
13310 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
13311
13312 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
13313 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
13314 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
13315 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
13316 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
13317 new laptop now. :)</p>
13318
13319 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
13320
13321       </div>
13322       <div class="tags">
13323
13324
13325         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>.
13326
13327
13328       </div>
13329     </div>
13330     <div class="padding"></div>
13331
13332     <div class="entry">
13333       <div class="title">
13334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
13335       </div>
13336       <div class="date">
13337          3rd July 2013
13338       </div>
13339       <div class="body">
13340         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
13341 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
13342
13343 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
13344 2013-07-03</strong></p>
13345
13346 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13347 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
13348
13349 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
13350
13351 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
13352 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
13353 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
13354 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
13355 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
13356 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
13357 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
13358 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
13359 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
13360 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
13361 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
13362 desktop contains
13363 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
13364 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
13365 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
13366 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
13367
13368 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
13369 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
13370 Squeeze release.</p>
13371
13372 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
13373 <ul>
13374   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
13375   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
13376     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
13377     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
13378   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
13379     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
13380     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
13381   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
13382     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
13383     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
13384     too.</li>
13385   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
13386     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
13387 </ul>
13388 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
13389 <ul>
13390   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
13391   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
13392   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
13393     up for some language options.</li>
13394   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
13395   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
13396   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
13397     d-i is doing it.</li>
13398   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
13399     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
13400   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
13401     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
13402     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
13403   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
13404     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
13405   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
13406   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
13407     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
13408   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
13409     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
13410 </ul>
13411 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
13412 <ul>
13413   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
13414     available yet (698840).</li>
13415   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
13416 </ul>
13417 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
13418
13419 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
13420 <ul>
13421   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
13422   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
13423   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
13424 </ul>
13425
13426 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
13427 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
13428
13429 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
13430 <ul>
13431   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
13432   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
13433   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
13434 </ul>
13435
13436 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
13437 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
13438
13439 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
13440
13441 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
13442
13443       </div>
13444       <div class="tags">
13445
13446
13447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13448
13449
13450       </div>
13451     </div>
13452     <div class="padding"></div>
13453
13454     <div class="entry">
13455       <div class="title">
13456         <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>
13457       </div>
13458       <div class="date">
13459         25th June 2013
13460       </div>
13461       <div class="body">
13462         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
13463 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
13464 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
13465 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
13466 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
13467 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
13468 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
13469 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
13470 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
13471 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
13472 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
13473
13474 <p><pre>
13475 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
13476 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
13477 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
13478 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
13479 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
13480 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
13481 firmware-ipw2x00
13482 firmware-ipw2x00
13483 Preconfiguring packages ...
13484 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
13485 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
13486 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
13487 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
13488 #
13489 </pre></p>
13490
13491 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
13492 printed instead:</p>
13493
13494 <p><pre>
13495 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
13496 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
13497 #
13498 </pre></p>
13499
13500 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
13501 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
13502
13503 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
13504 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
13505 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
13506 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
13507 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
13508 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
13509 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
13510 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
13511 machine.</p>
13512
13513 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
13514 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
13515 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
13516 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
13517 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
13518 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
13519
13520       </div>
13521       <div class="tags">
13522
13523
13524         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>.
13525
13526
13527       </div>
13528     </div>
13529     <div class="padding"></div>
13530
13531     <div class="entry">
13532       <div class="title">
13533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
13534       </div>
13535       <div class="date">
13536         22nd June 2013
13537       </div>
13538       <div class="body">
13539         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13540 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
13541 which check that services are running, working, and return the
13542 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
13543 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
13544 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
13545 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
13546 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
13547 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
13548
13549 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
13550 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
13551 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
13552 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
13553 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
13554 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
13555 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
13556 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
13557 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
13558 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
13559 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
13560 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
13561 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
13562 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
13563
13564 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
13565 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
13566 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
13567 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
13568 the problem.</p>
13569
13570 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
13571 please join us on
13572 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
13573 irc.debian.org</a> and the
13574 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
13575 list.</p>
13576
13577       </div>
13578       <div class="tags">
13579
13580
13581         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13582
13583
13584       </div>
13585     </div>
13586     <div class="padding"></div>
13587
13588     <div class="entry">
13589       <div class="title">
13590         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
13591       </div>
13592       <div class="date">
13593         17th June 2013
13594       </div>
13595       <div class="body">
13596         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13597 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
13598 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
13599 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
13600 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
13601 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
13602 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
13603 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
13604
13605 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13606
13607 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
13608 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
13609 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
13610 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
13611 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
13612 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
13613 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
13614 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
13615 field.</p>
13616
13617 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
13618 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
13619 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
13620 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
13621 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
13622 the only one we have in our country.</p>
13623
13624 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
13625 project?</strong></p>
13626
13627 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
13628 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
13629 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
13630 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
13631 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
13632 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
13633 ways to contribute.</p>
13634
13635 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
13636 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
13637 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
13638 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
13639 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
13640 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
13641 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
13642 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
13643 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
13644 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
13645
13646 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13647 Edu?</strong></p>
13648
13649 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
13650 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
13651 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
13652 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
13653 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
13654 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
13655 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
13656 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
13657
13658 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
13659 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
13660 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
13661 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
13662 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
13663 project.</p>
13664
13665 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
13666 Edu?</strong></p>
13667
13668 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
13669 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
13670 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
13671 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
13672 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
13673 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
13674 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
13675 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
13676 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
13677
13678 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
13679 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
13680 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
13681 on.</p>
13682
13683 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13684
13685 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
13686 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
13687 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
13688 Enlightenment project a lot!),
13689 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
13690 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
13691 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
13692 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
13693 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
13694
13695 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13696 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13697
13698 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
13699 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
13700 that:</p>
13701
13702 <ul>
13703
13704 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
13705
13706 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
13707     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
13708     of teenagers more?</li>
13709
13710 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
13711     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
13712     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
13713     them!)</li>
13714
13715 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
13716     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
13717     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
13718
13719 </ul>
13720
13721 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
13722 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
13723 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
13724 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
13725 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
13726
13727       </div>
13728       <div class="tags">
13729
13730
13731         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13732
13733
13734       </div>
13735     </div>
13736     <div class="padding"></div>
13737
13738     <div class="entry">
13739       <div class="title">
13740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
13741       </div>
13742       <div class="date">
13743         12th June 2013
13744       </div>
13745       <div class="body">
13746         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
13747 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13748 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
13749 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
13750 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
13751 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
13752
13753 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13754
13755 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
13756 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
13757 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
13758
13759 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
13760 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
13761 each other.</p>
13762
13763 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
13764 project?</strong></p>
13765
13766 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
13767 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
13768 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
13769 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
13770 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
13771 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
13772 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
13773 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
13774 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
13775 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
13776 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
13777 we'll get there one day.</p>
13778
13779 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
13780 Edu?</strong></p>
13781
13782 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
13783 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
13784 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
13785 very high quality work.</p>
13786
13787 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
13788 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
13789 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
13790 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
13791 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
13792
13793 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
13794 Edu?</strong></p>
13795
13796 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
13797 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
13798 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
13799
13800 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
13801 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
13802 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
13803 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
13804 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
13805 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
13806 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
13807 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
13808 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
13809 currently.</p>
13810
13811 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
13812 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
13813 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
13814 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
13815 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
13816 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
13817 autonomous.</p>
13818
13819 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13820
13821 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
13822 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
13823 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
13824 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
13825 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
13826
13827 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
13828 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
13829 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
13830 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
13831 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
13832 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
13833 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
13834 X.</p>
13835
13836 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
13837 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
13838 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
13839 it :p)
13840
13841 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13842 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13843
13844 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
13845 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
13846 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
13847 that.</p>
13848
13849 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
13850 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
13851 advantage of that.</p>
13852
13853 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
13854 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
13855 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
13856 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
13857 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
13858 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
13859 best solution for them.</p>
13860
13861 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
13862 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
13863 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
13864
13865       </div>
13866       <div class="tags">
13867
13868
13869         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13870
13871
13872       </div>
13873     </div>
13874     <div class="padding"></div>
13875
13876     <div class="entry">
13877       <div class="title">
13878         <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>
13879       </div>
13880       <div class="date">
13881         11th June 2013
13882       </div>
13883       <div class="body">
13884         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
13885 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
13886 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
13887 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
13888 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
13889 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
13890 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
13891 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
13892 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
13893 i915 driver used by the
13894 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
13895 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
13896
13897 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
13898 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
13899 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
13900 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
13901 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
13902
13903 <pre>
13904 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
13905 update-initramfs -u -k all
13906 </pre>
13907
13908 <p>Since March 2012 there is
13909 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
13910 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
13911 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
13912 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
13913 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
13914 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
13915 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
13916 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
13917 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
13918 number.</p>
13919
13920 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
13921 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
13922
13923 <p><pre>
13924 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
13925     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
13926     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
13927  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
13928  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
13929     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
13930  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
13931     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
13932  Latency: 0
13933  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
13934  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
13935  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
13936  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
13937  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
13938  Capabilities: <access denied>
13939  Kernel driver in use: i915
13940 </pre></p>
13941
13942 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
13943
13944 <p><pre>
13945 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
13946        ...
13947         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
13948         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
13949        ...
13950 }
13951 </pre></p>
13952
13953 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
13954 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
13955 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
13956 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
13957 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
13958 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
13959 yet shown up in
13960 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
13961 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
13962 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
13963 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
13964 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
13965 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
13966
13967 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
13968 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
13969 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
13970 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
13971 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
13972 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
13973 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
13974 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
13975 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
13976 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
13977 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
13978 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
13979
13980 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
13981 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
13982 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
13983 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
13984 backlight.</p>
13985
13986       </div>
13987       <div class="tags">
13988
13989
13990         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>.
13991
13992
13993       </div>
13994     </div>
13995     <div class="padding"></div>
13996
13997     <div class="entry">
13998       <div class="title">
13999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
14000       </div>
14001       <div class="date">
14002         10th June 2013
14003       </div>
14004       <div class="body">
14005         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
14006 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
14007
14008 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
14009 2013-06-10</strong></p>
14010
14011 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
14012 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
14013
14014 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
14015
14016 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
14017 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
14018 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
14019 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
14020 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
14021 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
14022 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
14023 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
14024 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
14025 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
14026 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
14027 desktop contains
14028 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
14029 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
14030 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
14031 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
14032
14033 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
14034 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
14035 Squeeze release.</p>
14036
14037 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
14038
14039 <ul>
14040
14041 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
14042 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
14043 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
14044 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
14045 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
14046
14047 </ul>
14048
14049 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
14050
14051 <ul>
14052
14053 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
14054 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
14055 <li>New Romanian translation.
14056 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
14057 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
14058 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
14059 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
14060 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
14061 <li>More testsuite tests.
14062 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
14063 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
14064
14065 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
14066 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
14067
14068 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
14069 them up with GOsa².</li>
14070
14071 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
14072
14073 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
14074 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
14075 entered password). </li>
14076
14077 </ul>
14078
14079 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
14080
14081 <ul>
14082
14083 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
14084
14085 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
14086 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
14087 missing import feature).</li>
14088
14089 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
14090
14091 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
14092 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
14093 unfixed.</li>
14094
14095 </ul>
14096
14097 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
14098
14099 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
14100
14101 <ul>
14102
14103 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
14104
14105 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
14106
14107 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
14108
14109 </ul>
14110
14111 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
14112 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
14113
14114 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
14115
14116 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
14117
14118       </div>
14119       <div class="tags">
14120
14121
14122         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14123
14124
14125       </div>
14126     </div>
14127     <div class="padding"></div>
14128
14129     <div class="entry">
14130       <div class="title">
14131         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
14132       </div>
14133       <div class="date">
14134          5th June 2013
14135       </div>
14136       <div class="body">
14137         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
14138 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
14139 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
14140 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
14141 the project:
14142
14143 <ol>
14144
14145 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
14146   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
14147   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
14148   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
14149   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
14150
14151 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
14152   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
14153   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
14154   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
14155   #698840</a>.</li>
14156
14157 </ol>
14158
14159 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
14160 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
14161 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
14162
14163       </div>
14164       <div class="tags">
14165
14166
14167         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14168
14169
14170       </div>
14171     </div>
14172     <div class="padding"></div>
14173
14174     <div class="entry">
14175       <div class="title">
14176         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
14177       </div>
14178       <div class="date">
14179          4th June 2013
14180       </div>
14181       <div class="body">
14182         <p>It has been a while since my last English
14183 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14184 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
14185 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
14186 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
14187 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
14188
14189 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14190
14191 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
14192 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
14193 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
14194 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
14195
14196 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
14197 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
14198 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
14199
14200 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
14201 project?</strong></p>
14202
14203 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
14204 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
14205 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
14206 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
14207 manual.
14208
14209 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
14210 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
14211 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
14212 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
14213
14214 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
14215 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
14216 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
14217 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
14218 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
14219 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
14220 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
14221 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
14222 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
14223 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
14224
14225 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
14226 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
14227 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
14228 beautiful project.</p>
14229
14230 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
14231 Edu?</strong></p>
14232
14233 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
14234 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
14235 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
14236
14237 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
14238 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
14239 of educational free software.</p>
14240
14241 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
14242 Edu?</strong></p>
14243
14244 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
14245 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
14246 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
14247 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
14248 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
14249
14250 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
14251 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
14252 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
14253 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
14254 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
14255 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
14256 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
14257 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
14258
14259 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14260
14261 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
14262 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
14263 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
14264 also using the mathematical software
14265 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
14266 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
14267 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
14268
14269 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
14270 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
14271 statistics?</strong></p>
14272
14273 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
14274 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
14275 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
14276 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
14277
14278 <ul>
14279
14280 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
14281 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
14282 constructions in planar geometry
14283
14284 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
14285 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
14286 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
14287
14288 </ul>
14289
14290 <p>I like also
14291 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
14292 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
14293 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
14294
14295 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14296 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14297
14298 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
14299
14300 <ul>
14301
14302 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
14303
14304 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
14305     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
14306     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
14307
14308 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
14309
14310 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
14311     system.</li>
14312
14313 </ul>
14314
14315       </div>
14316       <div class="tags">
14317
14318
14319         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14320
14321
14322       </div>
14323     </div>
14324     <div class="padding"></div>
14325
14326     <div class="entry">
14327       <div class="title">
14328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
14329       </div>
14330       <div class="date">
14331          1st June 2013
14332       </div>
14333       <div class="body">
14334         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14335 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
14336 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
14337 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
14338 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
14339 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
14340 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
14341 program.</p>
14342
14343 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
14344
14345 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
14346 <p>
14347 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
14348 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
14349 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
14350 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
14351 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14352 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
14353 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
14354 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
14355 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
14356 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
14357 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
14358 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
14359 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
14360 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
14361 </p>
14362
14363 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
14364 <p>
14365 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
14366 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
14367 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
14368 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
14369 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
14370 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
14371 </p>
14372
14373 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
14374 <p>
14375 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
14376 </p>
14377
14378 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
14379 <p>
14380 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
14381 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
14382 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
14383 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
14384 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
14385 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
14386 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
14387 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
14388 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
14389 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
14390 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
14391 </p>
14392
14393 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
14394 <p>
14395 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14396 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
14397 </p>
14398
14399 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
14400 <p>
14401 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
14402 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
14403 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
14404 </p>
14405
14406 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
14407 <p>
14408 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14409 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
14410 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
14411 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
14412 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
14413 </p>
14414
14415 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
14416 <p>
14417 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
14418 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
14419 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14420 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
14421 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
14422 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
14423 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
14424 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
14425 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
14426 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
14427 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
14428 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
14429 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
14430 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
14431 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
14432 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
14433 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
14434 </p>
14435
14436 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
14437 <p>
14438 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14439 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
14440 </p>
14441
14442 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
14443 <p>
14444 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
14445 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
14446 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
14447 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14448 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
14449 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
14450 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
14451 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
14452 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
14453 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
14454 </p>
14455
14456 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
14457 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
14458 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
14459 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
14460 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
14461 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
14462 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
14463
14464       </div>
14465       <div class="tags">
14466
14467
14468         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14469
14470
14471       </div>
14472     </div>
14473     <div class="padding"></div>
14474
14475     <div class="entry">
14476       <div class="title">
14477         <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>
14478       </div>
14479       <div class="date">
14480         27th May 2013
14481       </div>
14482       <div class="body">
14483         <p>Two days ago, I asked
14484 <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
14485 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
14486 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
14487 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
14488 and Windows 8.</p>
14489
14490 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
14491 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
14492 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
14493 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
14494 enough to tell.</p>
14495
14496 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
14497 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
14498 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
14499 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
14500 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
14501 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
14502 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
14503 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
14504 to follow.</p>
14505
14506 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
14507 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
14508 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
14509 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
14510 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
14511 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
14512 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
14513 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
14514
14515 <p>I've updated the
14516 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
14517 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
14518 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
14519 machine.</p>
14520
14521 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
14522 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
14523
14524       </div>
14525       <div class="tags">
14526
14527
14528         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>.
14529
14530
14531       </div>
14532     </div>
14533     <div class="padding"></div>
14534
14535     <div class="entry">
14536       <div class="title">
14537         <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>
14538       </div>
14539       <div class="date">
14540         25th May 2013
14541       </div>
14542       <div class="body">
14543         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
14544 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
14545 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
14546 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
14547 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
14548 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
14549
14550 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
14551 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
14552 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
14553 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
14554 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
14555 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
14556 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
14557 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
14558 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
14559 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
14560
14561 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
14562 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
14563 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
14564 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
14565 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
14566 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
14567
14568 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
14569 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
14570 on new Laptops?</p>
14571
14572       </div>
14573       <div class="tags">
14574
14575
14576         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>.
14577
14578
14579       </div>
14580     </div>
14581     <div class="padding"></div>
14582
14583     <div class="entry">
14584       <div class="title">
14585         <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>
14586       </div>
14587       <div class="date">
14588         17th May 2013
14589       </div>
14590       <div class="body">
14591         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
14592 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
14593 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
14594 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
14595 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
14596 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
14597 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
14598 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
14599 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
14600 donate some money</a>.
14601
14602 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
14603 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
14604 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
14605 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
14606 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
14607
14608 <p>The script,
14609 <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/>
14610 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
14611 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
14612 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
14613
14614 <ol>
14615
14616 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
14617 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
14618 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
14619     our configuration.</li>
14620 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
14621     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
14622     according to the profile specified in the config above,
14623     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
14624 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
14625     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
14626 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
14627
14628 </ol>
14629
14630 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
14631 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
14632 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
14633 the needed packages.</p>
14634
14635 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
14636 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
14637 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
14638 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
14639 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
14640 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
14641
14642 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
14643 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
14644 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
14645
14646 <p><pre>
14647 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
14648 DESKTOP="lxde"
14649 </pre></p>
14650
14651 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
14652 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
14653 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
14654 boot.</p>
14655
14656       </div>
14657       <div class="tags">
14658
14659
14660         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>.
14661
14662
14663       </div>
14664     </div>
14665     <div class="padding"></div>
14666
14667     <div class="entry">
14668       <div class="title">
14669         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
14670       </div>
14671       <div class="date">
14672         14th May 2013
14673       </div>
14674       <div class="body">
14675         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14676 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
14677 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
14678
14679 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
14680 2013-05-14</strong></p>
14681
14682 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
14683 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
14684 codename "Wheezy".</p>
14685
14686 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
14687
14688 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
14689 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
14690 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
14691 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
14692 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
14693 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
14694 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
14695 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
14696
14697 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
14698 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
14699 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
14700
14701 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
14702 <ul>
14703   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
14704     default.</li>
14705   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
14706   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
14707   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
14708     ibus-anthy.</li>
14709 </ul>
14710
14711 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
14712 <ul>
14713
14714   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
14715     reliability improvements.</li>
14716   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
14717     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
14718   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
14719     problems.</li>
14720   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
14721     direct:// URL.</li>
14722   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
14723   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
14724   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
14725   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
14726     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
14727   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
14728     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
14729 </ul>
14730
14731 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
14732 <ul>
14733
14734   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
14735     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
14736     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
14737   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
14738   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
14739     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
14740   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
14741   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
14742   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
14743     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
14744   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
14745     password submission problem
14746     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
14747
14748 </ul>
14749
14750 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
14751
14752 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
14753 <ul>
14754
14755   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
14756   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
14757   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
14758
14759 </ul>
14760
14761 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
14762
14763 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
14764
14765 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
14766
14767 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
14768
14769       </div>
14770       <div class="tags">
14771
14772
14773         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14774
14775
14776       </div>
14777     </div>
14778     <div class="padding"></div>
14779
14780     <div class="entry">
14781       <div class="title">
14782         <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>
14783       </div>
14784       <div class="date">
14785         11th May 2013
14786       </div>
14787       <div class="body">
14788         <P>In January,
14789 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
14790 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
14791 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
14792 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
14793 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
14794 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
14795 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
14796 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
14797 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
14798 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
14799 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
14800 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
14801
14802 <p><table>
14803 <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>
14804 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
14805 <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>
14806 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
14807 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
14808 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
14809 <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>
14810 <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>
14811 <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>
14812 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
14813 </table></p>
14814
14815 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
14816 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
14817 available in experimental.</p>
14818
14819 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
14820 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
14821 for LEGO designers.</p>
14822
14823       </div>
14824       <div class="tags">
14825
14826
14827         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/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
14828
14829
14830       </div>
14831     </div>
14832     <div class="padding"></div>
14833
14834     <div class="entry">
14835       <div class="title">
14836         <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>
14837       </div>
14838       <div class="date">
14839          5th May 2013
14840       </div>
14841       <div class="body">
14842         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
14843 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
14844 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
14845 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
14846 soon.</p>
14847
14848 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
14849 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
14850 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
14851 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
14852 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
14853 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
14854 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
14855 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
14856 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
14857 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
14858 Edu.</a>
14859
14860 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
14861 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
14862 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
14863 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
14864 follow.<p>
14865
14866       </div>
14867       <div class="tags">
14868
14869
14870         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>.
14871
14872
14873       </div>
14874     </div>
14875     <div class="padding"></div>
14876
14877     <div class="entry">
14878       <div class="title">
14879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
14880       </div>
14881       <div class="date">
14882         26th April 2013
14883       </div>
14884       <div class="body">
14885         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
14886 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
14887 announcement:</p>
14888
14889 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
14890 2013-04-26</strong></p>
14891
14892 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
14893 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
14894
14895 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
14896
14897 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
14898 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
14899 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
14900 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
14901 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
14902 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
14903 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
14904 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
14905 installed via the network.</p>
14906
14907 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
14908 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
14909 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
14910
14911 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
14912
14913 <ul>
14914 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
14915   <ul>
14916      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
14917      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
14918          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
14919          manual.)</li>
14920      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
14921      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
14922      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
14923      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
14924      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
14925      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
14926      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
14927      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
14928      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
14929      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
14930      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
14931      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
14932          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
14933          manual</a> for more details.</li>
14934      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
14935          installation.</li>
14936      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
14937          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
14938   </ul></li>
14939 </ul>
14940
14941 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
14942 <ul>
14943 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
14944     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
14945     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
14946 </ul>
14947
14948 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
14949 <ul>
14950 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
14951     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
14952     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
14953 </ul>
14954
14955 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
14956 <ul>
14957 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
14958     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
14959     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
14960 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
14961     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
14962     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
14963 </ul>
14964
14965 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
14966 <ul>
14967 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
14968     yet.</li>
14969 </ul>
14970
14971 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
14972
14973 <ul>
14974 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
14975     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
14976     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
14977 </ul>
14978
14979 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
14980
14981 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
14982 <ul>
14983 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
14984 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
14985 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
14986 </ul>
14987
14988 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
14989
14990 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
14991
14992 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
14993
14994 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
14995
14996       </div>
14997       <div class="tags">
14998
14999
15000         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15001
15002
15003       </div>
15004     </div>
15005     <div class="padding"></div>
15006
15007     <div class="entry">
15008       <div class="title">
15009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
15010       </div>
15011       <div class="date">
15012         16th April 2013
15013       </div>
15014       <div class="body">
15015         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
15016 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
15017 Details about the gathering can be found
15018 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
15019 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
15020 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
15021 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
15022 weekend.</p>
15023
15024 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
15025 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
15026 Edu release.</p>
15027
15028 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
15029
15030       </div>
15031       <div class="tags">
15032
15033
15034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15035
15036
15037       </div>
15038     </div>
15039     <div class="padding"></div>
15040
15041     <div class="entry">
15042       <div class="title">
15043         <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>
15044       </div>
15045       <div class="date">
15046          3rd April 2013
15047       </div>
15048       <div class="body">
15049         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
15050 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
15051 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
15052 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
15053
15054 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
15055 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
15056 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
15057 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
15058 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
15059 BTS. :)</p>
15060
15061       </div>
15062       <div class="tags">
15063
15064
15065         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>.
15066
15067
15068       </div>
15069     </div>
15070     <div class="padding"></div>
15071
15072     <div class="entry">
15073       <div class="title">
15074         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
15075       </div>
15076       <div class="date">
15077         26th March 2013
15078       </div>
15079       <div class="body">
15080         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
15081 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
15082 font you use when printing.</p>
15083
15084 <p>Three years ago,
15085 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
15086 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
15087 changed their default front from
15088 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
15089 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
15090 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
15091 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
15092 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
15093 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
15094 prints.</p>
15095
15096 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
15097 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
15098 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
15099 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
15100 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
15101 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
15102 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
15103 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
15104 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
15105 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
15106 depend on the documents printed.</p>
15107
15108 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
15109 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
15110 and save some money in the process.</p>
15111
15112 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
15113 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
15114 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
15115 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
15116 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
15117 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
15118 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
15119 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
15120 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
15121
15122       </div>
15123       <div class="tags">
15124
15125
15126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15127
15128
15129       </div>
15130     </div>
15131     <div class="padding"></div>
15132
15133     <div class="entry">
15134       <div class="title">
15135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
15136       </div>
15137       <div class="date">
15138         24th March 2013
15139       </div>
15140       <div class="body">
15141         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
15142 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
15143 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
15144 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
15145 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
15146 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
15147 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
15148 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
15149 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
15150 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
15151 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
15152 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
15153
15154 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
15155 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
15156 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
15157 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
15158 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
15159 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
15160 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
15161 all I had to do was to use the
15162 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
15163 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
15164 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
15165 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
15166 xsltproc/fop (aka
15167 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
15168 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
15169 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
15170 technical detail.</p>
15171
15172 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
15173 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
15174 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
15175 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
15176 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
15177 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
15178
15179 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
15180 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
15181 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
15182 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
15183 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
15184 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
15185 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
15186 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
15187 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
15188
15189 <p><blockquote><pre>
15190 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
15191 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
15192   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
15193     &lt;hr/&gt;
15194   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
15195 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
15196 </pre></blockquote></p>
15197
15198 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
15199
15200 <p><blockquote><pre>
15201 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
15202 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
15203   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
15204     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
15205       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
15206     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
15207   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
15208 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
15209 </pre></blockquote></p>
15210
15211 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
15212 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
15213 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
15214 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
15215 enough.</p>
15216
15217 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
15218 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
15219 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
15220 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
15221 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
15222 look like this:</p>
15223
15224 <p><blockquote><pre>
15225 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
15226 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
15227   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
15228     &lt;br/&gt;
15229   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
15230 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
15231 </pre></blockquote></p>
15232
15233 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
15234
15235 <p><blockquote><pre>
15236 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
15237 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
15238   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
15239   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
15240     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
15241   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
15242 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
15243 </pre></blockquote></p>
15244
15245 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
15246 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
15247 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
15248 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
15249 page.</p>
15250
15251 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
15252 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
15253 github</a>
15254 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
15255 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
15256 days.</p>
15257
15258       </div>
15259       <div class="tags">
15260
15261
15262         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
15263
15264
15265       </div>
15266     </div>
15267     <div class="padding"></div>
15268
15269     <div class="entry">
15270       <div class="title">
15271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
15272       </div>
15273       <div class="date">
15274         17th March 2013
15275       </div>
15276       <div class="body">
15277         <p>Via
15278 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
15279 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
15280 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
15281 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
15282 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
15283 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
15284 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
15285
15286 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
15287 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
15288
15289 <blockquote>
15290 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
15291 </blockquote>
15292
15293 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
15294
15295 <blockquote>
15296 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
15297 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
15298 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
15299 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
15300 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
15301 </blockquote>
15302
15303 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
15304 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
15305 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
15306 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
15307
15308 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
15309 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
15310
15311 <blockquote>
15312 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
15313 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
15314 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
15315 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
15316 </blockquote>
15317
15318 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
15319 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
15320 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
15321 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
15322 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
15323
15324 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
15325 embedding:</p>
15326
15327 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
15328
15329       </div>
15330       <div class="tags">
15331
15332
15333         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15334
15335
15336       </div>
15337     </div>
15338     <div class="padding"></div>
15339
15340     <div class="entry">
15341       <div class="title">
15342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
15343       </div>
15344       <div class="date">
15345          8th March 2013
15346       </div>
15347       <div class="body">
15348         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
15349 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
15350 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
15351 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
15352 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
15353 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
15354 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
15355
15356 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
15357
15358 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
15359 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
15360
15361 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
15362 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
15363 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
15364 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
15365 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
15366 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
15367
15368 <p>Images are available for download at
15369 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
15370
15371 <p>md5sums:
15372 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
15373 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
15374 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
15375
15376 <p>sha1sums:
15377 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
15378 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
15379 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
15380
15381 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
15382
15383 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
15384 2013-03-03:</p>
15385
15386 <ul>
15387   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
15388   <ul>
15389         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
15390         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
15391   </ul></li>
15392   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
15393   <ul>
15394         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
15395         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
15396   </ul></li>
15397   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
15398      <ul>
15399         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
15400         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
15401         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
15402                 Closes: #664596</li>
15403         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
15404                 Closes: #664976</li>
15405         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
15406            <ul>
15407                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
15408                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
15409            </ul></li>
15410         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
15411            <ul>
15412                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
15413                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
15414                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
15415                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
15416                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
15417            </ul></li>
15418         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
15419     </ul>
15420   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
15421     <ul>
15422         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
15423     </ul></li>
15424 </ul>
15425
15426 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
15427 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
15428 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
15429 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
15430
15431 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
15432 mailinglist
15433 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
15434 </p></blockquote>
15435
15436 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
15437
15438       </div>
15439       <div class="tags">
15440
15441
15442         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15443
15444
15445       </div>
15446     </div>
15447     <div class="padding"></div>
15448
15449     <div class="entry">
15450       <div class="title">
15451         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
15452       </div>
15453       <div class="date">
15454          3rd March 2013
15455       </div>
15456       <div class="body">
15457         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
15458 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
15459 support using
15460 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
15461 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
15462 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
15463 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
15464 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
15465 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
15466 using the GNU LGPL, and
15467 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
15468
15469 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
15470 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
15471 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
15472 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
15473 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
15474 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
15475
15476 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
15477 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
15478 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
15479 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
15480 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
15481 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
15482 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
15483 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
15484 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
15485 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
15486 signal distribution is handled using
15487 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
15488 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
15489 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
15490 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
15491 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
15492 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
15493 them up a bit more first.</p>
15494
15495 <p>The development is coordinated on the
15496 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
15497 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
15498 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
15499 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
15500 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
15501 development.</p>
15502
15503       </div>
15504       <div class="tags">
15505
15506
15507         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15508
15509
15510       </div>
15511     </div>
15512     <div class="padding"></div>
15513
15514     <div class="entry">
15515       <div class="title">
15516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
15517       </div>
15518       <div class="date">
15519         27th February 2013
15520       </div>
15521       <div class="body">
15522         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
15523 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
15524 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
15525 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
15526 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
15527 (where I am the chair of the board) and
15528 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
15529 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
15530 GNU», with this description:
15531
15532 <p><blockquote>
15533 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
15534 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
15535 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
15536 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
15537 </blockquote></p>
15538
15539 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
15540 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
15541 am really curious how many will show up.  See
15542 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
15543 page</a> for the location details.</p>
15544
15545       </div>
15546       <div class="tags">
15547
15548
15549         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
15550
15551
15552       </div>
15553     </div>
15554     <div class="padding"></div>
15555
15556     <div class="entry">
15557       <div class="title">
15558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
15559       </div>
15560       <div class="date">
15561         15th February 2013
15562       </div>
15563       <div class="body">
15564         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
15565 now a great source of free maps available from
15566 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
15567 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
15568 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
15569 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
15570 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
15571 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
15572 page for descriptions).</p>
15573
15574 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
15575 map you can just edit the
15576 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
15577 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
15578
15579       </div>
15580       <div class="tags">
15581
15582
15583         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
15584
15585
15586       </div>
15587     </div>
15588     <div class="padding"></div>
15589
15590     <div class="entry">
15591       <div class="title">
15592         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
15593       </div>
15594       <div class="date">
15595         12th February 2013
15596       </div>
15597       <div class="body">
15598         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
15599 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
15600 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
15601 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
15602 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
15603 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
15604 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
15605 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
15606 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
15607 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
15608 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
15609 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
15610 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
15611 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
15612 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
15613 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
15614
15615 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
15616 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
15617 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
15618 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
15619 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
15620 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
15621 fields:</p>
15622
15623 <p><pre>
15624 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
15625 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
15626 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
15627 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
15628 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
15629 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
15630 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
15631 </pre></p>
15632
15633 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
15634 answer regarding
15635 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
15636 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
15637 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
15638 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
15639
15640 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
15641
15642 <p><pre>
15643 BEGIN:VCARD
15644 VERSION:2.1
15645 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
15646 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
15647 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
15648 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
15649 REV:20130212T095000Z
15650 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
15651 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
15652 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
15653 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
15654 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
15655 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
15656 END:VCARD
15657 </pre></p>
15658
15659 <p>The resulting QR code created using
15660 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
15661 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
15662 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
15663 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
15664 system.</p>
15665
15666 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
15667
15668 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
15669 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
15670 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
15671 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
15672
15673 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
15674 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
15675
15676       </div>
15677       <div class="tags">
15678
15679
15680         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15681
15682
15683       </div>
15684     </div>
15685     <div class="padding"></div>
15686
15687     <div class="entry">
15688       <div class="title">
15689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
15690       </div>
15691       <div class="date">
15692         10th February 2013
15693       </div>
15694       <div class="body">
15695         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
15696
15697 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
15698 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
15699 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
15700 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
15701 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
15702 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
15703 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
15704 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
15705 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
15706 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
15707 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
15708
15709 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
15710 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
15711 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
15712 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
15713 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
15714 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
15715 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
15716 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
15717 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
15718 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
15719 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
15720 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
15721 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
15722 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
15723 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
15724 ones own
15725 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
15726 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
15727 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
15728 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
15729 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
15730 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
15731 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
15732 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
15733 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
15734 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
15735 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
15736
15737 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
15738 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
15739 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
15740 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
15741 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
15742 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
15743
15744 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
15745 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
15746 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
15747
15748       </div>
15749       <div class="tags">
15750
15751
15752         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15753
15754
15755       </div>
15756     </div>
15757     <div class="padding"></div>
15758
15759     <div class="entry">
15760       <div class="title">
15761         <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>
15762       </div>
15763       <div class="date">
15764          2nd February 2013
15765       </div>
15766       <div class="body">
15767         <p>My
15768 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
15769 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
15770 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
15771 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
15772 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
15773 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
15774 version too.</p>
15775
15776 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
15777 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
15778 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
15779 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
15780 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
15781 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
15782 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
15783 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
15784
15785 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
15786 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
15787 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
15788 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
15789 it. :)</p>
15790
15791 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
15792 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
15793 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
15794
15795       </div>
15796       <div class="tags">
15797
15798
15799         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>.
15800
15801
15802       </div>
15803     </div>
15804     <div class="padding"></div>
15805
15806     <div class="entry">
15807       <div class="title">
15808         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
15809       </div>
15810       <div class="date">
15811         22nd January 2013
15812       </div>
15813       <div class="body">
15814         <p>Yesterday, I
15815 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
15816 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
15817 pluggable hardware devices, which I
15818 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
15819 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
15820 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
15821 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
15822 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
15823 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
15824 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
15825 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
15826 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
15827 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
15828
15829 <pre>
15830 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
15831 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
15832 </pre>
15833
15834 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
15835 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
15836 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
15837 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
15838
15839 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
15840 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
15841 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
15842 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
15843 word.</p>
15844
15845 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
15846 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
15847 process.</p>
15848
15849 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
15850 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
15851
15852       </div>
15853       <div class="tags">
15854
15855
15856         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>.
15857
15858
15859       </div>
15860     </div>
15861     <div class="padding"></div>
15862
15863     <div class="entry">
15864       <div class="title">
15865         <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>
15866       </div>
15867       <div class="date">
15868         21st January 2013
15869       </div>
15870       <div class="body">
15871         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
15872 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
15873 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
15874 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
15875 it, fetch the
15876 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
15877 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
15878 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
15879 autostart script.</p>
15880
15881 <p>The design is simple:</p>
15882
15883 <ul>
15884
15885 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
15886 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
15887
15888 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
15889 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
15890 initially did.</li>
15891
15892 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
15893 the APT database, a database
15894 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
15895 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
15896
15897 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
15898 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
15899 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
15900 package or packages.</li>
15901
15902 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
15903 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
15904
15905 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
15906 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
15907
15908 </ul>
15909
15910 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
15911 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
15912 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
15913 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
15914
15915 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
15916 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
15917 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
15918 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
15919 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
15920
15921 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
15922 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
15923 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
15924 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
15925 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
15926 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
15927 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
15928 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
15929
15930 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
15931 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
15932 '<tt>svn checkout
15933 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
15934 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
15935 devscripts package.</p>
15936
15937 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
15938 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
15939 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
15940 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
15941 instructions</a> for details.</p>
15942
15943       </div>
15944       <div class="tags">
15945
15946
15947         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>.
15948
15949
15950       </div>
15951     </div>
15952     <div class="padding"></div>
15953
15954     <div class="entry">
15955       <div class="title">
15956         <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>
15957       </div>
15958       <div class="date">
15959         19th January 2013
15960       </div>
15961       <div class="body">
15962         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
15963 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
15964 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
15965 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
15966 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
15967 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
15968 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
15969 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
15970 not a durable solution.
15971
15972 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
15973 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
15974
15975 <ul>
15976
15977 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
15978   than A4).</li>
15979 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
15980 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
15981 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
15982 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
15983 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
15984 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
15985 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
15986 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
15987 size).</li>
15988 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
15989   X.org packages.</li>
15990 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
15991   the time).
15992
15993 </ul>
15994
15995 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
15996 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
15997 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
15998 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
15999 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
16000 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
16001 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
16002 still be useful.</p>
16003
16004 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
16005 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
16006 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
16007 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
16008 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
16009 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
16010
16011       </div>
16012       <div class="tags">
16013
16014
16015         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>.
16016
16017
16018       </div>
16019     </div>
16020     <div class="padding"></div>
16021
16022     <div class="entry">
16023       <div class="title">
16024         <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>
16025       </div>
16026       <div class="date">
16027         18th January 2013
16028       </div>
16029       <div class="body">
16030         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
16031 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
16032 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
16033 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
16034 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
16035 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
16036 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
16037
16038 <pre>
16039 #!/usr/bin/python
16040 import sys
16041 import apt
16042 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
16043     cache = apt.Cache()
16044     cache.open(None)
16045     thepkgs = []
16046     for pkg in cache:
16047         version = pkg.candidate
16048         if version is None:
16049             version = pkg.installed
16050         if version is None:
16051             continue
16052         record = version.record
16053         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
16054             continue
16055         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
16056         for t in mime_types:
16057             t = t.rstrip().strip()
16058             if t == mimetype:
16059                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
16060     return thepkgs
16061 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
16062 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
16063     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
16064 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
16065 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
16066     print "  %s" %pkg
16067 </pre>
16068
16069 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
16070
16071 <pre>
16072 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
16073 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
16074   gecko-mediaplayer
16075 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
16076 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
16077   browser-plugin-gnash
16078 %
16079 </pre>
16080
16081 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
16082 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
16083 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
16084 anyone working on adding it?</p>
16085
16086 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
16087 request for icweasel support for this feature is
16088 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
16089 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
16090 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
16091 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
16092
16093       </div>
16094       <div class="tags">
16095
16096
16097         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>.
16098
16099
16100       </div>
16101     </div>
16102     <div class="padding"></div>
16103
16104     <div class="entry">
16105       <div class="title">
16106         <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>
16107       </div>
16108       <div class="date">
16109         16th January 2013
16110       </div>
16111       <div class="body">
16112         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
16113 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
16114 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
16115 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
16116 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
16117 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
16118 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
16119 downloaded by the browser.</p>
16120
16121 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
16122 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
16123 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
16124 can be found on the
16125 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
16126 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
16127 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
16128 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
16129 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
16130
16131 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
16132
16133 <pre>
16134   count MIME type
16135   ----- -----------------------
16136      32 text/plain
16137      30 audio/mpeg
16138      29 image/png
16139      28 image/jpeg
16140      27 application/ogg
16141      26 audio/x-mp3
16142      25 image/tiff
16143      25 image/gif
16144      22 image/bmp
16145      22 audio/x-wav
16146      20 audio/x-flac
16147      19 audio/x-mpegurl
16148      18 video/x-ms-asf
16149      18 audio/x-musepack
16150      18 audio/x-mpeg
16151      18 application/x-ogg
16152      17 video/mpeg
16153      17 audio/x-scpls
16154      17 audio/ogg
16155      16 video/x-ms-wmv
16156 </pre>
16157
16158 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
16159
16160 <pre>
16161   count MIME type
16162   ----- -----------------------
16163      33 text/plain
16164      32 image/png
16165      32 image/jpeg
16166      29 audio/mpeg
16167      27 image/gif
16168      26 image/tiff
16169      26 application/ogg
16170      25 audio/x-mp3
16171      22 image/bmp
16172      21 audio/x-wav
16173      19 audio/x-mpegurl
16174      19 audio/x-mpeg
16175      18 video/mpeg
16176      18 audio/x-scpls
16177      18 audio/x-flac
16178      18 application/x-ogg
16179      17 video/x-ms-asf
16180      17 text/html
16181      17 audio/x-musepack
16182      16 image/x-xbitmap
16183 </pre>
16184
16185 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
16186
16187 <pre>
16188   count MIME type
16189   ----- -----------------------
16190      31 text/plain
16191      31 image/png
16192      31 image/jpeg
16193      29 audio/mpeg
16194      28 application/ogg
16195      27 image/gif
16196      26 image/tiff
16197      26 audio/x-mp3
16198      23 audio/x-wav
16199      22 image/bmp
16200      21 audio/x-flac
16201      20 audio/x-mpegurl
16202      19 audio/x-mpeg
16203      18 video/x-ms-asf
16204      18 video/mpeg
16205      18 audio/x-scpls
16206      18 application/x-ogg
16207      17 audio/x-musepack
16208      16 video/x-ms-wmv
16209      16 video/x-msvideo
16210 </pre>
16211
16212 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
16213 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
16214 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
16215 issues.</p>
16216
16217 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
16218 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
16219
16220       </div>
16221       <div class="tags">
16222
16223
16224         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>.
16225
16226
16227       </div>
16228     </div>
16229     <div class="padding"></div>
16230
16231     <div class="entry">
16232       <div class="title">
16233         <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>
16234       </div>
16235       <div class="date">
16236         15th January 2013
16237       </div>
16238       <div class="body">
16239         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
16240 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
16241 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
16242 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
16243 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
16244 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
16245 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
16246 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
16247 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
16248 packages.</p>
16249
16250 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
16251 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
16252 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
16253 modalias.</p>
16254
16255 <p><blockquote>
16256 Package: package-name
16257 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
16258 </blockquote></p>
16259
16260 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
16261 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
16262
16263 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
16264 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
16265
16266 <p><blockquote>
16267 Package: cheese
16268 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
16269 </blockquote></p>
16270
16271 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
16272 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
16273
16274 <p><blockquote>
16275 Package: pcmciautils
16276 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
16277 </blockquote></p>
16278
16279 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
16280 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
16281
16282 <p><blockquote>
16283 Package: colorhug-client
16284 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
16285 </blockquote></p>
16286
16287 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
16288 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
16289 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
16290
16291 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
16292 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
16293 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
16294 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
16295 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
16296 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
16297 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
16298 Raring.</p>
16299
16300 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
16301 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
16302 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
16303 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
16304 try the
16305 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
16306 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
16307 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
16308 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
16309
16310 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
16311 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
16312
16313 <p><blockquote>
16314 % ./hw-support-lookup
16315 <br>yubikey-personalization
16316 <br>%
16317 </blockquote></p>
16318
16319 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
16320 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
16321
16322 <p><blockquote>
16323 % ./hw-support-lookup
16324 <br>pcmciautils
16325 <br>%
16326 </blockquote></p>
16327
16328 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
16329 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
16330 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
16331
16332 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
16333 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
16334 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
16335 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
16336 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
16337 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
16338 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
16339 see if it work.</p>
16340
16341 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
16342 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
16343 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
16344 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
16345
16346       </div>
16347       <div class="tags">
16348
16349
16350         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>.
16351
16352
16353       </div>
16354     </div>
16355     <div class="padding"></div>
16356
16357     <div class="entry">
16358       <div class="title">
16359         <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>
16360       </div>
16361       <div class="date">
16362         14th January 2013
16363       </div>
16364       <div class="body">
16365         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
16366 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
16367 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
16368 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
16369 in
16370 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
16371 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
16372
16373 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
16374
16375 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
16376 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
16377 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
16378 &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;,
16379 &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
16380 &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;.
16381
16382 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
16383 this shell script:</p>
16384
16385 <pre>
16386 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
16387 </pre>
16388
16389 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
16390 using modinfo:</p>
16391
16392 <pre>
16393 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
16394 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
16395 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
16396 %
16397 </pre>
16398
16399 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
16400
16401 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
16402 Bridge memory controller:</p>
16403
16404 <p><blockquote>
16405 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
16406 </blockquote></p>
16407
16408 <p>This represent these values:</p>
16409
16410 <pre>
16411  v   00008086  (vendor)
16412  d   00002770  (device)
16413  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
16414  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
16415  bc  06        (bus class)
16416  sc  00        (bus subclass)
16417  i   00        (interface)
16418 </pre>
16419
16420 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
16421 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
16422 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
16423 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
16424
16425 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
16426 means.</p>
16427
16428 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
16429
16430 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
16431 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
16432
16433 <p><blockquote>
16434 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
16435 </blockquote></p>
16436
16437 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
16438
16439 <pre>
16440  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
16441  p    0001  (device product)
16442  d    0206  (bcddevice)
16443  dc     09  (device class)
16444  dsc    00  (device subclass)
16445  dp     00  (device protocol)
16446  ic     09  (interface class)
16447  isc    00  (interface subclass)
16448  ip     00  (interface protocol)
16449 </pre>
16450
16451 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
16452 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
16453 these alias entries show up:</p>
16454
16455 <p><blockquote>
16456 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
16457 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
16458 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
16459 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
16460 </blockquote></p>
16461
16462 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
16463 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
16464 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
16465
16466 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
16467
16468 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
16469 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
16470
16471 <p><blockquote>
16472 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
16473 </blockquote></p>
16474
16475 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
16476
16477 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
16478
16479 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
16480 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
16481 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
16482
16483 <p><blockquote>
16484 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
16485 </blockquote></p>
16486
16487 <p>The values present are</p>
16488
16489 <pre>
16490  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
16491  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
16492  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
16493  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
16494  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
16495  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
16496  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
16497  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
16498  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
16499  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
16500  ct   10             (chassis type)
16501  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
16502 </pre>
16503
16504 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
16505 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
16506
16507 <pre>
16508   3 Desktop
16509   4 Low Profile Desktop
16510   5 Pizza Box
16511   6 Mini Tower
16512   7 Tower
16513   8 Portable
16514   9 Laptop
16515  10 Notebook
16516  11 Hand Held
16517  12 Docking Station
16518  13 All In One
16519  14 Sub Notebook
16520  15 Space-saving
16521  16 Lunch Box
16522  17 Main Server Chassis
16523  18 Expansion Chassis
16524  19 Sub Chassis
16525  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
16526  21 Peripheral Chassis
16527  22 RAID Chassis
16528  23 Rack Mount Chassis
16529  24 Sealed-case PC
16530  25 Multi-system
16531  26 CompactPCI
16532  27 AdvancedTCA
16533  28 Blade
16534  29 Blade Enclosing
16535 </pre>
16536
16537 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
16538 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
16539 claim it is a desktop.</p>
16540
16541 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
16542
16543 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
16544 test machine:</p>
16545
16546 <p><blockquote>
16547 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
16548 </blockquote></p>
16549
16550 <p>The values present are</p>
16551
16552 <pre>
16553   ty  01  (type)
16554   pr  00  (prototype)
16555   id  00  (id)
16556   ex  00  (extra)
16557 </pre>
16558
16559 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
16560 the valid values are.</p>
16561
16562 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
16563
16564 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
16565 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
16566 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
16567 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
16568 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
16569 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
16570 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
16571
16572 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
16573
16574 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
16575 one can use the following shell script:</p>
16576
16577 <pre>
16578   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
16579     echo "$id" ; \
16580     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
16581   done
16582 </pre>
16583
16584 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
16585 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
16586
16587 <pre>
16588   acpi:ACPI0003:
16589     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
16590   acpi:device:
16591   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
16592   acpi:IBM0068:
16593     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
16594     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
16595     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
16596     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
16597   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
16598     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
16599     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
16600     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
16601   [...]
16602 </pre>
16603
16604 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
16605 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
16606 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
16607 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
16608
16609 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
16610 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
16611 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
16612
16613       </div>
16614       <div class="tags">
16615
16616
16617         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>.
16618
16619
16620       </div>
16621     </div>
16622     <div class="padding"></div>
16623
16624     <div class="entry">
16625       <div class="title">
16626         <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>
16627       </div>
16628       <div class="date">
16629         10th January 2013
16630       </div>
16631       <div class="body">
16632         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
16633 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
16634 Launcher and updated the Debian package
16635 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
16636 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
16637 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
16638 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
16639 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
16640 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
16641 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
16642 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
16643 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
16644 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
16645 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
16646 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
16647 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
16648 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
16649 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
16650
16651       </div>
16652       <div class="tags">
16653
16654
16655         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
16656
16657
16658       </div>
16659     </div>
16660     <div class="padding"></div>
16661
16662     <div class="entry">
16663       <div class="title">
16664         <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>
16665       </div>
16666       <div class="date">
16667          9th January 2013
16668       </div>
16669       <div class="body">
16670         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
16671 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
16672 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
16673 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
16674 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
16675 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
16676 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
16677 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
16678 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
16679 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
16680 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
16681
16682 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
16683 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
16684 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
16685 simple:
16686
16687 <ul>
16688
16689 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
16690   starting when a user log in.</li>
16691
16692 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
16693   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
16694
16695 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
16696   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
16697   packages.</li>
16698
16699 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
16700   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
16701
16702 </ul>
16703
16704 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
16705 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
16706 discover database to find packages and
16707 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
16708 packages.</p>
16709
16710 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
16711 draft package is now checked into
16712 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
16713 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
16714 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
16715 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
16716 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
16717 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
16718 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
16719 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
16720 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
16721 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
16722 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
16723 because of the freeze).</p>
16724
16725 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
16726 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
16727 inserted):</p>
16728
16729 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
16730
16731 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
16732 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
16733 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
16734
16735 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
16736 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
16737 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
16738 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
16739 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
16740 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
16741 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
16742
16743 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
16744 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
16745 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
16746 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
16747 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
16748 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
16749 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
16750 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
16751 not be installed?</p>
16752
16753 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
16754 please send me an email. :)</p>
16755
16756       </div>
16757       <div class="tags">
16758
16759
16760         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>.
16761
16762
16763       </div>
16764     </div>
16765     <div class="padding"></div>
16766
16767     <div class="entry">
16768       <div class="title">
16769         <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>
16770       </div>
16771       <div class="date">
16772          2nd January 2013
16773       </div>
16774       <div class="body">
16775         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
16776 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
16777 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
16778 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
16779 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
16780 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
16781 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
16782 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
16783 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
16784 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
16785
16786 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
16787 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
16788 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
16789
16790       </div>
16791       <div class="tags">
16792
16793
16794         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/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
16795
16796
16797       </div>
16798     </div>
16799     <div class="padding"></div>
16800
16801     <div class="entry">
16802       <div class="title">
16803         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
16804       </div>
16805       <div class="date">
16806         28th December 2012
16807       </div>
16808       <div class="body">
16809         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
16810 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
16811 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
16812 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
16813 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
16814 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
16815 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
16816 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
16817 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
16818 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
16819 followed by many others. :)</p>
16820
16821 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
16822 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
16823 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
16824 you want to donate to the project.</p>
16825
16826       </div>
16827       <div class="tags">
16828
16829
16830         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16831
16832
16833       </div>
16834     </div>
16835     <div class="padding"></div>
16836
16837     <div class="entry">
16838       <div class="title">
16839         <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>
16840       </div>
16841       <div class="date">
16842         25th December 2012
16843       </div>
16844       <div class="body">
16845         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
16846 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
16847
16848 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
16849 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
16850 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
16851 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
16852 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
16853 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
16854 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
16855 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
16856 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
16857 name.</p>
16858
16859 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
16860 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
16861 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
16862
16863 <blockquote><pre>
16864 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
16865 cd bitcoin
16866 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
16867 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
16868 </pre></blockquote>
16869
16870 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
16871 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
16872 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
16873 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
16874 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
16875 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
16876 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
16877 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
16878 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
16879
16880 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
16881 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
16882 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
16883
16884       </div>
16885       <div class="tags">
16886
16887
16888         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>.
16889
16890
16891       </div>
16892     </div>
16893     <div class="padding"></div>
16894
16895     <div class="entry">
16896       <div class="title">
16897         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
16898       </div>
16899       <div class="date">
16900         21st December 2012
16901       </div>
16902       <div class="body">
16903         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
16904 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
16905 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
16906 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
16907 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
16908 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
16909 is now maintained by a
16910 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
16911 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
16912 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
16913 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
16914 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
16915 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
16916 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
16917 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
16918 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
16919 Corallo in a
16920 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
16921 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
16922 Debian package.</p>
16923
16924 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
16925 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
16926 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
16927 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
16928 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
16929 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
16930 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
16931 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
16932 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
16933 new version to unstable.
16934
16935 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
16936 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
16937 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
16938 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
16939 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
16940 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
16941 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
16942 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
16943 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
16944 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
16945 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
16946 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
16947 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
16948 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
16949 have not tested them.</p>
16950
16951 <p>My
16952 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
16953 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
16954 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
16955 years ago, as can be
16956 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
16957 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
16958 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
16959 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
16960 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
16961 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
16962 the same address as last time,
16963 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
16964
16965       </div>
16966       <div class="tags">
16967
16968
16969         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>.
16970
16971
16972       </div>
16973     </div>
16974     <div class="padding"></div>
16975
16976     <div class="entry">
16977       <div class="title">
16978         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
16979       </div>
16980       <div class="date">
16981         18th December 2012
16982       </div>
16983       <div class="body">
16984         <p>A few days ago I came across
16985 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
16986 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
16987 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
16988 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
16989 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
16990 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
16991 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
16992 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
16993 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
16994
16995 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
16996 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
16997 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
16998 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
16999
17000 <blockquote><pre>
17001 2004-05-27 Book Store
17002       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
17003       Liabilities:Visa
17004 </pre></blockquote>
17005
17006 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
17007 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
17008 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
17009 Spang</a>,
17010 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
17011 Keen</a>,
17012 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
17013 Cantino</a> and
17014 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
17015 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
17016 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
17017 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
17018 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
17019
17020 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
17021 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
17022 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
17023 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
17024 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
17025
17026 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
17027 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
17028 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
17029 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
17030 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
17031 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
17032 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
17033 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
17034 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
17035
17036       </div>
17037       <div class="tags">
17038
17039
17040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17041
17042
17043       </div>
17044     </div>
17045     <div class="padding"></div>
17046
17047     <div class="entry">
17048       <div class="title">
17049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
17050       </div>
17051       <div class="date">
17052          6th December 2012
17053       </div>
17054       <div class="body">
17055         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
17056 Oslo</a>, we use the
17057 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
17058 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
17059 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
17060 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
17061 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
17062 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
17063 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
17064 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
17065 Python.</p>
17066
17067 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
17068 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
17069 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
17070 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
17071 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
17072 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
17073
17074 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
17075 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
17076 user currently logged in:</p>
17077
17078 <blockquote><pre>
17079 #!/usr/bin/env python
17080 import getpass
17081 import xmlrpclib
17082 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
17083 username = getpass.getuser()
17084 password = getpass.getpass()
17085 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
17086 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
17087 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
17088 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
17089 result = server.logout(sessionid)
17090 print result
17091 </pre></blockquote>
17092
17093 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
17094 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
17095
17096       </div>
17097       <div class="tags">
17098
17099
17100         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
17101
17102
17103       </div>
17104     </div>
17105     <div class="padding"></div>
17106
17107     <div class="entry">
17108       <div class="title">
17109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
17110       </div>
17111       <div class="date">
17112         17th November 2012
17113       </div>
17114       <div class="body">
17115         <p>While working on a
17116 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
17117 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
17118 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
17119 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
17120 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
17121 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
17122
17123 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
17124 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
17125 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
17126 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
17127 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
17128 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
17129 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
17130 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
17131 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
17132 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
17133 arguments.</p>
17134
17135 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
17136 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
17137 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
17138 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
17139 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
17140 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
17141 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
17142 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
17143
17144 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
17145 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
17146 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
17147 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
17148 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
17149 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
17150 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
17151 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
17152 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
17153 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
17154 correct right holder.</p>
17155
17156 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
17157 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
17158 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
17159 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
17160 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
17161 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
17162 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
17163 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
17164 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
17165 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
17166 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
17167 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
17168 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
17169 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
17170
17171 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
17172 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
17173 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
17174
17175 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
17176 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
17177
17178       </div>
17179       <div class="tags">
17180
17181
17182         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
17183
17184
17185       </div>
17186     </div>
17187     <div class="padding"></div>
17188
17189     <div class="entry">
17190       <div class="title">
17191         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
17192       </div>
17193       <div class="date">
17194         14th November 2012
17195       </div>
17196       <div class="body">
17197         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
17198 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
17199 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
17200 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
17201 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
17202 the people behind the German
17203 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
17204 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
17205 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
17206
17207 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17208
17209 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
17210 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
17211 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
17212
17213 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
17214 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
17215 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
17216 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
17217 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
17218 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
17219
17220 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
17221 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
17222 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
17223 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
17224 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
17225 relationship management and the communication processes in the
17226 project.</p>
17227
17228 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
17229 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
17230 and a yoga teacher.</p>
17231
17232 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
17233 project?</strong></p>
17234
17235 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
17236
17237 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
17238 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
17239 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
17240 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
17241 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
17242 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
17243 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
17244 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
17245 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
17246 parents.</p>
17247
17248 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
17249 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
17250 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
17251 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
17252 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
17253 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
17254 Germany.</p>
17255
17256 <p>For information about our school project you can read
17257 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
17258 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
17259
17260 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
17261 Edu?</strong></p>
17262
17263 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
17264 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
17265
17266 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
17267 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
17268 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
17269 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
17270 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
17271 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
17272 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
17273 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
17274 teachers, parents...</p>
17275
17276 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
17277 Edu?</strong></p>
17278
17279 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
17280 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
17281
17282 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
17283 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
17284 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
17285 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
17286 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
17287
17288 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
17289 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
17290 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
17291 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
17292 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
17293 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
17294 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
17295
17296 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17297
17298 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
17299 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
17300 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
17301 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
17302
17303 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17304 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17305
17306 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
17307 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
17308 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
17309 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
17310 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
17311
17312 <ul>
17313
17314 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
17315 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
17316 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
17317
17318 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
17319 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
17320 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
17321 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
17322 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
17323 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
17324 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
17325
17326 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
17327 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
17328 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
17329 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
17330
17331 </ul>
17332
17333       </div>
17334       <div class="tags">
17335
17336
17337         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
17338
17339
17340       </div>
17341     </div>
17342     <div class="padding"></div>
17343
17344     <div class="entry">
17345       <div class="title">
17346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
17347       </div>
17348       <div class="date">
17349          4th November 2012
17350       </div>
17351       <div class="body">
17352         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
17353 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
17354 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
17355 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
17356 see how a member of the bitcoin community
17357 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
17358 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
17359 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
17360 competition.  My thoughts go to the
17361 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
17362 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
17363 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
17364 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
17365 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
17366
17367 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
17368 that the community already seem to have
17369 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
17370 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
17371 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
17372 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
17373 wealth is available.</p>
17374
17375       </div>
17376       <div class="tags">
17377
17378
17379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17380
17381
17382       </div>
17383     </div>
17384     <div class="padding"></div>
17385
17386     <div class="entry">
17387       <div class="title">
17388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
17389       </div>
17390       <div class="date">
17391         26th October 2012
17392       </div>
17393       <div class="body">
17394         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
17395 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
17396 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
17397 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
17398 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
17399 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
17400 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
17401 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
17402 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
17403 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
17404 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
17405 it every time.</p>
17406
17407 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
17408 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
17409 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
17410 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
17411 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
17412 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
17413 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
17414 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
17415 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
17416 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
17417 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
17418 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
17419
17420 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
17421 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
17422 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
17423 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
17424 article: First the unplanned outage:
17425
17426 <blockquote><pre>
17427 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
17428 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
17429 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
17430 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
17431 Duration:    40 minutes
17432 Scope:       Exchange 2003
17433 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
17434              a cluster failover.
17435
17436 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
17437              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
17438 Technician:  [xxx]
17439 </pre></blockquote>
17440
17441 Next the planned outage:
17442
17443 <blockquote><pre>
17444 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
17445 Severity:    Major (Planned)
17446 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
17447 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
17448 Duration:    10 hours
17449 Scope:       H2 Transport
17450 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
17451              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
17452              4510s.
17453 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
17454              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
17455              connectivity.
17456 Technician:  [xxx]
17457 </pre></blockquote>
17458
17459 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
17460 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
17461 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
17462 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
17463 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
17464 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
17465 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
17466
17467 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
17468 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
17469 university too.  We do register
17470 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
17471 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
17472 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
17473 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
17474 for other sites to consider too?</p>
17475
17476       </div>
17477       <div class="tags">
17478
17479
17480         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
17481
17482
17483       </div>
17484     </div>
17485     <div class="padding"></div>
17486
17487     <div class="entry">
17488       <div class="title">
17489         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
17490       </div>
17491       <div class="date">
17492         22nd October 2012
17493       </div>
17494       <div class="body">
17495         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
17496 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
17497 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
17498 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
17499 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
17500 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
17501 background information is available in Norwegian from
17502 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
17503 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
17504 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
17505 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
17506 willing to
17507 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
17508 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
17509 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
17510 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
17511 sounded like
17512 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
17513 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
17514 later.</p>
17515
17516 <p>And thought this action is
17517 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
17518 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
17519 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
17520 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
17521 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
17522 rights.</p>
17523
17524 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
17525 unacceptable terms.  For example
17526 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
17527 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
17528 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
17529 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
17530 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
17531
17532 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
17533 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
17534 restored the account of the user, as reported by
17535 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
17536 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
17537 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
17538 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
17539 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
17540 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
17541 reading two opinions from
17542 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
17543 Phipps</a> and
17544 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
17545 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
17546 details about the original story.</p>
17547
17548       </div>
17549       <div class="tags">
17550
17551
17552         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
17553
17554
17555       </div>
17556     </div>
17557     <div class="padding"></div>
17558
17559     <div class="entry">
17560       <div class="title">
17561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
17562       </div>
17563       <div class="date">
17564         18th October 2012
17565       </div>
17566       <div class="body">
17567         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
17568 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
17569 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
17570 across a marvellous drawing by
17571 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
17572 visualising some of what is going on.
17573
17574 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
17575 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
17576
17577 <blockquote>
17578 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
17579 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
17580 </blockquote>
17581
17582 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
17583 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
17584 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
17585 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
17586 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
17587 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
17588
17589       </div>
17590       <div class="tags">
17591
17592
17593         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
17594
17595
17596       </div>
17597     </div>
17598     <div class="padding"></div>
17599
17600     <div class="entry">
17601       <div class="title">
17602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
17603       </div>
17604       <div class="date">
17605         12th October 2012
17606       </div>
17607       <div class="body">
17608         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
17609 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
17610 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
17611 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
17612 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
17613 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
17614 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
17615 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
17616 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
17617 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
17618 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
17619 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
17620 matter".</p>
17621
17622 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
17623 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
17624 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
17625 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
17626 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
17627 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
17628 to argue its side.</p>
17629
17630 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
17631 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
17632 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
17633 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
17634
17635 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
17636 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
17637 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
17638
17639       </div>
17640       <div class="tags">
17641
17642
17643         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
17644
17645
17646       </div>
17647     </div>
17648     <div class="padding"></div>
17649
17650     <div class="entry">
17651       <div class="title">
17652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
17653       </div>
17654       <div class="date">
17655          3rd October 2012
17656       </div>
17657       <div class="body">
17658         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
17659 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
17660 the computer science book collection available in his local
17661 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
17662 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
17663 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
17664 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
17665 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
17666 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
17667 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
17668 recently published books.</p>
17669
17670 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
17671 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
17672 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
17673 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
17674 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
17675 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
17676 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
17677 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
17678 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
17679 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
17680 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
17681 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
17682 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
17683 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
17684 for the library that evening.</p>
17685
17686 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
17687 going to know that for example
17688 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
17689 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
17690 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
17691 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
17692 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
17693 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
17694 book right away.</p>
17695
17696       </div>
17697       <div class="tags">
17698
17699
17700         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17701
17702
17703       </div>
17704     </div>
17705     <div class="padding"></div>
17706
17707     <div class="entry">
17708       <div class="title">
17709         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
17710       </div>
17711       <div class="date">
17712         23rd September 2012
17713       </div>
17714       <div class="body">
17715         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
17716 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
17717 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
17718 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
17719 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
17720 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
17721
17722 When I started, I
17723 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
17724 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
17725 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
17726 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
17727 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
17728 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
17729 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
17730
17731 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
17732
17733 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
17734 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
17735 the project files currently available from
17736 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
17737
17738 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
17739 the updated
17740 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
17741 and
17742 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
17743 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
17744 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
17745 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
17746
17747       </div>
17748       <div class="tags">
17749
17750
17751         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
17752
17753
17754       </div>
17755     </div>
17756     <div class="padding"></div>
17757
17758     <div class="entry">
17759       <div class="title">
17760         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
17761       </div>
17762       <div class="date">
17763         17th September 2012
17764       </div>
17765       <div class="body">
17766         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
17767 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
17768 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
17769 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
17770 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
17771 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
17772 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
17773
17774 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17775
17776 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
17777 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
17778 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
17779 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
17780 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
17781 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
17782 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
17783 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
17784 training is anyway very important</p>
17785
17786 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
17787 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
17788 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
17789 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
17790 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
17791
17792 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17793 project?</strong></p>
17794
17795 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
17796 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
17797 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
17798 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
17799 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
17800 hole.</p>
17801
17802 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17803 Edu?</strong></p>
17804
17805 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
17806 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
17807 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
17808 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
17809 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
17810 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
17811 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
17812 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
17813 hassle.</p>
17814
17815 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17816 Edu?</strong></p>
17817
17818 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
17819 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
17820 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
17821 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
17822 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
17823 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
17824 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
17825 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
17826
17827 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17828
17829 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
17830 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
17831 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
17832 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
17833 has the same...</p>
17834
17835 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
17836 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
17837 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
17838 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
17839
17840 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17841 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17842
17843 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
17844 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
17845 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
17846
17847 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
17848 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
17849 don't.</p>
17850
17851 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
17852 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
17853 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
17854 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
17855 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
17856 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
17857 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
17858
17859       </div>
17860       <div class="tags">
17861
17862
17863         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
17864
17865
17866       </div>
17867     </div>
17868     <div class="padding"></div>
17869
17870     <div class="entry">
17871       <div class="title">
17872         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
17873       </div>
17874       <div class="date">
17875         15th September 2012
17876       </div>
17877       <div class="body">
17878         <p>After the
17879 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
17880 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
17881 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
17882 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
17883 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
17884 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
17885 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
17886 was
17887 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
17888 formal working group should be formed.</p>
17889
17890 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
17891 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
17892 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
17893 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
17894 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
17895 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
17896 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
17897 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
17898
17899 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
17900 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
17901 IETF.</p>
17902
17903       </div>
17904       <div class="tags">
17905
17906
17907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17908
17909
17910       </div>
17911     </div>
17912     <div class="padding"></div>
17913
17914     <div class="entry">
17915       <div class="title">
17916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
17917       </div>
17918       <div class="date">
17919         12th September 2012
17920       </div>
17921       <div class="body">
17922         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
17923 publication of of
17924 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
17925 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
17926 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
17927 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
17928 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
17929 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
17930 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
17931 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
17932 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
17933 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
17934
17935 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
17936 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
17937 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
17938 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
17939
17940 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
17941 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
17942
17943       </div>
17944       <div class="tags">
17945
17946
17947         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17948
17949
17950       </div>
17951     </div>
17952     <div class="padding"></div>
17953
17954     <div class="entry">
17955       <div class="title">
17956         <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>
17957       </div>
17958       <div class="date">
17959          7th September 2012
17960       </div>
17961       <div class="body">
17962         <p>As I
17963 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
17964 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
17965 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
17966 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
17967 repository for the project</a>.</p>
17968
17969 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
17970 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
17971 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
17972 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
17973
17974 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
17975 PostScript formats at
17976 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
17977 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
17978
17979       </div>
17980       <div class="tags">
17981
17982
17983         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>.
17984
17985
17986       </div>
17987     </div>
17988     <div class="padding"></div>
17989
17990     <div class="entry">
17991       <div class="title">
17992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
17993       </div>
17994       <div class="date">
17995         23rd August 2012
17996       </div>
17997       <div class="body">
17998         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
17999 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
18000 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
18001 revisit the great site
18002 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
18003 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
18004 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
18005
18006       </div>
18007       <div class="tags">
18008
18009
18010         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
18011
18012
18013       </div>
18014     </div>
18015     <div class="padding"></div>
18016
18017     <div class="entry">
18018       <div class="title">
18019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
18020       </div>
18021       <div class="date">
18022         17th August 2012
18023       </div>
18024       <div class="body">
18025         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
18026 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
18027 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
18028 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
18029 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
18030 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
18031 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
18032 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
18033 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
18034 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
18035 summer I
18036 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
18037 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
18038 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
18039
18040 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
18041 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
18042 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
18043 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
18044 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
18045 progress:</p>
18046
18047 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
18048
18049 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
18050 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
18051 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
18052 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
18053 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
18054 english version of the docbook source.</p>
18055
18056 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
18057 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
18058 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
18059 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
18060 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
18061 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
18062 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
18063 project files currently available from <a
18064 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
18065
18066 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
18067 the updated
18068 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
18069 and
18070 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
18071 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
18072 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
18073 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
18074
18075       </div>
18076       <div class="tags">
18077
18078
18079         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
18080
18081
18082       </div>
18083     </div>
18084     <div class="padding"></div>
18085
18086     <div class="entry">
18087       <div class="title">
18088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
18089       </div>
18090       <div class="date">
18091         10th August 2012
18092       </div>
18093       <div class="body">
18094         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
18095 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
18096 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
18097 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
18098 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
18099 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
18100 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
18101 case for the language
18102 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
18103 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
18104
18105 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
18106 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
18107 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
18108 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
18109 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
18110
18111 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
18112 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
18113 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
18114 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
18115 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
18116 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
18117 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
18118 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
18119 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
18120 alias for 'nb'.</p>
18121
18122 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
18123 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
18124 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
18125 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
18126 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
18127 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
18128 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
18129 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
18130 at the same time. :(</p>
18131
18132 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
18133 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
18134 processors. :(</p>
18135
18136 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
18137
18138       </div>
18139       <div class="tags">
18140
18141
18142         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
18143
18144
18145       </div>
18146     </div>
18147     <div class="padding"></div>
18148
18149     <div class="entry">
18150       <div class="title">
18151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
18152       </div>
18153       <div class="date">
18154         31st July 2012
18155       </div>
18156       <div class="body">
18157         <p>I tried to send this text to the
18158 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
18159 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
18160 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
18161 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
18162 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
18163 out.</p>
18164
18165 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
18166 learning curve at the moment.</p>
18167
18168 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
18169 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
18170 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
18171 available from
18172 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
18173 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
18174 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
18175 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
18176 Squeeze.</p>
18177
18178 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
18179 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
18180 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
18181 problems.</p>
18182
18183 <ul>
18184
18185 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
18186    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
18187    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
18188    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
18189    index references spanning several pages (See
18190    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
18191    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
18192    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
18193
18194 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
18195    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
18196    #683163</a>).</li>
18197
18198 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
18199    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
18200    footnote and text body, see
18201    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
18202    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
18203    refs listed are not right).</li>
18204
18205 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
18206
18207 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
18208    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
18209
18210 </ul>
18211
18212 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
18213 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
18214 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
18215
18216 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
18217
18218       </div>
18219       <div class="tags">
18220
18221
18222         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
18223
18224
18225       </div>
18226     </div>
18227     <div class="padding"></div>
18228
18229     <div class="entry">
18230       <div class="title">
18231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
18232       </div>
18233       <div class="date">
18234         21st July 2012
18235       </div>
18236       <div class="body">
18237         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
18238 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
18239 norwegian version</a> of the book
18240 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
18241 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
18242 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
18243 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
18244 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
18245
18246 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
18247 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
18248 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
18249 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
18250 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
18251 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
18252 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
18253 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
18254 print. :)</p>
18255
18256 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
18257 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
18258 language.</p>
18259
18260       </div>
18261       <div class="tags">
18262
18263
18264         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
18265
18266
18267       </div>
18268     </div>
18269     <div class="padding"></div>
18270
18271     <div class="entry">
18272       <div class="title">
18273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
18274       </div>
18275       <div class="date">
18276         16th July 2012
18277       </div>
18278       <div class="body">
18279         <p>I am currently working on a
18280 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
18281 to translate</a> the book
18282 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
18283 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
18284 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
18285 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
18286 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
18287 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
18288 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
18289
18290 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
18291 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
18292 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
18293 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
18294 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
18295 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
18296 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
18297 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
18298 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
18299
18300       </div>
18301       <div class="tags">
18302
18303
18304         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
18305
18306
18307       </div>
18308     </div>
18309     <div class="padding"></div>
18310
18311     <div class="entry">
18312       <div class="title">
18313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
18314       </div>
18315       <div class="date">
18316          9th July 2012
18317       </div>
18318       <div class="body">
18319         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
18320 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
18321 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
18322 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
18323 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
18324 to adjust and scale the just released
18325 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
18326 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
18327 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
18328
18329 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18330
18331 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
18332 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
18333 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
18334 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
18335 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
18336 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
18337 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
18338 perspective when working with IT.</p>
18339
18340 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18341 project?</strong></p>
18342
18343 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
18344 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
18345 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
18346 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
18347 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
18348 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
18349
18350 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18351 Edu?</strong></p>
18352
18353 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
18354 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
18355 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
18356 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
18357 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
18358 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
18359 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
18360 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
18361 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
18362 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
18363 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
18364 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
18365 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
18366 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
18367 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
18368 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
18369 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
18370 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
18371 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
18372 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
18373 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
18374 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
18375 quicker to update.
18376
18377 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18378 Edu?</strong></p>
18379
18380 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
18381 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
18382 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
18383 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
18384 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
18385 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
18386
18387 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
18388 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
18389 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
18390 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
18391 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
18392 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
18393 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
18394 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
18395 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
18396 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
18397 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
18398 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
18399 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
18400 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
18401 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
18402
18403 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
18404 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
18405 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
18406 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
18407 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
18408 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
18409 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
18410 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
18411
18412 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
18413 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
18414 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
18415 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
18416 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
18417 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
18418 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
18419 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
18420 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
18421 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
18422 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
18423 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
18424 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
18425 sound file.</p>
18426
18427 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
18428 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
18429 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
18430 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
18431 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
18432 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
18433 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
18434 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
18435 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
18436
18437 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18438
18439 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
18440 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
18441 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
18442 )</p>
18443
18444 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18445 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18446
18447 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
18448 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
18449 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
18450 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
18451 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
18452 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
18453 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
18454 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
18455 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
18456 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
18457 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
18458 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
18459 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
18460 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
18461 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
18462
18463 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
18464 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
18465 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
18466 management with Airtime</a>,
18467 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
18468 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
18469 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
18470 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
18471 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
18472
18473       </div>
18474       <div class="tags">
18475
18476
18477         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
18478
18479
18480       </div>
18481     </div>
18482     <div class="padding"></div>
18483
18484     <div class="entry">
18485       <div class="title">
18486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
18487       </div>
18488       <div class="date">
18489          8th July 2012
18490       </div>
18491       <div class="body">
18492         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
18493 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
18494 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
18495 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
18496 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
18497 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
18498 Steinberg in his blog post
18499 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
18500 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
18501 spending of your tax money.</p>
18502
18503 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
18504 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
18505 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
18506 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
18507 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
18508 purchases.</p>
18509
18510       </div>
18511       <div class="tags">
18512
18513
18514         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18515
18516
18517       </div>
18518     </div>
18519     <div class="padding"></div>
18520
18521     <div class="entry">
18522       <div class="title">
18523         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
18524       </div>
18525       <div class="date">
18526          7th July 2012
18527       </div>
18528       <div class="body">
18529         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
18530 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
18531 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
18532 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
18533 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
18534 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
18535 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
18536 receive.  The software is
18537
18538 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
18539 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
18540 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
18541 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
18542 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
18543 Windows</a>.</p>
18544
18545 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
18546 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
18547
18548 <p><ul>
18549
18550   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
18551     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
18552
18553   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
18554     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
18555     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
18556     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
18557     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
18558     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
18559     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
18560     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
18561     </li>
18562
18563   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
18564     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
18565
18566   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
18567     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
18568
18569   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
18570     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
18571
18572   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
18573
18574   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
18575     formats </li>
18576
18577   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
18578     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
18579     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
18580     (as separate sets)</li>
18581
18582   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
18583     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
18584     percentage)</li>
18585
18586   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
18587     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
18588     memory):
18589     <ul>
18590       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
18591       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
18592       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
18593       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
18594       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
18595       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
18596       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
18597       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
18598       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
18599       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
18600           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
18601           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
18602           activity)</li>
18603       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
18604       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
18605     </ul></li>
18606
18607   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
18608     <ul>
18609       <li>Break periods</li>
18610       <li>For teacher(s):
18611         <ul>
18612           <li>Not available periods</li>
18613           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
18614           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
18615           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
18616           <li>Min hours daily</li>
18617           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
18618
18619           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
18620             days per week</li>
18621         </ul></li>
18622       <li>For students (sets):
18623         <ul>
18624           <li>Not available periods</li>
18625           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
18626           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
18627           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
18628           <li>Min hours daily</li>
18629           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
18630
18631           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
18632             days per week</li>
18633         </ul></li>
18634       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
18635         <ul>
18636           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
18637           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
18638           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
18639           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
18640           <li>End(s) students day</li>
18641           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
18642           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
18643             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
18644           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
18645           <li>Not overlapping</li>
18646           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
18647           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
18648         </ul></li>
18649     </ul></li>
18650
18651   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
18652     <ul>
18653       <li>Room not available periods</li>
18654       <li>For teacher(s):
18655         <ul>
18656           <li>Home room(s)</li>
18657           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
18658           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
18659         </ul>
18660       </li>
18661
18662       <li>For students (sets):
18663         <ul>
18664           <li>Home room(s)</li>
18665           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
18666           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
18667         </ul>
18668       </li>
18669       <li>Preferred room(s):
18670         <ul>
18671           <li>For a subject</li>
18672           <li>For an activity tag</li>
18673           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
18674           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
18675         </ul>
18676       </li>
18677
18678       <li>For a set of activities:
18679         <ul>
18680           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
18681         </ul>
18682       </li>
18683     </ul>
18684   </li>
18685 </ul></p>
18686
18687 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
18688 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
18689 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
18690 manually, check it out.
18691
18692 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
18693 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
18694 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
18695 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
18696 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
18697 section</a>.</p>
18698
18699       </div>
18700       <div class="tags">
18701
18702
18703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
18704
18705
18706       </div>
18707     </div>
18708     <div class="padding"></div>
18709
18710     <div class="entry">
18711       <div class="title">
18712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
18713       </div>
18714       <div class="date">
18715          3rd July 2012
18716       </div>
18717       <div class="body">
18718         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
18719 project (Norwegian version of
18720 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
18721 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
18722 a problem with the municipalities using
18723 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
18724 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
18725 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
18726 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
18727 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
18728 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
18729 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
18730 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
18731 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
18732 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
18733 the From: header.</p>
18734
18735 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
18736 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
18737 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
18738 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
18739 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
18740 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
18741 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
18742 behaviour.</p>
18743
18744 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
18745 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
18746 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
18747 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
18748 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
18749 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
18750 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
18751
18752       </div>
18753       <div class="tags">
18754
18755
18756         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18757
18758
18759       </div>
18760     </div>
18761     <div class="padding"></div>
18762
18763     <div class="entry">
18764       <div class="title">
18765         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
18766       </div>
18767       <div class="date">
18768         26th June 2012
18769       </div>
18770       <div class="body">
18771         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
18772 another interview with the people behind
18773 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
18774 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
18775 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
18776 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
18777 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
18778 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
18779 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
18780
18781 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18782
18783 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
18784 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
18785 ICT in schools</p>
18786
18787 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18788 project?</strong></p>
18789
18790 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
18791 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
18792 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
18793 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
18794
18795 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18796 Edu?</strong></p>
18797
18798 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
18799 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
18800 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
18801 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
18802
18803 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18804 Edu?</strong></p>
18805
18806 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
18807 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
18808 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
18809 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
18810 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
18811 technologies in school.</p>
18812
18813 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18814
18815 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
18816 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
18817 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
18818
18819 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18820 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18821
18822 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
18823 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
18824 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
18825 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
18826
18827 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
18828 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
18829 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
18830
18831 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
18832 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
18833 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
18834 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
18835 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
18836 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
18837 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
18838 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
18839 working there.</p>
18840
18841       </div>
18842       <div class="tags">
18843
18844
18845         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
18846
18847
18848       </div>
18849     </div>
18850     <div class="padding"></div>
18851
18852     <div class="entry">
18853       <div class="title">
18854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
18855       </div>
18856       <div class="date">
18857         24th June 2012
18858       </div>
18859       <div class="body">
18860         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
18861 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
18862 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
18863 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
18864 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
18865 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
18866 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
18867 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
18868 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
18869 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
18870 missing in my book.</p>
18871
18872 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
18873 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
18874 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
18875 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
18876 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
18877 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
18878 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
18879
18880       </div>
18881       <div class="tags">
18882
18883
18884         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>.
18885
18886
18887       </div>
18888     </div>
18889     <div class="padding"></div>
18890
18891     <div class="entry">
18892       <div class="title">
18893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
18894       </div>
18895       <div class="date">
18896         11th June 2012
18897       </div>
18898       <div class="body">
18899         <p>During my work on
18900 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
18901 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
18902 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
18903 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
18904 explanation.</p>
18905
18906 <p><ul>
18907
18908 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
18909 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
18910 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
18911 system depend on tasksel tasks in
18912 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
18913 installation.</li>
18914
18915 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
18916 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
18917 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
18918 at least try to enable it for these services:
18919 <ul>
18920
18921   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
18922     quotas.</li>
18923   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
18924   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
18925   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
18926   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
18927   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
18928
18929 </ul></li>
18930
18931 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
18932 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
18933 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
18934 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
18935
18936 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
18937 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
18938 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
18939
18940 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
18941 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
18942 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
18943 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
18944 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
18945 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
18946
18947 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
18948 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
18949 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
18950 in Wheezy.
18951
18952 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
18953 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
18954 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
18955
18956 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
18957 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
18958 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
18959 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
18960
18961 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
18962 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
18963 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
18964 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
18965
18966 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
18967 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
18968 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
18969
18970 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
18971 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
18972 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
18973
18974 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
18975 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
18976 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
18977 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
18978 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
18979
18980 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
18981 <ul>
18982
18983 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
18984 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
18985 <li>and probably more?</li>
18986 </ul></li>
18987
18988 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
18989 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
18990 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
18991 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
18992 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
18993 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
18994 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
18995 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
18996
18997
18998 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
18999 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
19000 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
19001 use.</li>
19002
19003 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
19004 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
19005 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
19006 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
19007 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
19008
19009 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
19010 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
19011 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
19012 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
19013 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
19014 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
19015
19016 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
19017 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
19018 There are at least three implementations,
19019 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
19020 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
19021 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
19022 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
19023 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
19024 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
19025 given room.</li>
19026
19027 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
19028 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
19029 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
19030 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
19031 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
19032 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
19033 investigated.</li>
19034
19035 </ul></p>
19036
19037 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
19038 version.</p>
19039
19040       </div>
19041       <div class="tags">
19042
19043
19044         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19045
19046
19047       </div>
19048     </div>
19049     <div class="padding"></div>
19050
19051     <div class="entry">
19052       <div class="title">
19053         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
19054       </div>
19055       <div class="date">
19056          9th June 2012
19057       </div>
19058       <div class="body">
19059         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
19060 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
19061 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
19062 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
19063 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
19064 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
19065 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
19066 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
19067 be willing to pay for.</p>
19068
19069 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
19070 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
19071 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
19072 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
19073 Orwell</a>.</p>
19074
19075       </div>
19076       <div class="tags">
19077
19078
19079         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
19080
19081
19082       </div>
19083     </div>
19084     <div class="padding"></div>
19085
19086     <div class="entry">
19087       <div class="title">
19088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
19089       </div>
19090       <div class="date">
19091          6th June 2012
19092       </div>
19093       <div class="body">
19094         <p>A few days ago
19095 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
19096 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
19097 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
19098 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
19099 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
19100 code for HP, Dell and IBM
19101 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
19102 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
19103 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
19104 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
19105 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
19106
19107 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
19108 output:
19109
19110 <blockquote><pre>
19111 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
19112 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
19113 %
19114 </pre></blockquote>
19115
19116 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
19117 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
19118 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
19119
19120       </div>
19121       <div class="tags">
19122
19123
19124         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19125
19126
19127       </div>
19128     </div>
19129     <div class="padding"></div>
19130
19131     <div class="entry">
19132       <div class="title">
19133         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
19134       </div>
19135       <div class="date">
19136          2nd June 2012
19137       </div>
19138       <div class="body">
19139         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
19140 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
19141 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
19142 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
19143 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
19144 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
19145
19146 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
19147
19148 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
19149 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
19150 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
19151 by Angela).</p>
19152
19153 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
19154 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
19155 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
19156 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
19157 becoming an osteopath.</p>
19158
19159 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
19160 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
19161 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
19162 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
19163 skills with communication skills.</p>
19164
19165 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
19166 project?</strong></p>
19167
19168 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
19169 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
19170 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
19171 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
19172 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
19173
19174 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
19175 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
19176 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
19177 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
19178 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
19179 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
19180 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
19181 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
19182 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
19183
19184 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
19185 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
19186 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
19187
19188 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
19189
19190 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
19191 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
19192 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
19193 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
19194 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
19195 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
19196 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
19197 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
19198 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
19199 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
19200 point.</p>
19201
19202 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
19203 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
19204 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
19205 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
19206 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
19207 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
19208
19209 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
19210 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
19211 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
19212 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
19213 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
19214 spare time.</p>
19215
19216 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
19217 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
19218 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
19219 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
19220 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
19221
19222 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
19223 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
19224 avoidance do exist.</p>
19225
19226 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
19227 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
19228 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
19229 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
19230 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
19231 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
19232 and probably a gain for all.</p>
19233
19234 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19235 Edu?</strong></p>
19236
19237 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
19238 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
19239 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
19240 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
19241 project communication, honest communication within the group of
19242 developers, etc.</p>
19243
19244 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19245 Edu?</strong></p>
19246
19247 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
19248
19249 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
19250 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
19251 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
19252 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
19253 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
19254 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
19255 contribute).</p>
19256
19257 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
19258 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
19259 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
19260 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
19261 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
19262 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
19263 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
19264 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
19265 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
19266 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
19267
19268 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
19269
19270 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
19271
19272 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
19273 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
19274 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
19275
19276 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
19277 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
19278 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
19279 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
19280
19281 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
19282 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
19283 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
19284 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
19285 whiteboard.</p>
19286
19287 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
19288
19289 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
19290 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
19291
19292 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
19293 enrol people.</p>
19294
19295       </div>
19296       <div class="tags">
19297
19298
19299         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
19300
19301
19302       </div>
19303     </div>
19304     <div class="padding"></div>
19305
19306     <div class="entry">
19307       <div class="title">
19308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
19309       </div>
19310       <div class="date">
19311          1st June 2012
19312       </div>
19313       <div class="body">
19314         <p>A few years ago I wrote
19315 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
19316 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
19317 I have learned from colleges here at the
19318 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
19319 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
19320 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
19321 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
19322 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
19323
19324 <p><pre>
19325 use strict;
19326 use warnings;
19327 use SOAP::Lite;
19328 use Data::Dumper;
19329 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
19330 my $App = 'test';
19331 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
19332 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
19333 my $s = SOAP::Lite
19334     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
19335     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
19336     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
19337     ;
19338 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
19339     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
19340     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
19341     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
19342 );
19343 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
19344 </pre></p>
19345
19346 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
19347
19348 <p><pre>
19349 $VAR1 = {
19350           'Asset' => {
19351                      'Entitlements' => {
19352                                        'EntitlementData' => [
19353                                                             {
19354                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
19355                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
19356                                                               'Provider' => '',
19357                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
19358                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
19359                                                             },
19360                                                             {
19361                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
19362                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
19363                                                               'Provider' => '',
19364                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
19365                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
19366                                                             },
19367                                                             {
19368                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
19369                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
19370                                                               'Provider' => '',
19371                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
19372                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
19373                                                             }
19374                                                           ]
19375                                      },
19376                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
19377                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
19378                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
19379                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
19380                                           'Buid' => '2323',
19381                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
19382                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
19383                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
19384                                         }
19385                    }
19386         };
19387 </pre></p>
19388
19389 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
19390 service outside the
19391 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
19392 documentation</a>, and according to
19393 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
19394 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
19395 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
19396
19397 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
19398 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
19399
19400       </div>
19401       <div class="tags">
19402
19403
19404         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19405
19406
19407       </div>
19408     </div>
19409     <div class="padding"></div>
19410
19411     <div class="entry">
19412       <div class="title">
19413         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
19414       </div>
19415       <div class="date">
19416         31st May 2012
19417       </div>
19418       <div class="body">
19419         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
19420 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
19421 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
19422 running Debian Squeeze, where
19423 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
19424 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
19425 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
19426 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
19427 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
19428 another day.</p>
19429
19430 <p>After calibration, I get a
19431 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
19432 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
19433 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
19434 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
19435 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
19436 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
19437 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
19438 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
19439 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
19440 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
19441 and a simple</p>
19442
19443 <p><pre>
19444 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
19445 </pre></p>
19446
19447 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
19448 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
19449 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
19450 enough for now.</p>
19451
19452       </div>
19453       <div class="tags">
19454
19455
19456         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19457
19458
19459       </div>
19460     </div>
19461     <div class="padding"></div>
19462
19463     <div class="entry">
19464       <div class="title">
19465         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
19466       </div>
19467       <div class="date">
19468         27th May 2012
19469       </div>
19470       <div class="body">
19471         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
19472 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
19473 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
19474 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
19475 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
19476 since then, helping to make sure the
19477 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
19478 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
19479
19480 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
19481
19482 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
19483 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
19484 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
19485 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
19486 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
19487 our computer network.</p>
19488
19489 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
19490 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
19491 (4 months).</p>
19492
19493 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
19494 project?</strong></p>
19495
19496 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
19497 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
19498 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
19499 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
19500 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
19501 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
19502 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
19503 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
19504 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
19505 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
19506 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
19507 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
19508 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
19509 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
19510
19511 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19512 Edu?</strong></p>
19513
19514 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
19515 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
19516 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
19517 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
19518 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
19519 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
19520 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
19521 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
19522
19523 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19524 Edu?</strong></p>
19525
19526 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
19527 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
19528 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
19529 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
19530 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
19531 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
19532 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
19533 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
19534 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
19535 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
19536 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
19537 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
19538
19539 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
19540
19541 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
19542 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
19543 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
19544
19545 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
19546 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
19547
19548 <p><ol>
19549
19550 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
19551 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
19552 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
19553 developing.</li>
19554
19555 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
19556 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
19557 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
19558 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
19559 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
19560
19561 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
19562 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
19563 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
19564
19565 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
19566 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
19567 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
19568 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
19569
19570 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
19571 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
19572 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
19573
19574 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
19575
19576 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
19577 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
19578 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
19579 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
19580
19581 </ol></p>
19582
19583       </div>
19584       <div class="tags">
19585
19586
19587         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
19588
19589
19590       </div>
19591     </div>
19592     <div class="padding"></div>
19593
19594     <div class="entry">
19595       <div class="title">
19596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
19597       </div>
19598       <div class="date">
19599         26th May 2012
19600       </div>
19601       <div class="body">
19602         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
19603 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
19604 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
19605 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
19606 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
19607
19608 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
19609 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
19610 comment:</p>
19611
19612 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
19613 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
19614 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
19615 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
19616 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
19617 </blockquote></p>
19618
19619 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
19620 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
19621 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
19622 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
19623 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
19624 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
19625 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
19626 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
19627 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
19628 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
19629 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
19630 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
19631 of wasted effort.</p>
19632
19633 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
19634 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
19635 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
19636
19637 <p>See
19638 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
19639 and
19640 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
19641 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
19642 </blockquote></p>
19643
19644       </div>
19645       <div class="tags">
19646
19647
19648         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
19649
19650
19651       </div>
19652     </div>
19653     <div class="padding"></div>
19654
19655     <div class="entry">
19656       <div class="title">
19657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
19658       </div>
19659       <div class="date">
19660         18th May 2012
19661       </div>
19662       <div class="body">
19663         <p>In january, I
19664 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
19665 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
19666 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
19667 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
19668 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
19669 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
19670 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
19671 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
19672 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
19673 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
19674
19675 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
19676 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
19677 drivers. :)</p>
19678
19679       </div>
19680       <div class="tags">
19681
19682
19683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19684
19685
19686       </div>
19687     </div>
19688     <div class="padding"></div>
19689
19690     <div class="entry">
19691       <div class="title">
19692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
19693       </div>
19694       <div class="date">
19695         13th May 2012
19696       </div>
19697       <div class="body">
19698         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
19699 publish another interview with the people behind
19700 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
19701 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
19702 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
19703 details get right before release.
19704
19705 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
19706
19707 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
19708 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
19709 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
19710 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
19711 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
19712 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
19713 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
19714 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
19715
19716 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
19717 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
19718 home since 2006.</p>
19719
19720 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
19721 project?</strong></p>
19722
19723 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
19724 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
19725 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
19726 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
19727 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
19728 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
19729
19730 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
19731 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
19732 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
19733 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
19734 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
19735 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
19736 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
19737 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
19738 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
19739 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
19740 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
19741 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
19742 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
19743 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
19744 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
19745 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
19746
19747 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19748 Edu?</strong></p>
19749
19750 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
19751 for me as today.</p>
19752
19753 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
19754
19755 <p><ul>
19756
19757 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
19758 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
19759
19760 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
19761 cost.</li>
19762
19763 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
19764 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
19765 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
19766 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
19767 server</li>
19768
19769 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
19770 school.</li>
19771
19772 </ul></p>
19773
19774 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
19775 came up in this way:</p>
19776
19777 <p><ul>
19778
19779 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
19780 now.</li>
19781
19782 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
19783 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
19784 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
19785
19786 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
19787 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
19788 interfaces used in the past.</li>
19789
19790 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
19791 different needs.</li>
19792
19793 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
19794
19795 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
19796 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
19797 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
19798
19799 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
19800 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
19801
19802 </ul></p>
19803
19804 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19805 Edu?</strong></p>
19806
19807 <p><ul>
19808
19809 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
19810 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
19811 whole municipality areas.</li>
19812
19813 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
19814 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
19815 politicians.</li>
19816
19817 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
19818
19819 </ul></p>
19820
19821 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
19822
19823 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
19824 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
19825 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
19826 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
19827 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
19828 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
19829
19830 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
19831 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
19832 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
19833 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
19834 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
19835
19836 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
19837 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
19838
19839 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
19840 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
19841 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
19842
19843       </div>
19844       <div class="tags">
19845
19846
19847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
19848
19849
19850       </div>
19851     </div>
19852     <div class="padding"></div>
19853
19854     <div class="entry">
19855       <div class="title">
19856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
19857       </div>
19858       <div class="date">
19859         30th April 2012
19860       </div>
19861       <div class="body">
19862         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
19863 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
19864
19865 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
19866 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
19867 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
19868 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
19869 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
19870 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
19871 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
19872 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
19873 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
19874 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
19875 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
19876 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
19877 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
19878 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
19879 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
19880 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
19881
19882 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
19883 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
19884 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
19885 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
19886 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
19887 finally found a Danish supplier
19888 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
19889 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
19890 days ago.</p>
19891
19892 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
19893 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
19894 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
19895 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
19896 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
19897 toys.</p>
19898
19899       </div>
19900       <div class="tags">
19901
19902
19903         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19904
19905
19906       </div>
19907     </div>
19908     <div class="padding"></div>
19909
19910     <div class="entry">
19911       <div class="title">
19912         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
19913       </div>
19914       <div class="date">
19915         26th April 2012
19916       </div>
19917       <div class="body">
19918         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
19919 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
19920 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
19921 that the video editor application included with
19922 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
19923 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
19924 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
19925
19926 <p><blockquote>
19927 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
19928 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
19929 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
19930 </blockquote></p>
19931
19932 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
19933
19934 <p><blockquote>
19935 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
19936 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
19937 </blockquote></p>
19938
19939 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
19940 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
19941 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
19942 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
19943 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
19944 video.  AMR is
19945 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
19946 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
19947 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
19948 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
19949 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
19950 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
19951 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
19952
19953 <p>I know why I prefer
19954 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
19955 standards</a> also for video.</p>
19956
19957       </div>
19958       <div class="tags">
19959
19960
19961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19962
19963
19964       </div>
19965     </div>
19966     <div class="padding"></div>
19967
19968     <div class="entry">
19969       <div class="title">
19970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
19971       </div>
19972       <div class="date">
19973         19th April 2012
19974       </div>
19975       <div class="body">
19976         <p>Here in Norway, the
19977 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
19978 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
19979 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
19980 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
19981 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
19982 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
19983 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
19984 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
19985 on the same level.</p>
19986
19987 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
19988 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
19989 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
19990 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
19991 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
19992 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
19993 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
19994 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
19995 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
19996 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
19997 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
19998 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
19999 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
20000 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
20001 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
20002 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
20003 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
20004 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
20005
20006 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
20007 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
20008 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
20009 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
20010 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
20011 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
20012 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
20013 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
20014
20015 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
20016 from Simon Phipps
20017 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
20018 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
20019
20020 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
20021 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
20022 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
20023 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
20024 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
20025 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
20026 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
20027 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
20028 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
20029
20030       </div>
20031       <div class="tags">
20032
20033
20034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20035
20036
20037       </div>
20038     </div>
20039     <div class="padding"></div>
20040
20041     <div class="entry">
20042       <div class="title">
20043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
20044       </div>
20045       <div class="date">
20046         15th April 2012
20047       </div>
20048       <div class="body">
20049         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
20050 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
20051 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
20052 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
20053 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
20054 up in the recently released
20055 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
20056 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
20057
20058 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20059
20060 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
20061 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
20062 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
20063 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
20064 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
20065 information technology and science/technology.</p>
20066
20067 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20068 project?</strong></p>
20069
20070 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
20071 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
20072 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
20073 contributing.</p>
20074
20075 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20076 Edu?</strong></p>
20077
20078 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
20079 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
20080 Debian Project!</p>
20081
20082 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20083 Edu?</strong></p>
20084
20085 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
20086 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
20087 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
20088 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
20089 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
20090 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
20091 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
20092
20093 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
20094 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
20095
20096 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20097
20098 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
20099 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
20100 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
20101 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
20102
20103 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20104 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20105
20106 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
20107 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
20108 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
20109 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
20110 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
20111 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
20112 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
20113
20114 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
20115 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
20116 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
20117 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
20118 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
20119 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
20120 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
20121 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
20122
20123       </div>
20124       <div class="tags">
20125
20126
20127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20128
20129
20130       </div>
20131     </div>
20132     <div class="padding"></div>
20133
20134     <div class="entry">
20135       <div class="title">
20136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
20137       </div>
20138       <div class="date">
20139          8th April 2012
20140       </div>
20141       <div class="body">
20142         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
20143 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
20144 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
20145 contributor to the
20146 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
20147 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
20148
20149 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20150
20151 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
20152 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
20153
20154 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20155 project?</strong></p>
20156
20157 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
20158 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
20159 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
20160 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
20161 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
20162 "localisation".</p>
20163
20164 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20165 Edu?</strong></p>
20166
20167 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20168 Edu?</strong></p>
20169
20170 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
20171 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
20172 education system.</p>
20173
20174 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
20175 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
20176 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
20177 money on the latest hardware.</p>
20178
20179 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20180
20181 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
20182 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
20183 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
20184
20185 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20186 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20187
20188 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
20189 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
20190 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
20191
20192       </div>
20193       <div class="tags">
20194
20195
20196         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20197
20198
20199       </div>
20200     </div>
20201     <div class="padding"></div>
20202
20203     <div class="entry">
20204       <div class="title">
20205         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
20206       </div>
20207       <div class="date">
20208          6th April 2012
20209       </div>
20210       <div class="body">
20211         <p>Recently I have spent time with
20212 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
20213 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
20214 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
20215 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
20216 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
20217 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
20218 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
20219 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
20220
20221 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
20222 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
20223 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
20224 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
20225 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
20226 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
20227 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
20228 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
20229
20230 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
20231 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
20232 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
20233 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
20234 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
20235 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
20236 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
20237 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
20238
20239 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
20240 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
20241 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
20242 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
20243 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
20244 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
20245 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
20246 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
20247 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
20248 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
20249
20250 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
20251 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
20252 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
20253 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
20254
20255 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
20256 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
20257
20258 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
20259 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
20260 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
20261 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
20262
20263       </div>
20264       <div class="tags">
20265
20266
20267         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20268
20269
20270       </div>
20271     </div>
20272     <div class="padding"></div>
20273
20274     <div class="entry">
20275       <div class="title">
20276         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
20277       </div>
20278       <div class="date">
20279          5th April 2012
20280       </div>
20281       <div class="body">
20282         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
20283 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
20284 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
20285 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
20286 for schools.  Check out his article
20287 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
20288 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
20289
20290       </div>
20291       <div class="tags">
20292
20293
20294         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20295
20296
20297       </div>
20298     </div>
20299     <div class="padding"></div>
20300
20301     <div class="entry">
20302       <div class="title">
20303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
20304       </div>
20305       <div class="date">
20306          1st April 2012
20307       </div>
20308       <div class="body">
20309         <p>Germany is a core area for the
20310 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
20311 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
20312 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
20313
20314 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20315
20316 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
20317 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
20318 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
20319 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
20320 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
20321 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
20322 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
20323 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
20324
20325 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
20326 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
20327 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
20328 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
20329 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
20330 the end of April this year.</p>
20331
20332 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20333 project?</strong></p>
20334
20335 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
20336 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
20337 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
20338 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
20339 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
20340 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
20341 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
20342 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
20343 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
20344 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
20345 Skolelinux.</p>
20346
20347 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
20348 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
20349 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
20350 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
20351 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
20352 the admin teachers.</p>
20353
20354 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20355 Edu?</strong></p>
20356
20357 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
20358 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
20359 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
20360
20361 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
20362 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
20363 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
20364 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
20365 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
20366
20367 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20368 Edu?</strong></p>
20369
20370 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
20371
20372 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20373
20374 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
20375 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
20376 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
20377 LibreOffice.</p>
20378
20379 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20380 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20381
20382 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
20383 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
20384 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
20385
20386       </div>
20387       <div class="tags">
20388
20389
20390         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20391
20392
20393       </div>
20394     </div>
20395     <div class="padding"></div>
20396
20397     <div class="entry">
20398       <div class="title">
20399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
20400       </div>
20401       <div class="date">
20402         25th March 2012
20403       </div>
20404       <div class="body">
20405         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
20406
20407 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
20408 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
20409 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
20410 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
20411 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
20412 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
20413 and download as a
20414 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
20415 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
20416
20417 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
20418   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
20419     <p>Download video as
20420       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
20421 </video></p>
20422
20423       </div>
20424       <div class="tags">
20425
20426
20427         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20428
20429
20430       </div>
20431     </div>
20432     <div class="padding"></div>
20433
20434     <div class="entry">
20435       <div class="title">
20436         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
20437       </div>
20438       <div class="date">
20439         19th March 2012
20440       </div>
20441       <div class="body">
20442         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
20443 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
20444 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
20445 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
20446 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
20447
20448 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20449
20450 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
20451 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
20452 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
20453 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
20454 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
20455 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
20456 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
20457 installations.</p>
20458
20459 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20460 project?</strong></p>
20461
20462 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
20463 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
20464 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
20465 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
20466 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
20467 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
20468 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
20469 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
20470 these things we decided to try it.</p>
20471
20472 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20473 Edu?</strong></p>
20474
20475 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
20476 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
20477 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
20478 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
20479 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
20480 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
20481 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
20482 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
20483
20484 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20485 Edu?</strong></p>
20486
20487 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
20488 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
20489 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
20490 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
20491 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
20492
20493 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20494
20495 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
20496 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
20497 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
20498 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
20499 that counts...)</p>
20500
20501 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20502 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20503
20504 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
20505 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
20506 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
20507 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
20508 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
20509 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
20510 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
20511 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
20512 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
20513 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
20514 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
20515
20516 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
20517 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
20518 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
20519
20520       </div>
20521       <div class="tags">
20522
20523
20524         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20525
20526
20527       </div>
20528     </div>
20529     <div class="padding"></div>
20530
20531     <div class="entry">
20532       <div class="title">
20533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
20534       </div>
20535       <div class="date">
20536         16th March 2012
20537       </div>
20538       <div class="body">
20539         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
20540 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
20541 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
20542 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
20543
20544 <ol>
20545
20546 <li>The documentation is written in a
20547 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
20548 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
20549 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
20550 docbook XML.</li>
20551
20552 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
20553 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
20554 with the translated text.</li>
20555
20556 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
20557 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
20558 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
20559 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
20560 images.</li>
20561
20562 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
20563 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
20564
20565 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
20566 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
20567
20568 </ol>
20569
20570 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
20571 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
20572 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
20573 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
20574 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
20575
20576 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
20577 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
20578 package</a>.</p>
20579
20580       </div>
20581       <div class="tags">
20582
20583
20584         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20585
20586
20587       </div>
20588     </div>
20589     <div class="padding"></div>
20590
20591     <div class="entry">
20592       <div class="title">
20593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
20594       </div>
20595       <div class="date">
20596         11th March 2012
20597       </div>
20598       <div class="body">
20599         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
20600 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
20601 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
20602 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
20603 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
20604 you have not done so already.</p>
20605
20606 <p>I plan to present the new version at
20607 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
20608 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
20609 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
20610
20611       </div>
20612       <div class="tags">
20613
20614
20615         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20616
20617
20618       </div>
20619     </div>
20620     <div class="padding"></div>
20621
20622     <div class="entry">
20623       <div class="title">
20624         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
20625       </div>
20626       <div class="date">
20627          9th March 2012
20628       </div>
20629       <div class="body">
20630         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
20631 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
20632 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
20633 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
20634 more international audience.</p>
20635
20636 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
20637 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
20638 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
20639 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
20640 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
20641 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
20642 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
20643
20644
20645 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20646
20647 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
20648 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
20649 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
20650 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
20651 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
20652 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
20653 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
20654 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
20655 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
20656 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
20657 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
20658
20659 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20660 project?</strong></p>
20661
20662 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
20663 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
20664 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
20665 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
20666 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
20667 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
20668 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
20669 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
20670 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
20671 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
20672 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
20673 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
20674 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
20675
20676 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20677 Edu?</strong></p>
20678
20679 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
20680 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
20681 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
20682 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
20683 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
20684 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
20685 Japan.</p>
20686
20687 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20688 Edu?</strong></p>
20689
20690 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
20691 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
20692 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
20693 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
20694 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
20695 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
20696 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
20697 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
20698 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
20699 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
20700 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
20701 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
20702 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
20703 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
20704 help.</p>
20705
20706 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20707
20708 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
20709 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
20710 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
20711 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
20712 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
20713 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
20714 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
20715 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
20716 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
20717 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
20718 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
20719
20720 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20721 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20722
20723 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
20724 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
20725 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
20726 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
20727 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
20728 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
20729 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
20730 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
20731 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
20732 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
20733 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
20734 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
20735
20736       </div>
20737       <div class="tags">
20738
20739
20740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20741
20742
20743       </div>
20744     </div>
20745     <div class="padding"></div>
20746
20747     <div class="entry">
20748       <div class="title">
20749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
20750       </div>
20751       <div class="date">
20752          7th March 2012
20753       </div>
20754       <div class="body">
20755         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
20756
20757 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
20758 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
20759 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
20760 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
20761 download as a
20762 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
20763 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
20764
20765 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
20766   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
20767     <p>Download video as
20768       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
20769 </video></p>
20770
20771       </div>
20772       <div class="tags">
20773
20774
20775         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20776
20777
20778       </div>
20779     </div>
20780     <div class="padding"></div>
20781
20782     <div class="entry">
20783       <div class="title">
20784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
20785       </div>
20786       <div class="date">
20787          4th March 2012
20788       </div>
20789       <div class="body">
20790         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
20791 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
20792 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
20793 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
20794 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
20795 need a software solution for your school.</p>
20796
20797       </div>
20798       <div class="tags">
20799
20800
20801         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20802
20803
20804       </div>
20805     </div>
20806     <div class="padding"></div>
20807
20808     <div class="entry">
20809       <div class="title">
20810         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
20811       </div>
20812       <div class="date">
20813          3rd March 2012
20814       </div>
20815       <div class="body">
20816         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
20817 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
20818 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
20819 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
20820 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
20821 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
20822 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
20823 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
20824 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
20825 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
20826 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
20827 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
20828 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
20829 year...</p>
20830
20831 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
20832 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
20833 name,
20834 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
20835 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
20836 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
20837 mean). I've been following
20838 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
20839 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
20840 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
20841 Check it out. :)</p>
20842
20843       </div>
20844       <div class="tags">
20845
20846
20847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20848
20849
20850       </div>
20851     </div>
20852     <div class="padding"></div>
20853
20854     <div class="entry">
20855       <div class="title">
20856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
20857       </div>
20858       <div class="date">
20859         27th February 2012
20860       </div>
20861       <div class="body">
20862         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
20863 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
20864 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
20865 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
20866 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
20867 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
20868 need a software solution for your school.</p>
20869
20870       </div>
20871       <div class="tags">
20872
20873
20874         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20875
20876
20877       </div>
20878     </div>
20879     <div class="padding"></div>
20880
20881     <div class="entry">
20882       <div class="title">
20883         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
20884       </div>
20885       <div class="date">
20886         19th February 2012
20887       </div>
20888       <div class="body">
20889         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
20890 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
20891 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
20892 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
20893 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
20894 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
20895 solution for your school.</p>
20896
20897       </div>
20898       <div class="tags">
20899
20900
20901         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20902
20903
20904       </div>
20905     </div>
20906     <div class="padding"></div>
20907
20908     <div class="entry">
20909       <div class="title">
20910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
20911       </div>
20912       <div class="date">
20913         14th February 2012
20914       </div>
20915       <div class="body">
20916         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
20917 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
20918 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
20919 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
20920 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
20921 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
20922 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
20923 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
20924 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
20925
20926 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
20927 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
20928 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
20929 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
20930 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
20931
20932 <blockquote><pre>
20933 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
20934 do
20935     printf "Failed disk $d: "
20936     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
20937 done
20938 </blockquote></pre>
20939
20940 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
20941 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
20942
20943 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
20944
20945 <blockquote><pre>
20946 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
20947 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
20948 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
20949 </blockquote></pre>
20950
20951 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
20952 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
20953 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
20954 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
20955 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
20956 mounted inside my box.</p>
20957
20958 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
20959 Software RAID in the
20960 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
20961 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
20962 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
20963 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
20964 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
20965 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
20966
20967       </div>
20968       <div class="tags">
20969
20970
20971         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
20972
20973
20974       </div>
20975     </div>
20976     <div class="padding"></div>
20977
20978     <div class="entry">
20979       <div class="title">
20980         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
20981       </div>
20982       <div class="date">
20983         13th February 2012
20984       </div>
20985       <div class="body">
20986         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
20987 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
20988 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
20989 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
20990 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
20991 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
20992 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
20993 change the global proxy setting by editing
20994 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
20995 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
20996
20997 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
20998 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
20999 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
21000
21001 <blockquote><pre>
21002 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
21003 {
21004    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
21005        isPlainHostName(host) ||
21006        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
21007       return "DIRECT";
21008    else
21009       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
21010 }
21011 </pre></blockquote>
21012
21013 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
21014
21015 <blockquote><pre>
21016 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
21017 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
21018 </pre></blockquote>
21019
21020 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
21021 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
21022 would be used for
21023 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
21024 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
21025 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
21026 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
21027 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
21028 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
21029 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
21030 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
21031 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
21032 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
21033
21034 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
21035 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
21036 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
21037 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
21038 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
21039 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
21040
21041 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
21042 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
21043 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
21044 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
21045 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
21046 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
21047 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
21048 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
21049 the network setup changes.</p>
21050
21051 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
21052 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
21053 draft</a> and a
21054 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
21055 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
21056
21057       </div>
21058       <div class="tags">
21059
21060
21061         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21062
21063
21064       </div>
21065     </div>
21066     <div class="padding"></div>
21067
21068     <div class="entry">
21069       <div class="title">
21070         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
21071       </div>
21072       <div class="date">
21073          5th February 2012
21074       </div>
21075       <div class="body">
21076         <p>Since the Lenny version of
21077 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
21078 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
21079 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
21080 in the morning.  This is done using the
21081 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
21082
21083 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
21084 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
21085 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
21086 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
21087 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
21088 the
21089 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
21090 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
21091 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
21092 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
21093 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
21094
21095 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
21096 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
21097 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
21098 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
21099 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
21100 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
21101 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
21102
21103 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
21104 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
21105 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
21106 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
21107 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
21108
21109       </div>
21110       <div class="tags">
21111
21112
21113         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21114
21115
21116       </div>
21117     </div>
21118     <div class="padding"></div>
21119
21120     <div class="entry">
21121       <div class="title">
21122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
21123       </div>
21124       <div class="date">
21125          4th February 2012
21126       </div>
21127       <div class="body">
21128         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
21129 publish the third beta version of
21130 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
21131 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
21132 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
21133 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
21134 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
21135 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
21136 on the project announcement list.</p>
21137
21138 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
21139 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
21140
21141 <ul>
21142
21143 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
21144   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
21145   the installation.</li>
21146
21147 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
21148   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
21149
21150 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
21151   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
21152   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
21153
21154 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
21155   for the local system administrator is created during installation
21156   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
21157   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
21158   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
21159   up to date on the system.</li>
21160
21161 </ul>
21162
21163 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
21164 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
21165 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
21166 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
21167
21168 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
21169 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
21170 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
21171 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
21172 will see you there?</p>
21173
21174       </div>
21175       <div class="tags">
21176
21177
21178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21179
21180
21181       </div>
21182     </div>
21183     <div class="padding"></div>
21184
21185     <div class="entry">
21186       <div class="title">
21187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
21188       </div>
21189       <div class="date">
21190         27th January 2012
21191       </div>
21192       <div class="body">
21193         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
21194 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
21195 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
21196 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
21197 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
21198 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
21199 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
21200
21201 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
21202 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
21203 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
21204 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
21205 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
21206 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
21207 not taken care of by this.</p>
21208
21209 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
21210 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
21211 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
21212 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
21213 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
21214 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
21215 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
21216 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
21217 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
21218 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
21219 firmware packages.</p>
21220
21221 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
21222 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
21223 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
21224 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
21225 initrd with extra firmware, the
21226 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
21227 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
21228 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
21229
21230 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
21231 network cards working.  For this,
21232 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
21233 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
21234 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
21235
21236 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
21237 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
21238 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
21239
21240 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
21241 try.</p>
21242
21243       </div>
21244       <div class="tags">
21245
21246
21247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21248
21249
21250       </div>
21251     </div>
21252     <div class="padding"></div>
21253
21254     <div class="entry">
21255       <div class="title">
21256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
21257       </div>
21258       <div class="date">
21259         25th January 2012
21260       </div>
21261       <div class="body">
21262         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
21263 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
21264 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
21265 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
21266 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
21267
21268 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
21269 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
21270 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
21271 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
21272 this is done, log on to the central server and run
21273 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
21274 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
21275 will look similar to this:</p>
21276
21277 <p><blockquote><pre>
21278 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
21279 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
21280 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
21281
21282 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
21283
21284 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21285 enter password: *******
21286 %
21287 </pre></blockquote></p>
21288
21289 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
21290 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
21291 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
21292 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
21293 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
21294 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
21295 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
21296 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
21297 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
21298 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
21299 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
21300 automatically.</p>
21301
21302 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
21303 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
21304
21305 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
21306 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
21307 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
21308
21309       </div>
21310       <div class="tags">
21311
21312
21313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
21314
21315
21316       </div>
21317     </div>
21318     <div class="padding"></div>
21319
21320     <div class="entry">
21321       <div class="title">
21322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
21323       </div>
21324       <div class="date">
21325         10th January 2012
21326       </div>
21327       <div class="body">
21328         <p>In the Squeeze version of
21329 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
21330 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
21331 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
21332 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
21333 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
21334 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
21335 first time.</p>
21336
21337 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
21338 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
21339 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
21340 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
21341
21342 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
21343 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
21344 new setting.</p>
21345
21346 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
21347 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
21348 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
21349
21350       </div>
21351       <div class="tags">
21352
21353
21354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21355
21356
21357       </div>
21358     </div>
21359     <div class="padding"></div>
21360
21361     <div class="entry">
21362       <div class="title">
21363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
21364       </div>
21365       <div class="date">
21366          7th January 2012
21367       </div>
21368       <div class="body">
21369         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
21370 the second beta version of
21371 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
21372 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
21373 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
21374 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
21375 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
21376 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
21377 on the project announcement list.</p>
21378
21379       </div>
21380       <div class="tags">
21381
21382
21383         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21384
21385
21386       </div>
21387     </div>
21388     <div class="padding"></div>
21389
21390     <div class="entry">
21391       <div class="title">
21392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
21393       </div>
21394       <div class="date">
21395          3rd January 2012
21396       </div>
21397       <div class="body">
21398         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
21399 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
21400 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
21401 interesting.</p>
21402
21403 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
21404 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
21405 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
21406 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
21407 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
21408 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
21409 wrap up its tasks.</p>
21410
21411 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
21412 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
21413 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
21414 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
21415 because I was typing.</P>
21416
21417 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
21418 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
21419 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
21420 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
21421 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
21422 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
21423 generate entropy.</p>
21424
21425 <p>The fix is in
21426 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
21427 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
21428 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
21429 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
21430
21431       </div>
21432       <div class="tags">
21433
21434
21435         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21436
21437
21438       </div>
21439     </div>
21440     <div class="padding"></div>
21441
21442     <div class="entry">
21443       <div class="title">
21444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
21445       </div>
21446       <div class="date">
21447         21st November 2011
21448       </div>
21449       <div class="body">
21450         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
21451 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
21452 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
21453 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
21454 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
21455 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
21456 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
21457 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
21458 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
21459 the tools to do so.</p>
21460
21461 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
21462 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
21463 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
21464 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
21465
21466 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
21467 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
21468 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
21469 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
21470 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
21471 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
21472 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
21473 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
21474
21475 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
21476 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
21477 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
21478
21479 <p><pre>
21480 #!/usr/bin/perl
21481 use strict;
21482 use warnings;
21483 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
21484 BEGIN {
21485     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
21486     my %rhelmodules = (
21487         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
21488         );
21489     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
21490         eval "use $module;";
21491         if ($@) {
21492             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
21493             system("yum install -y $pkg");
21494             eval "use $module;";
21495         }
21496     }
21497 }
21498 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
21499
21500 upgrade_dell();
21501
21502 exit 0;
21503
21504 sub run_firmware_script {
21505     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
21506     unless ($script) {
21507         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
21508         exit 1
21509     }
21510     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
21511
21512     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
21513         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
21514     } else {
21515         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
21516     }
21517 }
21518
21519 sub run_firmware_scripts {
21520     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
21521     # Run firmware packages
21522     for my $dir (@dirs) {
21523         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
21524         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
21525         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
21526             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
21527             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
21528         }
21529         closedir $dh;
21530     }
21531 }
21532
21533 sub download {
21534     my $url = shift;
21535     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
21536     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
21537 }
21538
21539 sub upgrade_dell {
21540     my @dirs;
21541     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
21542     chomp $product;
21543
21544     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
21545
21546         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
21547         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
21548
21549         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
21550             CLEANUP => 1
21551             );
21552         chdir($tmpdir);
21553         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
21554         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
21555         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
21556         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
21557         my $fwopts = "-q";
21558         if (@paths) {
21559             for my $url (@paths) {
21560                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
21561             }
21562             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
21563         } else {
21564             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
21565             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
21566         }
21567         chdir('/');
21568     } else {
21569         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
21570         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
21571     }
21572 }
21573
21574 sub fetch_dell_fw {
21575     my $path = shift;
21576     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
21577     download($url);
21578 }
21579
21580 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
21581 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
21582 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
21583 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
21584     my $filename = shift;
21585
21586     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
21587     chomp $product;
21588     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
21589
21590     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
21591
21592     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
21593     my @paths;
21594     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
21595         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
21596         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
21597         my $oscode;
21598         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
21599             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
21600         } else {
21601             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
21602         }
21603         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
21604         {
21605             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
21606         }
21607     }
21608     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
21609         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
21610
21611         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
21612         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
21613
21614         my $cpath = $component->{path};
21615         for my $path (@paths) {
21616             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
21617                 push(@paths, $cpath);
21618             }
21619         }
21620     }
21621     return @paths;
21622 }
21623 </pre>
21624
21625 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
21626 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
21627 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
21628 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
21629 outdated.</p>
21630
21631       </div>
21632       <div class="tags">
21633
21634
21635         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>.
21636
21637
21638       </div>
21639     </div>
21640     <div class="padding"></div>
21641
21642     <div class="entry">
21643       <div class="title">
21644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
21645       </div>
21646       <div class="date">
21647          7th October 2011
21648       </div>
21649       <div class="body">
21650         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
21651 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
21652 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
21653 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
21654 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
21655 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
21656 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
21657 models.</p>
21658
21659 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
21660 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
21661 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
21662 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
21663
21664 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
21665 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
21666 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
21667 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
21668 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
21669 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
21670 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
21671 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
21672 distributed.</p>
21673
21674 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
21675
21676 <ul>
21677
21678 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
21679   other relevant equipment.</li>
21680
21681 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
21682
21683 </ul>
21684
21685 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
21686 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
21687 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
21688 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
21689 books available.</p>
21690
21691 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
21692 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
21693 libraries. :)</p>
21694
21695       </div>
21696       <div class="tags">
21697
21698
21699         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
21700
21701
21702       </div>
21703     </div>
21704     <div class="padding"></div>
21705
21706     <div class="entry">
21707       <div class="title">
21708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
21709       </div>
21710       <div class="date">
21711         17th September 2011
21712       </div>
21713       <div class="body">
21714         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
21715 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
21716 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
21717 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
21718 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
21719 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
21720 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
21721 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
21722
21723 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
21724
21725 <blockquote><pre>
21726 #!/bin/sh
21727 # apt-get install lsdvd
21728 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
21729 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
21730 </pre></blockquote>
21731
21732 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
21733 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
21734 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
21735 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
21736
21737 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
21738 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
21739 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
21740 back as an ISO.
21741
21742 <blockquote><pre>
21743 #!/bin/sh
21744 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
21745 set -e
21746 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
21747 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
21748 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
21749 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
21750 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
21751 </pre></blockquote>
21752
21753 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
21754
21755 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
21756 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
21757 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
21758 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
21759 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
21760
21761 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
21762 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
21763 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
21764 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
21765 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
21766 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
21767
21768       </div>
21769       <div class="tags">
21770
21771
21772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
21773
21774
21775       </div>
21776     </div>
21777     <div class="padding"></div>
21778
21779     <div class="entry">
21780       <div class="title">
21781         <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>
21782       </div>
21783       <div class="date">
21784          4th August 2011
21785       </div>
21786       <div class="body">
21787         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
21788 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
21789 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
21790 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
21791 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
21792 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
21793 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
21794 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
21795 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
21796
21797 <p><blockquote>
21798 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
21799 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
21800 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
21801 </blockquote></p>
21802
21803 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
21804 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
21805 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
21806 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
21807 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
21808 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
21809 hard to explain.</p>
21810
21811 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
21812 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
21813 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
21814 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
21815 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
21816 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
21817 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
21818 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
21819 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
21820 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
21821 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
21822 mode).</p>
21823
21824 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
21825 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
21826 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
21827 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
21828 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
21829 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
21830 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
21831 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
21832 after visiting single user mode.</p>
21833
21834 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
21835 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
21836 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
21837 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
21838 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
21839 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
21840 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
21841 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
21842
21843 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
21844 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
21845 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
21846
21847       </div>
21848       <div class="tags">
21849
21850
21851         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>.
21852
21853
21854       </div>
21855     </div>
21856     <div class="padding"></div>
21857
21858     <div class="entry">
21859       <div class="title">
21860         <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>
21861       </div>
21862       <div class="date">
21863         30th July 2011
21864       </div>
21865       <div class="body">
21866         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
21867 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
21868 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
21869 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
21870 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
21871 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
21872 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
21873 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
21874 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
21875 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
21876 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
21877 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
21878 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
21879
21880 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
21881 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
21882 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
21883 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
21884 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
21885 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
21886 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
21887 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
21888 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
21889
21890 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
21891 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
21892 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
21893 is presented.</p>
21894
21895 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
21896 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
21897 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
21898 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
21899 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
21900 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
21901 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
21902 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
21903 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
21904 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
21905 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
21906 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
21907 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
21908 find time to push this forward.</p>
21909
21910       </div>
21911       <div class="tags">
21912
21913
21914         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>.
21915
21916
21917       </div>
21918     </div>
21919     <div class="padding"></div>
21920
21921     <div class="entry">
21922       <div class="title">
21923         <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>
21924       </div>
21925       <div class="date">
21926         29th July 2011
21927       </div>
21928       <div class="body">
21929         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
21930 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
21931 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
21932 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
21933 issues.</p>
21934
21935 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
21936 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
21937 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
21938
21939 <ol>
21940
21941 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
21942 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
21943 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
21944 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
21945 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
21946 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
21947 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
21948 Debian.</li>
21949
21950 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
21951 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
21952 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
21953 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
21954 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
21955 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
21956 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
21957 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
21958 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
21959 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
21960 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
21961 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
21962 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
21963
21964 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
21965 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
21966 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
21967 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
21968 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
21969 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
21970 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
21971 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
21972 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
21973 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
21974
21975 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
21976 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
21977 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
21978 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
21979 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
21980 latter behaviour.</li>
21981
21982 </ol>
21983
21984 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
21985 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
21986 it do not matter much.</p>
21987
21988 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
21989 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
21990 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
21991
21992       </div>
21993       <div class="tags">
21994
21995
21996         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21997
21998
21999       </div>
22000     </div>
22001     <div class="padding"></div>
22002
22003     <div class="entry">
22004       <div class="title">
22005         <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>
22006       </div>
22007       <div class="date">
22008         26th July 2011
22009       </div>
22010       <div class="body">
22011         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
22012 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
22013 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
22014 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
22015 security support for a few years.</p>
22016
22017 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
22018 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
22019 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
22020 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
22021 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
22022 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
22023 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
22024 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
22025 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
22026 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
22027 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
22028 easier in the future.</p>
22029
22030 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
22031 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
22032 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
22033 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
22034 do not have time for.</p>
22035
22036       </div>
22037       <div class="tags">
22038
22039
22040         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>.
22041
22042
22043       </div>
22044     </div>
22045     <div class="padding"></div>
22046
22047     <div class="entry">
22048       <div class="title">
22049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
22050       </div>
22051       <div class="date">
22052         20th June 2011
22053       </div>
22054       <div class="body">
22055         <p>Reading
22056 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
22057 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
22058 parts of the
22059 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
22060 and
22061 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
22062 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
22063 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
22064 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
22065
22066       </div>
22067       <div class="tags">
22068
22069
22070         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
22071
22072
22073       </div>
22074     </div>
22075     <div class="padding"></div>
22076
22077     <div class="entry">
22078       <div class="title">
22079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
22080       </div>
22081       <div class="date">
22082         30th April 2011
22083       </div>
22084       <div class="body">
22085         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
22086 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
22087 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
22088 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
22089 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
22090 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
22091 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
22092 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
22093 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
22094 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
22095
22096 <p>Where is it?  Visit
22097 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
22098 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
22099 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
22100 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
22101
22102       </div>
22103       <div class="tags">
22104
22105
22106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
22107
22108
22109       </div>
22110     </div>
22111     <div class="padding"></div>
22112
22113     <div class="entry">
22114       <div class="title">
22115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
22116       </div>
22117       <div class="date">
22118         29th April 2011
22119       </div>
22120       <div class="body">
22121         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
22122 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
22123 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
22124 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
22125 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
22126 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
22127 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
22128 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
22129 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
22130 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
22131 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
22132 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
22133 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
22134
22135 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
22136 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
22137 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
22138 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
22139 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
22140 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
22141 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
22142 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
22143 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
22144 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
22145 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
22146 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
22147 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
22148
22149 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
22150 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
22151 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
22152 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
22153 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
22154 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
22155 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
22156 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
22157 it.</p>
22158
22159 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
22160 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
22161 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
22162 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
22163 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
22164 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
22165 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
22166
22167 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
22168 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
22169 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
22170 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
22171 and range= options.</p>
22172
22173 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
22174 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
22175 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
22176 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
22177 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
22178 to best handle this.  I've noticed
22179 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
22180 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
22181 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
22182 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
22183
22184 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
22185 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
22186 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
22187 discussions instead of only
22188 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
22189 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
22190 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
22191 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
22192 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
22193 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
22194
22195       </div>
22196       <div class="tags">
22197
22198
22199         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
22200
22201
22202       </div>
22203     </div>
22204     <div class="padding"></div>
22205
22206     <div class="entry">
22207       <div class="title">
22208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
22209       </div>
22210       <div class="date">
22211          6th April 2011
22212       </div>
22213       <div class="body">
22214         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
22215 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
22216 A few days ago the project
22217 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
22218 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
22219 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
22220 into Gnash.</p>
22221
22222       </div>
22223       <div class="tags">
22224
22225
22226         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22227
22228
22229       </div>
22230     </div>
22231     <div class="padding"></div>
22232
22233     <div class="entry">
22234       <div class="title">
22235         <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>
22236       </div>
22237       <div class="date">
22238          3rd April 2011
22239       </div>
22240       <div class="body">
22241         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
22242 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
22243 update in English.</p>
22244
22245 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
22246 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
22247 of the British service
22248 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
22249 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
22250 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
22251 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
22252 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
22253 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
22254 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
22255 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
22256 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
22257 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
22258 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
22259 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
22260 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
22261
22262 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
22263 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
22264 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
22265 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
22266 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
22267 public infrastructure.</p>
22268
22269 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
22270 such service?</p>
22271
22272       </div>
22273       <div class="tags">
22274
22275
22276         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>.
22277
22278
22279       </div>
22280     </div>
22281     <div class="padding"></div>
22282
22283     <div class="entry">
22284       <div class="title">
22285         <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>
22286       </div>
22287       <div class="date">
22288         28th January 2011
22289       </div>
22290       <div class="body">
22291         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
22292 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
22293 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
22294 available on the Internet, and check our locally
22295 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
22296 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
22297 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
22298 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
22299 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
22300 out which security holes were present in our free software
22301 collection.</p>
22302
22303 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
22304 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
22305 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
22306 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
22307 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
22308 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
22309 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
22310 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
22311 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
22312 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
22313 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
22314 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
22315 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
22316 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
22317 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
22318 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
22319
22320 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
22321 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
22322 check out, one could look up
22323 <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
22324 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
22325 The most recent one is
22326 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
22327 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
22328 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
22329
22330 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
22331 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
22332 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
22333 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
22334 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
22335 security issues out.</p>
22336
22337 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
22338 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
22339 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
22340 RHEL is providing
22341 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
22342 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
22343 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
22344
22345 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
22346 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
22347 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
22348 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
22349 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
22350 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
22351 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
22352 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
22353 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
22354 established soon.</p>
22355
22356 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
22357 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
22358 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
22359 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
22360 for their packages.</p>
22361
22362       </div>
22363       <div class="tags">
22364
22365
22366         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>.
22367
22368
22369       </div>
22370     </div>
22371     <div class="padding"></div>
22372
22373     <div class="entry">
22374       <div class="title">
22375         <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>
22376       </div>
22377       <div class="date">
22378         23rd January 2011
22379       </div>
22380       <div class="body">
22381         <p>In the
22382 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
22383 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
22384 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
22385 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
22386 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
22387 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
22388 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
22389 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
22390 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
22391 one of my machines like this:</p>
22392
22393 <pre>
22394 loaded modules:
22395 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
22396 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
22397 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
22398 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
22399 10de:03ec pata_amd
22400 10de:03f6 sata_nv
22401 1022:1103 k8temp
22402 109e:036e bttv
22403 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
22404 11ab:4364 sky2
22405 </pre>
22406
22407 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
22408 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
22409
22410 <pre>
22411 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
22412     echo loaded pci modules:
22413     (
22414         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
22415         for address in * ; do
22416             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
22417                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
22418                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
22419                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
22420                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
22421                     echo "$id $module"
22422                 fi
22423             fi
22424         done
22425     )
22426     echo
22427 fi
22428 </pre>
22429
22430 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
22431 mappings:</p>
22432
22433 <pre>
22434 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
22435     echo loaded usb modules:
22436     (
22437         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
22438         for address in * ; do
22439             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
22440                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
22441                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
22442                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
22443                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
22444                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
22445                         echo "$id $module"
22446                     fi
22447                 fi
22448             fi
22449         done
22450     )
22451     echo
22452 fi
22453 </pre>
22454
22455 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
22456 well.</p>
22457
22458       </div>
22459       <div class="tags">
22460
22461
22462         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>.
22463
22464
22465       </div>
22466     </div>
22467     <div class="padding"></div>
22468
22469     <div class="entry">
22470       <div class="title">
22471         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
22472       </div>
22473       <div class="date">
22474         16th January 2011
22475       </div>
22476       <div class="body">
22477         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
22478 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
22479 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
22480 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
22481 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
22482 the Wikipedia article on
22483 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
22484 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
22485 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
22486 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
22487 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
22488 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
22489 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
22490 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
22491 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
22492 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
22493 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
22494 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
22495
22496 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
22497 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
22498 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
22499 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
22500 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
22501 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
22502 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
22503 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
22504 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
22505 from last week</a>.</p>
22506
22507 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
22508 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
22509 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
22510 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
22511 was without royalties and license terms, check out
22512 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
22513 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
22514
22515 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
22516 available from
22517 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
22518 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
22519 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
22520
22521 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
22522 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
22523 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
22524 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
22525
22526       </div>
22527       <div class="tags">
22528
22529
22530         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
22531
22532
22533       </div>
22534     </div>
22535     <div class="padding"></div>
22536
22537     <div class="entry">
22538       <div class="title">
22539         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
22540       </div>
22541       <div class="date">
22542         12th January 2011
22543       </div>
22544       <div class="body">
22545         <p>Today I discovered
22546 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
22547 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
22548 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
22549 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
22550 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
22551 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
22552 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
22553 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
22554 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
22555 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
22556 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
22557 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
22558 on the Google announcement is available from
22559 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
22560 A good read. :)</p>
22561
22562 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
22563 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
22564 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
22565 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
22566 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
22567 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
22568 browsers support H.264, and others support
22569 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
22570 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
22571 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
22572 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
22573 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
22574 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
22575 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
22576 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
22577
22578 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
22579 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
22580 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
22581 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
22582 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
22583 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
22584 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
22585
22586 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
22587 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
22588 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
22589 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
22590 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
22591 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
22592 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
22593
22594 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
22595 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
22596 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
22597 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
22598 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
22599 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
22600 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
22601
22602 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
22603 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
22604 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
22605 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
22606 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
22607 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
22608 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
22609 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
22610 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
22611 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
22612 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
22613 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
22614 I guess time will tell.</p>
22615
22616 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
22617 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
22618 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
22619
22620       </div>
22621       <div class="tags">
22622
22623
22624         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
22625
22626
22627       </div>
22628     </div>
22629     <div class="padding"></div>
22630
22631     <div class="entry">
22632       <div class="title">
22633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
22634       </div>
22635       <div class="date">
22636         30th December 2010
22637       </div>
22638       <div class="body">
22639         <p>After trying to
22640 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
22641 Ogg Theora</a> to
22642 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
22643 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
22644 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
22645 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
22646 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
22647 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
22648 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
22649
22650 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
22651 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
22652 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
22653 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
22654 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
22655 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
22656 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
22657
22658 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
22659 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
22660
22661       </div>
22662       <div class="tags">
22663
22664
22665         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
22666
22667
22668       </div>
22669     </div>
22670     <div class="padding"></div>
22671
22672     <div class="entry">
22673       <div class="title">
22674         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
22675       </div>
22676       <div class="date">
22677         27th December 2010
22678       </div>
22679       <div class="body">
22680         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
22681 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
22682 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
22683 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
22684 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
22685 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
22686 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
22687 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
22688
22689 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
22690 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
22691 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
22692 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
22693 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
22694 page</a>.</p>
22695
22696 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
22697 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
22698 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
22699 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
22700 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
22701 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
22702 specification on equal terms.</p>
22703
22704 <blockquote>
22705
22706 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
22707 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
22708 open standard:</p>
22709
22710 <ul>
22711
22712 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
22713 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
22714 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
22715 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
22716
22717 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
22718 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
22719 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
22720 nominal fee.</li>
22721
22722 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
22723 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
22724 free basis.</li>
22725
22726 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
22727
22728 </ul>
22729 </blockquote>
22730
22731 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
22732 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
22733 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
22734 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
22735 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
22736 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
22737 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
22738
22739 <blockquote>
22740
22741 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
22742
22743 <ol>
22744
22745 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
22746 tilgængelig.</li>
22747
22748 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
22749 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
22750
22751 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
22752 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
22753
22754 </ol>
22755
22756 </blockquote>
22757
22758 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
22759 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
22760
22761 <blockquote>
22762
22763 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
22764
22765 <ol>
22766
22767 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
22768 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
22769
22770 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
22771 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
22772 Standard themselves;</li>
22773
22774 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
22775 any party or in any business model;</li>
22776
22777 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
22778 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
22779 parties;</li>
22780
22781 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
22782 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
22783 parties.</li>
22784
22785 </ol>
22786
22787 </blockquote>
22788
22789 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
22790 its
22791 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
22792 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
22793
22794 <blockquote>
22795 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
22796
22797 <ul>
22798
22799 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
22800   democratic:
22801
22802          <ul>
22803
22804          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
22805             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
22806             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
22807             and managed.</li>
22808
22809          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
22810             method, can be changed through input from all
22811             participants.</li>
22812
22813          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
22814             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
22815
22816          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
22817             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
22818
22819          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
22820             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
22821             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
22822
22823          </ul>
22824
22825 </li>
22826
22827 </ul>
22828
22829 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
22830 <ul>
22831
22832 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
22833   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
22834   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
22835   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
22836   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
22837
22838 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
22839   a technical or economic barriers</li>
22840
22841 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
22842   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
22843   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
22844   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
22845   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
22846   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
22847   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
22848   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
22849   intended to function.</li>
22850
22851 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
22852   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
22853   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
22854
22855 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
22856   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
22857   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
22858   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
22859   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
22860   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
22861   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
22862   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
22863
22864       <ul>
22865
22866       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
22867         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
22868         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
22869
22870       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
22871         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
22872         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
22873         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
22874
22875       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
22876         licensor</li>
22877
22878       </ul>
22879 </li>
22880
22881 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
22882   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
22883   or restricted licensing terms</li>
22884
22885 </ul>
22886
22887 </blockquote>
22888
22889 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
22890 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
22891 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
22892 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
22893 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
22894 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
22895 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
22896 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
22897 Standards.</p>
22898
22899       </div>
22900       <div class="tags">
22901
22902
22903         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
22904
22905
22906       </div>
22907     </div>
22908     <div class="padding"></div>
22909
22910     <div class="entry">
22911       <div class="title">
22912         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
22913       </div>
22914       <div class="date">
22915         25th December 2010
22916       </div>
22917       <div class="body">
22918         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
22919 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
22920
22921 <blockquote>
22922
22923 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
22924 as follows:</p>
22925
22926 <ol>
22927
22928 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
22929 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
22930 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
22931
22932 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
22933 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
22934 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
22935 parties.</li>
22936
22937 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
22938 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
22939 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
22940
22941 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
22942 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
22943
22944 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
22945
22946 </ol>
22947
22948 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
22949 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
22950 products based on the standard.</p>
22951 </blockquote>
22952
22953 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
22954 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
22955 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
22956 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
22957 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
22958 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
22959 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
22960 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
22961
22962 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
22963
22964 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
22965 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
22966 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
22967 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
22968 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
22969 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
22970 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
22971 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
22972 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
22973 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
22974 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
22975 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
22976 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
22977 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
22978
22979 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
22980
22981 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
22982 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
22983 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
22984 documentation indicating this.</p>
22985
22986 <p>According to
22987 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
22988 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
22989 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
22990 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
22991 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
22992 report is correct.</p>
22993
22994 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
22995
22996 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
22997 container format</a> and both the
22998 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
22999 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
23000 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
23001
23002 <blockquote>
23003
23004 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
23005 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
23006 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
23007 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
23008 specification compliance.
23009
23010 </blockquote>
23011
23012 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
23013 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
23014 this is the term:<p>
23015
23016 <blockquote>
23017
23018 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
23019 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
23020 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
23021 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
23022 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
23023 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
23024 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
23025 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
23026 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
23027 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
23028 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
23029 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
23030
23031 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
23032 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
23033 </blockquote>
23034
23035 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
23036 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
23037 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
23038 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
23039 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
23040
23041 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
23042
23043 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
23044 Theora format.
23045 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
23046 and
23047 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
23048 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
23049 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
23050 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
23051 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
23052 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
23053 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
23054 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
23055
23056 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
23057
23058 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
23059
23060 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
23061
23062 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
23063 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
23064 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
23065 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
23066 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
23067 this.</p>
23068
23069 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
23070 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
23071
23072       </div>
23073       <div class="tags">
23074
23075
23076         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
23077
23078
23079       </div>
23080     </div>
23081     <div class="padding"></div>
23082
23083     <div class="entry">
23084       <div class="title">
23085         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
23086       </div>
23087       <div class="date">
23088         25th December 2010
23089       </div>
23090       <div class="body">
23091         <p>A few days ago
23092 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
23093 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
23094 2.0 of
23095 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
23096 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
23097 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
23098 Nothing very surprising there, given
23099 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
23100 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
23101 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
23102 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
23103 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
23104 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
23105 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
23106 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
23107 standard definition from its content.</p>
23108
23109 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
23110 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
23111 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
23112 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
23113 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
23114 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
23115 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
23116 background information about that story is available in
23117 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
23118 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
23119
23120 <blockquote>
23121 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
23122 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
23123 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
23124
23125 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
23126
23127 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
23128
23129 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
23130
23131 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
23132
23133 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
23134
23135 <p>
23136 <ul>
23137 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
23138 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
23139 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
23140 </ul>
23141 </p>
23142
23143 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
23144
23145 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
23146
23147 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
23148
23149 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
23150
23151 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
23152
23153
23154 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
23155 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
23156 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
23157 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
23158 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
23159 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
23160
23161 </p>
23162
23163 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
23164
23165 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
23166
23167 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
23168
23169 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
23170
23171 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
23172
23173 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
23174
23175 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
23176
23177 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
23178
23179 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
23180
23181 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
23182
23183 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
23184
23185 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
23186
23187 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
23188
23189 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
23190
23191 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
23192
23193 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
23194
23195 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
23196
23197 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
23198
23199 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
23200
23201 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
23202
23203 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
23204
23205 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
23206
23207 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
23208
23209 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
23210
23211 <p>On security:</p>
23212
23213 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
23214
23215 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
23216
23217 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
23218
23219 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
23220
23221 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
23222
23223 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
23224
23225 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
23226
23227 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
23228
23229 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
23230
23231 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
23232
23233 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
23234
23235 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
23236
23237 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
23238
23239 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
23240
23241 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
23242
23243 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
23244
23245 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
23246
23247 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
23248
23249 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
23250
23251 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
23252
23253 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
23254
23255 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
23256
23257 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
23258
23259 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
23260
23261 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
23262
23263 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
23264
23265 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
23266
23267 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
23268
23269 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
23270
23271 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
23272
23273 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
23274
23275 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
23276
23277 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
23278
23279 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
23280
23281 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
23282
23283 <p>Cordially,<br>
23284 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
23285 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
23286 </blockquote>
23287
23288       </div>
23289       <div class="tags">
23290
23291
23292         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
23293
23294
23295       </div>
23296     </div>
23297     <div class="padding"></div>
23298
23299     <div class="entry">
23300       <div class="title">
23301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
23302       </div>
23303       <div class="date">
23304         25th December 2010
23305       </div>
23306       <div class="body">
23307         <p>Half a year ago I
23308 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
23309 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
23310 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
23311 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
23312
23313 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
23314 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
23315 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
23316 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
23317 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
23318 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
23319 got such a great test tool available.</p>
23320
23321       </div>
23322       <div class="tags">
23323
23324
23325         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
23326
23327
23328       </div>
23329     </div>
23330     <div class="padding"></div>
23331
23332     <div class="entry">
23333       <div class="title">
23334         <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>
23335       </div>
23336       <div class="date">
23337         22nd December 2010
23338       </div>
23339       <div class="body">
23340         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
23341 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
23342 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
23343 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
23344 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
23345 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
23346 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
23347 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
23348 university.</p>
23349
23350 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
23351 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
23352 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
23353 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
23354 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
23355 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
23356 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
23357 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
23358
23359 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
23360 I perform on a new model.</p>
23361
23362 <ul>
23363
23364 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
23365 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
23366 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
23367
23368 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
23369 installation, X.org is working.</li>
23370
23371 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
23372 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
23373 reported by the program.</li>
23374
23375 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
23376 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
23377 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
23378 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
23379 normally test this by playing
23380 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
23381 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
23382
23383 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
23384 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
23385
23386 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
23387 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
23388
23389 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
23390 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
23391
23392 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
23393 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
23394 few.</li>
23395
23396 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
23397 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
23398 notice this.</li>
23399
23400 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
23401 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
23402 resume.</li>
23403
23404 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
23405 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
23406 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
23407 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
23408 not.</li>
23409
23410 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
23411 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
23412 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
23413 existence.</li>
23414
23415 </ul>
23416
23417 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
23418 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
23419 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
23420 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
23421 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
23422 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
23423 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
23424 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
23425
23426       </div>
23427       <div class="tags">
23428
23429
23430         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>.
23431
23432
23433       </div>
23434     </div>
23435     <div class="padding"></div>
23436
23437     <div class="entry">
23438       <div class="title">
23439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
23440       </div>
23441       <div class="date">
23442         11th December 2010
23443       </div>
23444       <div class="body">
23445         <p>As I continue to explore
23446 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
23447 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
23448 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
23449
23450 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
23451 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
23452 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
23453 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
23454 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
23455 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
23456 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
23457 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
23458 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
23459 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
23460 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
23461 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
23462 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
23463 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
23464 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
23465 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
23466 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
23467 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
23468 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
23469 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
23470
23471 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
23472 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
23473 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
23474 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
23475 If the Skolelinux foundation
23476 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
23477 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
23478 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
23479 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
23480 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
23481 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
23482 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
23483 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
23484
23485 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
23486 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
23487 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
23488 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
23489 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
23490 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
23491 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
23492 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
23493 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
23494 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
23495 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
23496 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
23497 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
23498 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
23499 currencies.</p>
23500
23501 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
23502 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
23503 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
23504 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
23505 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
23506 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
23507 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
23508 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
23509 BitCoins.  Check out
23510 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
23511 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
23512 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
23513 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
23514 yet.</p>
23515
23516 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
23517 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
23518 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
23519 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
23520 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
23521
23522       </div>
23523       <div class="tags">
23524
23525
23526         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>.
23527
23528
23529       </div>
23530     </div>
23531     <div class="padding"></div>
23532
23533     <div class="entry">
23534       <div class="title">
23535         <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>
23536       </div>
23537       <div class="date">
23538         10th December 2010
23539       </div>
23540       <div class="body">
23541         <p>With this weeks lawless
23542 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
23543 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
23544 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
23545 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
23546 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
23547 A blog post from
23548 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
23549 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
23550 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
23551 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
23552 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
23553 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
23554 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
23555
23556 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
23557 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
23558 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
23559 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
23560 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
23561 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
23562 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
23563 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
23564 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
23565 Debian</a> soon.</p>
23566
23567 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
23568 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
23569 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
23570 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
23571 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
23572 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
23573 you can even get
23574 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
23575 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
23576 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
23577 on the current exchange rates.</p>
23578
23579 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
23580 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
23581 donations to the address
23582 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
23583
23584       </div>
23585       <div class="tags">
23586
23587
23588         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>.
23589
23590
23591       </div>
23592     </div>
23593     <div class="padding"></div>
23594
23595     <div class="entry">
23596       <div class="title">
23597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
23598       </div>
23599       <div class="date">
23600          9th December 2010
23601       </div>
23602       <div class="body">
23603         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
23604 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
23605 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
23606 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
23607 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
23608 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
23609 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
23610 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
23611 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
23612 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
23613 operational.</p>
23614
23615 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
23616 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
23617 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
23618 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
23619 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
23620 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
23621 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
23622
23623       </div>
23624       <div class="tags">
23625
23626
23627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
23628
23629
23630       </div>
23631     </div>
23632     <div class="padding"></div>
23633
23634     <div class="entry">
23635       <div class="title">
23636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
23637       </div>
23638       <div class="date">
23639         29th November 2010
23640       </div>
23641       <div class="body">
23642         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
23643 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
23644 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
23645 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
23646 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
23647 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
23648
23649 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
23650 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
23651 will hold its
23652 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
23653 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
23654 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
23655 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
23656 vote this year.</p>
23657
23658       </div>
23659       <div class="tags">
23660
23661
23662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23663
23664
23665       </div>
23666     </div>
23667     <div class="padding"></div>
23668
23669     <div class="entry">
23670       <div class="title">
23671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
23672       </div>
23673       <div class="date">
23674         27th November 2010
23675       </div>
23676       <div class="body">
23677         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
23678 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
23679 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
23680 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
23681 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
23682 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
23683 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
23684 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
23685
23686 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
23687 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
23688 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
23689 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
23690 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
23691 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
23692 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
23693 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
23694 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
23695 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
23696 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
23697
23698 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
23699 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
23700 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
23701 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
23702 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
23703 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
23704 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
23705 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
23706 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
23707 what is going on.</p>
23708
23709       </div>
23710       <div class="tags">
23711
23712
23713         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>.
23714
23715
23716       </div>
23717     </div>
23718     <div class="padding"></div>
23719
23720     <div class="entry">
23721       <div class="title">
23722         <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>
23723       </div>
23724       <div class="date">
23725         22nd November 2010
23726       </div>
23727       <div class="body">
23728         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
23729 upgrade testing of the
23730 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
23731 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
23732 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
23733 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
23734
23735 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
23736
23737 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
23738
23739 <blockquote><p>
23740   apache2.2-bin
23741   aptdaemon
23742   baobab
23743   binfmt-support
23744   browser-plugin-gnash
23745   cheese-common
23746   cli-common
23747   cups-pk-helper
23748   dmz-cursor-theme
23749   empathy
23750   empathy-common
23751   freedesktop-sound-theme
23752   freeglut3
23753   gconf-defaults-service
23754   gdm-themes
23755   gedit-plugins
23756   geoclue
23757   geoclue-hostip
23758   geoclue-localnet
23759   geoclue-manual
23760   geoclue-yahoo
23761   gnash
23762   gnash-common
23763   gnome
23764   gnome-backgrounds
23765   gnome-cards-data
23766   gnome-codec-install
23767   gnome-core
23768   gnome-desktop-environment
23769   gnome-disk-utility
23770   gnome-screenshot
23771   gnome-search-tool
23772   gnome-session-canberra
23773   gnome-system-log
23774   gnome-themes-extras
23775   gnome-themes-more
23776   gnome-user-share
23777   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
23778   gstreamer0.10-tools
23779   gtk2-engines
23780   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
23781   gtk2-engines-smooth
23782   hamster-applet
23783   libapache2-mod-dnssd
23784   libapr1
23785   libaprutil1
23786   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
23787   libaprutil1-ldap
23788   libart2.0-cil
23789   libboost-date-time1.42.0
23790   libboost-python1.42.0
23791   libboost-thread1.42.0
23792   libchamplain-0.4-0
23793   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
23794   libcheese-gtk18
23795   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
23796   libcryptui0
23797   libdiscid0
23798   libelf1
23799   libepc-1.0-2
23800   libepc-common
23801   libepc-ui-1.0-2
23802   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
23803   libfreerdp0
23804   libgconf2.0-cil
23805   libgdata-common
23806   libgdata7
23807   libgdu-gtk0
23808   libgee2
23809   libgeoclue0
23810   libgexiv2-0
23811   libgif4
23812   libglade2.0-cil
23813   libglib2.0-cil
23814   libgmime2.4-cil
23815   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
23816   libgnome2.24-cil
23817   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
23818   libgpod-common
23819   libgpod4
23820   libgtk2.0-cil
23821   libgtkglext1
23822   libgtksourceview2.0-common
23823   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
23824   libmono-addins0.2-cil
23825   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
23826   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
23827   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
23828   libmono-posix2.0-cil
23829   libmono-security2.0-cil
23830   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
23831   libmono-system2.0-cil
23832   libmtp8
23833   libmusicbrainz3-6
23834   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
23835   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
23836   libopal3.6.8
23837   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
23838   libpt2.6.7
23839   libpython2.6
23840   librpm1
23841   librpmio1
23842   libsdl1.2debian
23843   libsrtp0
23844   libssh-4
23845   libtelepathy-farsight0
23846   libtelepathy-glib0
23847   libtidy-0.99-0
23848   media-player-info
23849   mesa-utils
23850   mono-2.0-gac
23851   mono-gac
23852   mono-runtime
23853   nautilus-sendto
23854   nautilus-sendto-empathy
23855   p7zip-full
23856   pkg-config
23857   python-aptdaemon
23858   python-aptdaemon-gtk
23859   python-axiom
23860   python-beautifulsoup
23861   python-bugbuddy
23862   python-clientform
23863   python-coherence
23864   python-configobj
23865   python-crypto
23866   python-cupshelpers
23867   python-elementtree
23868   python-epsilon
23869   python-evolution
23870   python-feedparser
23871   python-gdata
23872   python-gdbm
23873   python-gst0.10
23874   python-gtkglext1
23875   python-gtksourceview2
23876   python-httplib2
23877   python-louie
23878   python-mako
23879   python-markupsafe
23880   python-mechanize
23881   python-nevow
23882   python-notify
23883   python-opengl
23884   python-openssl
23885   python-pam
23886   python-pkg-resources
23887   python-pyasn1
23888   python-pysqlite2
23889   python-rdflib
23890   python-serial
23891   python-tagpy
23892   python-twisted-bin
23893   python-twisted-conch
23894   python-twisted-core
23895   python-twisted-web
23896   python-utidylib
23897   python-webkit
23898   python-xdg
23899   python-zope.interface
23900   remmina
23901   remmina-plugin-data
23902   remmina-plugin-rdp
23903   remmina-plugin-vnc
23904   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
23905   rhythmbox-plugins
23906   rpm-common
23907   rpm2cpio
23908   seahorse-plugins
23909   shotwell
23910   software-center
23911   system-config-printer-udev
23912   telepathy-gabble
23913   telepathy-mission-control-5
23914   telepathy-salut
23915   tomboy
23916   totem
23917   totem-coherence
23918   totem-mozilla
23919   totem-plugins
23920   transmission-common
23921   xdg-user-dirs
23922   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
23923   xserver-xephyr
23924 </p></blockquote>
23925
23926 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
23927
23928 <blockquote><p>
23929   cheese
23930   ekiga
23931   eog
23932   epiphany-extensions
23933   evolution-exchange
23934   fast-user-switch-applet
23935   file-roller
23936   gcalctool
23937   gconf-editor
23938   gdm
23939   gedit
23940   gedit-common
23941   gnome-games
23942   gnome-games-data
23943   gnome-nettool
23944   gnome-system-tools
23945   gnome-themes
23946   gnuchess
23947   gucharmap
23948   guile-1.8-libs
23949   libavahi-ui0
23950   libdmx1
23951   libgalago3
23952   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
23953   libgtksourceview2.0-0
23954   liblircclient0
23955   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
23956   libspeexdsp1
23957   libsvga1
23958   rhythmbox
23959   seahorse
23960   sound-juicer
23961   system-config-printer
23962   totem-common
23963   transmission-gtk
23964   vinagre
23965   vino
23966 </p></blockquote>
23967
23968 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
23969
23970 <blockquote><p>
23971   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
23972 </p></blockquote>
23973
23974 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
23975
23976 <blockquote><p>
23977 [nothing]
23978 </p></blockquote>
23979
23980 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
23981
23982 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
23983
23984 <blockquote><p>
23985   ksmserver
23986 </p></blockquote>
23987
23988 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
23989
23990 <blockquote><p>
23991   kwin
23992   network-manager-kde
23993 </p></blockquote>
23994
23995 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
23996
23997 <blockquote><p>
23998   arts
23999   dolphin
24000   freespacenotifier
24001   google-gadgets-gst
24002   google-gadgets-xul
24003   kappfinder
24004   kcalc
24005   kcharselect
24006   kde-core
24007   kde-plasma-desktop
24008   kde-standard
24009   kde-window-manager
24010   kdeartwork
24011   kdeartwork-emoticons
24012   kdeartwork-style
24013   kdeartwork-theme-icon
24014   kdebase
24015   kdebase-apps
24016   kdebase-workspace
24017   kdebase-workspace-bin
24018   kdebase-workspace-data
24019   kdeeject
24020   kdelibs
24021   kdeplasma-addons
24022   kdeutils
24023   kdewallpapers
24024   kdf
24025   kfloppy
24026   kgpg
24027   khelpcenter4
24028   kinfocenter
24029   konq-plugins-l10n
24030   konqueror-nsplugins
24031   kscreensaver
24032   kscreensaver-xsavers
24033   ktimer
24034   kwrite
24035   libgle3
24036   libkde4-ruby1.8
24037   libkonq5
24038   libkonq5-templates
24039   libnetpbm10
24040   libplasma-ruby
24041   libplasma-ruby1.8
24042   libqt4-ruby1.8
24043   marble-data
24044   marble-plugins
24045   netpbm
24046   nuvola-icon-theme
24047   plasma-dataengines-workspace
24048   plasma-desktop
24049   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
24050   plasma-runners-addons
24051   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
24052   plasma-scriptengine-python
24053   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
24054   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
24055   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
24056   plasma-scriptengines
24057   plasma-wallpapers-addons
24058   plasma-widget-folderview
24059   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
24060   ruby
24061   sweeper
24062   update-notifier-kde
24063   xscreensaver-data-extra
24064   xscreensaver-gl
24065   xscreensaver-gl-extra
24066   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
24067 </p></blockquote>
24068
24069 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
24070
24071 <blockquote><p>
24072   ark
24073   google-gadgets-common
24074   google-gadgets-qt
24075   htdig
24076   kate
24077   kdebase-bin
24078   kdebase-data
24079   kdepasswd
24080   kfind
24081   klipper
24082   konq-plugins
24083   konqueror
24084   ksysguard
24085   ksysguardd
24086   libarchive1
24087   libcln6
24088   libeet1
24089   libeina-svn-06
24090   libggadget-1.0-0b
24091   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
24092   libgps19
24093   libkdecorations4
24094   libkephal4
24095   libkonq4
24096   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
24097   libkscreensaver5
24098   libksgrd4
24099   libksignalplotter4
24100   libkunitconversion4
24101   libkwineffects1a
24102   libmarblewidget4
24103   libntrack-qt4-1
24104   libntrack0
24105   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
24106   libplasmaclock4a
24107   libplasmagenericshell4
24108   libprocesscore4a
24109   libprocessui4a
24110   libqalculate5
24111   libqedje0a
24112   libqtruby4shared2
24113   libqzion0a
24114   libruby1.8
24115   libscim8c2a
24116   libsmokekdecore4-3
24117   libsmokekdeui4-3
24118   libsmokekfile3
24119   libsmokekhtml3
24120   libsmokekio3
24121   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
24122   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
24123   libsmokekparts3
24124   libsmokektexteditor3
24125   libsmokekutils3
24126   libsmokenepomuk3
24127   libsmokephonon3
24128   libsmokeplasma3
24129   libsmokeqtcore4-3
24130   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
24131   libsmokeqtgui4-3
24132   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
24133   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
24134   libsmokeqtscript4-3
24135   libsmokeqtsql4-3
24136   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
24137   libsmokeqttest4-3
24138   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
24139   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
24140   libsmokeqtxml4-3
24141   libsmokesolid3
24142   libsmokesoprano3
24143   libtaskmanager4a
24144   libtidy-0.99-0
24145   libweather-ion4a
24146   libxklavier16
24147   libxxf86misc1
24148   okteta
24149   oxygencursors
24150   plasma-dataengines-addons
24151   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
24152   plasma-widget-lancelot
24153   plasma-widgets-addons
24154   plasma-widgets-workspace
24155   polkit-kde-1
24156   ruby1.8
24157   systemsettings
24158   update-notifier-common
24159 </p></blockquote>
24160
24161 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
24162 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
24163 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
24164 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
24165
24166       </div>
24167       <div class="tags">
24168
24169
24170         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>.
24171
24172
24173       </div>
24174     </div>
24175     <div class="padding"></div>
24176
24177     <div class="entry">
24178       <div class="title">
24179         <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>
24180       </div>
24181       <div class="date">
24182         22nd November 2010
24183       </div>
24184       <div class="body">
24185         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
24186 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
24187 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
24188 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
24189 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
24190 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
24191 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
24192 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
24193 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
24194
24195 <p>I found
24196 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
24197 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
24198 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
24199 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
24200 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
24201 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
24202
24203 <pre>
24204 #!/bin/sh
24205
24206 # Based on
24207 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
24208
24209 set -e
24210 set -x
24211
24212 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
24213     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
24214     exit 1
24215 else
24216     host="$1"
24217 fi
24218
24219 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
24220     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
24221     exit 1
24222 fi
24223
24224 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
24225 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
24226 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
24227 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
24228
24229 img=$host.img
24230 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
24231 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
24232
24233 parted $img mklabel msdos
24234 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
24235 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
24236 parted $img set 1 boot on
24237
24238 modprobe dm-mod
24239 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
24240 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
24241
24242 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
24243 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
24244 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
24245
24246 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
24247 losetup -d /dev/loop0
24248 </pre>
24249
24250 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
24251 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
24252
24253 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
24254 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
24255 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
24256 seem to work just fine.</p>
24257
24258       </div>
24259       <div class="tags">
24260
24261
24262         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>.
24263
24264
24265       </div>
24266     </div>
24267     <div class="padding"></div>
24268
24269     <div class="entry">
24270       <div class="title">
24271         <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>
24272       </div>
24273       <div class="date">
24274         20th November 2010
24275       </div>
24276       <div class="body">
24277         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
24278 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
24279 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
24280 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
24281
24282 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
24283 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
24284 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
24285
24286 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
24287
24288 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
24289
24290 <blockquote><p>
24291   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
24292   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
24293   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
24294   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
24295   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
24296   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
24297   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
24298   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
24299   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
24300   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
24301   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
24302   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
24303   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
24304   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
24305   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
24306   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
24307   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
24308   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
24309   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
24310   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
24311   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
24312   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
24313   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
24314   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
24315   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
24316   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
24317   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
24318   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
24319   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
24320   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
24321   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
24322   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
24323   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
24324   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
24325   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
24326   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
24327   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
24328   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
24329   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
24330   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
24331   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
24332   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
24333   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
24334   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
24335   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
24336   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
24337   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
24338   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
24339   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
24340   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
24341   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
24342   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
24343   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
24344   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
24345   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
24346   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
24347   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
24348   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
24349   zip
24350 </p></blockquote>
24351
24352 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
24353
24354 <blockquote><p>
24355   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
24356   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
24357   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
24358   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
24359   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
24360   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
24361   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
24362   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
24363   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
24364   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
24365   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
24366   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
24367   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
24368   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
24369   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
24370   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
24371   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
24372   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
24373   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
24374   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
24375   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
24376   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
24377   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
24378   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
24379   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
24380   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
24381   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
24382   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
24383   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
24384 </p></blockquote>
24385
24386 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
24387
24388 <blockquote><p>
24389   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
24390 </p></blockquote>
24391
24392 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
24393
24394 <blockquote><p>
24395 [nothing]
24396 </p></blockquote>
24397
24398 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
24399
24400 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
24401
24402 <blockquote><p>
24403   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
24404   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
24405   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
24406   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
24407   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
24408   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
24409   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
24410   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
24411   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
24412   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
24413   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
24414   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
24415   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
24416   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
24417   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
24418   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
24419   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
24420   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
24421   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
24422   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
24423   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
24424   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
24425   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
24426   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
24427   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
24428   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
24429   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
24430   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
24431   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
24432   ttf-sazanami-gothic
24433 </p></blockquote>
24434
24435 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
24436
24437 <blockquote><p>
24438   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
24439   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
24440   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
24441   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
24442   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
24443   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
24444   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
24445   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
24446   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
24447   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
24448   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
24449   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
24450   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
24451   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
24452   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
24453   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
24454   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
24455   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
24456   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
24457   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
24458   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
24459   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
24460   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
24461   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
24462   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
24463   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
24464   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
24465   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
24466   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
24467   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
24468   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
24469   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
24470   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
24471 </p></blockquote>
24472
24473 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
24474
24475 <blockquote><p>
24476   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
24477   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
24478   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
24479   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
24480   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
24481   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
24482   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
24483 </p></blockquote>
24484
24485 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
24486
24487 <blockquote><p>
24488   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
24489 </p></blockquote>
24490
24491       </div>
24492       <div class="tags">
24493
24494
24495         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>.
24496
24497
24498       </div>
24499     </div>
24500     <div class="padding"></div>
24501
24502     <div class="entry">
24503       <div class="title">
24504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
24505       </div>
24506       <div class="date">
24507         20th November 2010
24508       </div>
24509       <div class="body">
24510         <p>Answering
24511 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
24512 call from the Gnash project</a> for
24513 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
24514 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
24515 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
24516 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
24517 releases out more often.</p>
24518
24519 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
24520 I have considered setting up a <a
24521 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
24522 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
24523 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
24524 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
24525 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
24526 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
24527 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
24528 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
24529 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
24530 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
24531 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
24532 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
24533
24534       </div>
24535       <div class="tags">
24536
24537
24538         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>.
24539
24540
24541       </div>
24542     </div>
24543     <div class="padding"></div>
24544
24545     <div class="entry">
24546       <div class="title">
24547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
24548       </div>
24549       <div class="date">
24550          9th November 2010
24551       </div>
24552       <div class="body">
24553         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
24554
24555 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
24556 3D linked in from
24557 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
24558 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
24559
24560       </div>
24561       <div class="tags">
24562
24563
24564         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>.
24565
24566
24567       </div>
24568     </div>
24569     <div class="padding"></div>
24570
24571     <div class="entry">
24572       <div class="title">
24573         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
24574       </div>
24575       <div class="date">
24576          7th November 2010
24577       </div>
24578       <div class="body">
24579         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
24580 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
24581 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
24582 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
24583 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
24584 working using this DVD.</p>
24585
24586 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
24587 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
24588 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
24589 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
24590 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
24591 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
24592 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
24593
24594 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
24595 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
24596 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
24597 Debian archive.</p>
24598
24599 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
24600 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
24601 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
24602 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
24603 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
24604 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
24605 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
24606 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
24607 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
24608 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
24609 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
24610 free X driver should work.</p>
24611
24612 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
24613 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
24614 DVD more useful again.</p>
24615
24616       </div>
24617       <div class="tags">
24618
24619
24620         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
24621
24622
24623       </div>
24624     </div>
24625     <div class="padding"></div>
24626
24627     <div class="entry">
24628       <div class="title">
24629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
24630       </div>
24631       <div class="date">
24632         24th October 2010
24633       </div>
24634       <div class="body">
24635         <p>Some updates.</p>
24636
24637 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
24638 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
24639 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
24640 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
24641 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
24642 :)</p>
24643
24644 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
24645 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
24646 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
24647 It is called
24648 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
24649 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
24650 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
24651 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
24652 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
24653 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
24654
24655 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
24656 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
24657 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
24658 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
24659 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
24660 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
24661 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
24662 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
24663 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
24664 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
24665
24666       </div>
24667       <div class="tags">
24668
24669
24670         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>.
24671
24672
24673       </div>
24674     </div>
24675     <div class="padding"></div>
24676
24677     <div class="entry">
24678       <div class="title">
24679         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
24680       </div>
24681       <div class="date">
24682         19th October 2010
24683       </div>
24684       <div class="body">
24685         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
24686 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
24687 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
24688 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
24689 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
24690 AVM2 flash files.</p>
24691
24692 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
24693 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
24694 following text:</P>
24695
24696 <p><blockquote>
24697
24698   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
24699   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
24700
24701   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
24702
24703   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
24704
24705   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
24706   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
24707   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
24708   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
24709   days. The project web page is available from
24710   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
24711   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
24712   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
24713
24714   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
24715   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
24716   to get this to happen.</p>
24717
24718   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
24719   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
24720
24721 </blockquote></p>
24722
24723 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
24724 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
24725 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
24726 :)</p>
24727
24728       </div>
24729       <div class="tags">
24730
24731
24732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
24733
24734
24735       </div>
24736     </div>
24737     <div class="padding"></div>
24738
24739     <div class="entry">
24740       <div class="title">
24741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
24742       </div>
24743       <div class="date">
24744          9th October 2010
24745       </div>
24746       <div class="body">
24747         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
24748 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
24749 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
24750 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
24751 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
24752 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
24753 robots.</p>
24754
24755 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
24756 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
24757 a few less important features too.</p>
24758
24759 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
24760 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
24761 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
24762 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
24763
24764 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
24765 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
24766 source or binary package:</p>
24767
24768 <p><ul>
24769 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
24770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
24771 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
24772 </ul></p>
24773
24774 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
24775 please let me know.</p>
24776
24777       </div>
24778       <div class="tags">
24779
24780
24781         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
24782
24783
24784       </div>
24785     </div>
24786     <div class="padding"></div>
24787
24788     <div class="entry">
24789       <div class="title">
24790         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
24791       </div>
24792       <div class="date">
24793          3rd October 2010
24794       </div>
24795       <div class="body">
24796         <p><ul>
24797
24798 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
24799 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
24800
24801 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
24802 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
24803 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
24804
24805 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
24806 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
24807 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
24808 simple setup.
24809
24810 </ul></p>
24811
24812       </div>
24813       <div class="tags">
24814
24815
24816         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
24817
24818
24819       </div>
24820     </div>
24821     <div class="padding"></div>
24822
24823     <div class="entry">
24824       <div class="title">
24825         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
24826       </div>
24827       <div class="date">
24828          9th September 2010
24829       </div>
24830       <div class="body">
24831         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
24832 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
24833 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
24834 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
24835 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
24836 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
24837 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
24838 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
24839 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
24840
24841 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
24842 written:</p>
24843
24844 <blockquote>
24845 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
24846 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
24847 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
24848 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
24849 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
24850
24851 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
24852 standard.</p>
24853 </blockquote>
24854
24855 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
24856 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
24857 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
24858 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
24859
24860 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
24861 read
24862 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
24863 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
24864 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
24865 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
24866 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
24867 the issue.  The solution is to support the
24868 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
24869 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
24870 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
24871
24872       </div>
24873       <div class="tags">
24874
24875
24876         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
24877
24878
24879       </div>
24880     </div>
24881     <div class="padding"></div>
24882
24883     <div class="entry">
24884       <div class="title">
24885         <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>
24886       </div>
24887       <div class="date">
24888          4th September 2010
24889       </div>
24890       <div class="body">
24891         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
24892 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
24893 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
24894 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
24895 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
24896 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
24897 installed.</p>
24898
24899 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
24900 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
24901 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
24902 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
24903 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
24904 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
24905 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
24906 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
24907 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
24908
24909 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
24910 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
24911 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
24912 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
24913 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
24914 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
24915 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
24916 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
24917 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
24918 pages they want to visit.</p>
24919
24920 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
24921 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
24922 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
24923 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
24924 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
24925 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
24926 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
24927 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
24928 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
24929 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
24930 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
24931
24932       </div>
24933       <div class="tags">
24934
24935
24936         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>.
24937
24938
24939       </div>
24940     </div>
24941     <div class="padding"></div>
24942
24943     <div class="entry">
24944       <div class="title">
24945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
24946       </div>
24947       <div class="date">
24948          1st September 2010
24949       </div>
24950       <div class="body">
24951         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
24952 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
24953 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
24954 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
24955 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
24956 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
24957 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
24958 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
24959 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
24960 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
24961 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
24962 drive around.</p>
24963
24964 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
24965 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
24966
24967 <p><pre>
24968 use Spykee;
24969 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
24970 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
24971 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
24972 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
24973 $spykee->left();
24974 sleep 2;
24975 $spykee->right();
24976 sleep 2;
24977 $spykee->forward();
24978 sleep 2;
24979 $spykee->back();
24980 sleep 2;
24981 $spykee->stop();
24982 </pre></p>
24983
24984 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
24985 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
24986 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
24987 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
24988 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
24989 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
24990 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
24991 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
24992 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
24993 going. :).</p>
24994
24995 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
24996 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
24997 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
24998 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
24999
25000       </div>
25001       <div class="tags">
25002
25003
25004         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
25005
25006
25007       </div>
25008     </div>
25009     <div class="padding"></div>
25010
25011     <div class="entry">
25012       <div class="title">
25013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
25014       </div>
25015       <div class="date">
25016         30th August 2010
25017       </div>
25018       <div class="body">
25019         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
25020 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
25021 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
25022 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
25023 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
25024 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
25025 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
25026
25027 <pre>
25028 % ln foo bar
25029 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
25030 %
25031 </pre>
25032
25033 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
25034 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
25035 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
25036 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
25037 nevertheless. :)</p>
25038
25039 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
25040 git from
25041 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
25042
25043       </div>
25044       <div class="tags">
25045
25046
25047         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25048
25049
25050       </div>
25051     </div>
25052     <div class="padding"></div>
25053
25054     <div class="entry">
25055       <div class="title">
25056         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
25057       </div>
25058       <div class="date">
25059         26th August 2010
25060       </div>
25061       <div class="body">
25062         <p>My file system sematics program
25063 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
25064 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
25065 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
25066 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
25067 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
25068 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
25069 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
25070 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
25071 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
25072 script:</p>
25073
25074 <pre>
25075 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
25076   mode_t retval = 0;
25077   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
25078   if (-1 != fd) {
25079     unlink(name);
25080     struct stat statbuf;
25081     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
25082       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
25083     }
25084     close(fd);
25085   }
25086   return retval;
25087 }
25088
25089 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
25090 int test_umask(void) {
25091   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
25092
25093   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
25094   mode_t newmode;
25095   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
25096     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
25097            newmode);
25098   }
25099   umask(007);
25100   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
25101     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
25102            newmode);
25103   }
25104
25105   umask (orig_umask);
25106   return 0;
25107 }
25108
25109 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
25110   [...]
25111   test_umask();
25112   return 0;
25113 }
25114 </pre>
25115
25116 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
25117
25118 <pre>
25119 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
25120 info: testing symlink creation
25121 info: testing subdirectory creation
25122 info: testing fcntl locking
25123   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25124   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25125   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
25126   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25127   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25128   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
25129 info: testing umask effect on file creation
25130 </pre>
25131
25132 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
25133 result:</p>
25134
25135 <pre>
25136 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
25137 info: testing symlink creation
25138 info: testing subdirectory creation
25139 info: testing fcntl locking
25140   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25141   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25142   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
25143   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25144   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25145   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
25146 info: testing umask effect on file creation
25147   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
25148   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
25149 </pre>
25150
25151 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
25152 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
25153 directory.</p>
25154
25155 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
25156 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
25157
25158 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
25159 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
25160 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
25161
25162       </div>
25163       <div class="tags">
25164
25165
25166         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25167
25168
25169       </div>
25170     </div>
25171     <div class="padding"></div>
25172
25173     <div class="entry">
25174       <div class="title">
25175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
25176       </div>
25177       <div class="date">
25178         15th August 2010
25179       </div>
25180       <div class="body">
25181         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
25182 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
25183 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
25184 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
25185 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
25186 long time.</p>
25187
25188       </div>
25189       <div class="tags">
25190
25191
25192         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
25193
25194
25195       </div>
25196     </div>
25197     <div class="padding"></div>
25198
25199     <div class="entry">
25200       <div class="title">
25201         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
25202       </div>
25203       <div class="date">
25204          9th August 2010
25205       </div>
25206       <div class="body">
25207         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
25208 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
25209 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
25210 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
25211 generated configuration.</p>
25212
25213 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
25214 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
25215 without any manual configuration.</p>
25216
25217 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
25218 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
25219 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
25220 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
25221 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
25222 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
25223 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
25224 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
25225 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
25226 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
25227 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
25228 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
25229 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
25230 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
25231 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
25232 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
25233 use.</p>
25234
25235 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
25236 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
25237 working properly out of the box:</p>
25238
25239 <ul>
25240 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
25241 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
25242 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
25243 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
25244 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
25245 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
25246 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
25247 </ul>
25248
25249 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
25250
25251 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
25252 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
25253 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
25254 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
25255 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
25256
25257 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
25258 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
25259 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
25260 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
25261 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
25262 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
25263 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
25264 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
25265
25266 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
25267 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
25268 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
25269 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
25270 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
25271 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
25272 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
25273 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
25274 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
25275 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
25276 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
25277 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
25278 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
25279 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
25280 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
25281 current DNS domain is used.</p>
25282
25283 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
25284 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
25285 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
25286 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
25287 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
25288 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
25289 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
25290 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
25291 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
25292 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
25293 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
25294 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
25295 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
25296
25297 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
25298 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
25299 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
25300 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
25301 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
25302 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
25303 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
25304 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
25305 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
25306 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
25307 do for now. :)</p>
25308
25309 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
25310 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
25311 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
25312 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
25313 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
25314 yet.</p>
25315
25316 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
25317 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25318
25319 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
25320 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
25321 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
25322 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
25323
25324       </div>
25325       <div class="tags">
25326
25327
25328         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25329
25330
25331       </div>
25332     </div>
25333     <div class="padding"></div>
25334
25335     <div class="entry">
25336       <div class="title">
25337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
25338       </div>
25339       <div class="date">
25340          8th August 2010
25341       </div>
25342       <div class="body">
25343         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
25344 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
25345 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
25346 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
25347 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
25348 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
25349 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
25350
25351 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
25352 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
25353 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
25354 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
25355 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
25356 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
25357 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
25358
25359 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
25360 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
25361 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
25362 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
25363 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
25364
25365 <pre>
25366 /*
25367  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
25368  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
25369  * directory.
25370  * License: GPL v2 or later
25371  *
25372  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
25373  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
25374 */
25375
25376 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
25377 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
25378 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
25379
25380 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
25381
25382 #include &lt;errno.h>
25383 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
25384 #include &lt;stdio.h>
25385 #include &lt;string.h>
25386 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
25387 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
25388 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
25389 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
25390 #include &lt;unistd.h>
25391
25392 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
25393 /*
25394  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
25395  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
25396  * below.
25397  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
25398  */
25399 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
25400 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
25401   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
25402 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
25403   char *zErrMsg;
25404   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
25405   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
25406   unlink(name);
25407   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
25408   if( rc ){
25409     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
25410     sqlite3_close(db);
25411     return -1;
25412   }
25413
25414   /* create tables */
25415   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
25416   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
25417     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
25418     sqlite3_close(db);
25419     return -1;
25420   }
25421   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
25422   sqlite3_close(db);
25423   return 0;
25424 }
25425 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
25426
25427 /*
25428  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
25429  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
25430  * done in the sqlite3 library.
25431  * See also
25432  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
25433  * POSIX specification
25434  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
25435  */
25436 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
25437   struct flock fl;
25438   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
25439   unlink(name);
25440   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
25441   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
25442
25443   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
25444   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
25445   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
25446   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
25447   fl.l_len    = 1;
25448   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
25449   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25450
25451   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
25452   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
25453   fl.l_len    = 510;
25454   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
25455   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25456
25457   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
25458   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
25459   fl.l_len    = 1;
25460   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
25461   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25462
25463   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
25464   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
25465   fl.l_len    = 1;
25466   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
25467   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25468
25469   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
25470   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
25471   fl.l_len    = 510;
25472   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25473
25474   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
25475   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
25476   fl.l_len    = 2;
25477   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
25478   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25479
25480   close(fd);
25481   return 0;
25482 }
25483
25484 /*
25485  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
25486  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
25487  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
25488  * slowing down file operations.
25489  */
25490 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
25491 #define LEVELS 5
25492   char *path = strdup("test");
25493   char *dirs[LEVELS];
25494   int level;
25495   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
25496   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
25497     char *newpath = NULL;
25498     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
25499       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
25500              path, strerror(errno));
25501       break;
25502     }
25503     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
25504     free(path);
25505     path = newpath;
25506   }
25507   return 0;
25508 }
25509
25510 /*
25511  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
25512  * KDE.
25513  */
25514 int test_symlinks(void) {
25515   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
25516   unlink("symlink");
25517   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
25518     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
25519   return 0;
25520 }
25521
25522 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
25523   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
25524   test_symlinks();
25525   test_subdirectory_creation();
25526 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
25527   test_sqlite_open();
25528 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
25529   test_gcompris_locking();
25530   return 0;
25531 }
25532 </pre>
25533
25534 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
25535 this:</p>
25536
25537 <pre>
25538 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
25539 info: testing symlink creation
25540 info: testing subdirectory creation
25541 info: sqlite worked
25542 info: testing fcntl locking
25543   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25544   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25545   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
25546   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25547   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25548   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
25549 </pre>
25550
25551 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
25552 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
25553 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
25554 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
25555 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
25556 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
25557 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
25558 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
25559
25560 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
25561 it. :)</p>
25562
25563 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
25564 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
25565 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
25566
25567       </div>
25568       <div class="tags">
25569
25570
25571         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25572
25573
25574       </div>
25575     </div>
25576     <div class="padding"></div>
25577
25578     <div class="entry">
25579       <div class="title">
25580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
25581       </div>
25582       <div class="date">
25583          7th August 2010
25584       </div>
25585       <div class="body">
25586         <p>A few days ago, I
25587 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
25588 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
25589 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
25590 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
25591 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
25592 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
25593 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
25594 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
25595 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
25596
25597 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
25598 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
25599 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
25600 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
25601 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
25602 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
25603 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
25604 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
25605 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
25606 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
25607 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
25608 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
25609 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
25610 gave it a IP address.</p>
25611
25612 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
25613 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
25614 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
25615 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
25616 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
25617 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
25618 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
25619 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
25620
25621 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
25622 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
25623 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
25624 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
25625 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
25626 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
25627
25628 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
25629 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
25630 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
25631 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
25632 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
25633 with UID and GID values.</p>
25634
25635 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
25636 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25637
25638       </div>
25639       <div class="tags">
25640
25641
25642         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25643
25644
25645       </div>
25646     </div>
25647     <div class="padding"></div>
25648
25649     <div class="entry">
25650       <div class="title">
25651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
25652       </div>
25653       <div class="date">
25654          3rd August 2010
25655       </div>
25656       <div class="body">
25657         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
25658 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
25659 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
25660 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
25661 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
25662 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
25663 servers.</p>
25664
25665 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
25666 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
25667 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
25668 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
25669 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
25670 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
25671 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
25672 .uio.no.</p>
25673
25674 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
25675 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
25676 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
25677 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
25678 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
25679 university servers.</p>
25680
25681 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
25682 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
25683 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
25684 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
25685 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
25686 uses.</p>
25687
25688       </div>
25689       <div class="tags">
25690
25691
25692         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25693
25694
25695       </div>
25696     </div>
25697     <div class="padding"></div>
25698
25699     <div class="entry">
25700       <div class="title">
25701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
25702       </div>
25703       <div class="date">
25704         27th July 2010
25705       </div>
25706       <div class="body">
25707         <p>I discovered this while doing
25708 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
25709 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
25710 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
25711 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
25712 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
25713
25714 <p>An example is from todays
25715 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
25716 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
25717 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
25718 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
25719 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
25720 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
25721 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
25722
25723 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
25724
25725 <blockquote><pre>
25726 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
25727  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
25728   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
25729 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
25730  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
25731 </pre></blockquote>
25732
25733 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
25734 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
25735 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
25736 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
25737 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
25738 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
25739 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
25740 of dependency loops.</p>
25741
25742 <p>Thanks to
25743 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
25744 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
25745 dependencies
25746 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
25747 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
25748
25749 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
25750 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
25751 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
25752 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
25753 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
25754 it.</p>
25755
25756       </div>
25757       <div class="tags">
25758
25759
25760         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>.
25761
25762
25763       </div>
25764     </div>
25765     <div class="padding"></div>
25766
25767     <div class="entry">
25768       <div class="title">
25769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
25770       </div>
25771       <div class="date">
25772         27th July 2010
25773       </div>
25774       <div class="body">
25775         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
25776 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
25777 completed.</p>
25778
25779 <blockquote>
25780 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
25781 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
25782 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
25783 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
25784 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
25785 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
25786 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
25787 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
25788
25789 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
25790 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
25791 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
25792
25793 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
25794 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
25795 much.</p>
25796
25797 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
25798
25799 <ul>
25800 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
25801 <ul>
25802   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
25803          combination with some new artwork
25804   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
25805   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
25806   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
25807   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
25808   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
25809   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
25810   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
25811   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
25812   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
25813 </ul></li>
25814 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
25815     Enabled for:
25816 <ul>
25817   <li>PAM
25818   <li>LDAP
25819   <li>IMAP
25820   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
25821 </ul>
25822 </li>
25823 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
25824 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
25825     fetched from LDAP.</li>
25826 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
25827 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
25828 </ul>
25829 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
25830
25831 <ul>
25832 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
25833     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
25834     for testing.</li>
25835 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
25836     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
25837     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
25838 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
25839 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
25840 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
25841 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
25842     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
25843 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
25844     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
25845     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
25846 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
25847     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
25848     and help out with translations.</li>
25849 </ul>
25850
25851 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
25852
25853 <ul>
25854 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
25855 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
25856 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
25857 </ul>
25858 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
25859
25860 <ul>
25861 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
25862 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
25863 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
25864 </ul>
25865
25866 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
25867 get closer to the final release.</p>
25868
25869 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
25870
25871 <ul>
25872 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
25873 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
25874 </ul>
25875
25876 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
25877 <ul>
25878 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
25879 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
25880 </ul>
25881 <p>How to report bugs:
25882 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
25883
25884 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
25885 </blockquote>
25886
25887       </div>
25888       <div class="tags">
25889
25890
25891         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25892
25893
25894       </div>
25895     </div>
25896     <div class="padding"></div>
25897
25898     <div class="entry">
25899       <div class="title">
25900         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
25901       </div>
25902       <div class="date">
25903         25th July 2010
25904       </div>
25905       <div class="body">
25906         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
25907 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
25908 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
25909 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
25910 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
25911
25912 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
25913 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
25914 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
25915 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
25916 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
25917 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
25918 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
25919
25920 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
25921 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
25922 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
25923 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
25924 up. :)</p>
25925
25926 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
25927 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
25928 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
25929
25930 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
25931 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
25932 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
25933 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
25934 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
25935 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
25936 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
25937 release another day.</p>
25938
25939 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
25940 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25941
25942       </div>
25943       <div class="tags">
25944
25945
25946         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
25947
25948
25949       </div>
25950     </div>
25951     <div class="padding"></div>
25952
25953     <div class="entry">
25954       <div class="title">
25955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
25956       </div>
25957       <div class="date">
25958         18th July 2010
25959       </div>
25960       <div class="body">
25961         <p>Thanks to
25962 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
25963 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
25964 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
25965 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
25966 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
25967 only available from the development server, until more experience is
25968 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
25969
25970 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
25971 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
25972 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
25973 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
25974 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
25975 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
25976 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
25977
25978       </div>
25979       <div class="tags">
25980
25981
25982         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
25983
25984
25985       </div>
25986     </div>
25987     <div class="padding"></div>
25988
25989     <div class="entry">
25990       <div class="title">
25991         <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>
25992       </div>
25993       <div class="date">
25994         17th July 2010
25995       </div>
25996       <div class="body">
25997         <p>This is a
25998 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
25999 on my
26000 <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
26001 work</a> on
26002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
26003 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
26004
26005 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
26006 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
26007 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
26008 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
26009
26010 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
26011 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
26012 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
26013
26014 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
26015
26016 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
26017 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
26018 the web.
26019
26020 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
26021 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
26022 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
26023 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
26024 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
26025 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
26026
26027 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
26028 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
26029 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
26030 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
26031 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
26032 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
26033 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
26034 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
26035 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
26036 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
26037 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
26038 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
26039 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
26040 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
26041 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
26042 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
26043
26044 <blockquote><pre>
26045 ldapsearch -h ldap \
26046   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
26047   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
26048   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
26049   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
26050   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
26051   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
26052
26053 ldapsearch -h ldap \
26054   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
26055   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
26056   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
26057   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
26058   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
26059 </pre></blockquote>
26060
26061 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
26062 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
26063 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
26064 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26065 also exist.</p>
26066
26067 <blockquote><pre>
26068 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26069 objectclass: top
26070 objectclass: dnsdomain
26071 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
26072 dc: tjener
26073 arecord: 10.0.2.2
26074 associateddomain: tjener.intern
26075
26076 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26077 objectclass: top
26078 objectclass: dnsdomain2
26079 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
26080 dc: 2
26081 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
26082 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
26083 </pre></blockquote>
26084
26085 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
26086 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
26087 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
26088 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
26089 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
26090 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
26091 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
26092 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
26093 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
26094 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
26095 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
26096 instead.</p>
26097
26098 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
26099 like this:</p>
26100
26101 <blockquote><pre>
26102 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
26103   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
26104   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
26105   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
26106   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
26107   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
26108
26109 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
26110   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
26111 </pre></blockquote>
26112
26113 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
26114 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
26115 reverse lookups.</p>
26116
26117 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
26118 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
26119 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
26120 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
26121
26122 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
26123 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
26124 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
26125
26126 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
26127 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
26128 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
26129 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
26130 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
26131
26132 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
26133 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
26134 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
26135 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
26136 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
26137
26138 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
26139 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
26140 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
26141 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
26142 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
26143 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
26144
26145 <blockquote><pre>
26146 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
26147     SUP top
26148     AUXILIARY
26149     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
26150           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
26151           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
26152           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
26153           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
26154     ))
26155 </pre></blockquote>
26156
26157 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
26158 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
26159 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
26160 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
26161 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
26162 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
26163
26164 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
26165
26166 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
26167 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
26168 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
26169 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
26170 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
26171
26172 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
26173 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
26174 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
26175 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
26176
26177 <blockquote><pre>
26178 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
26179 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
26180 </pre></blockquote>
26181
26182 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
26183 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
26184 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
26185 search result is this entry:</p>
26186
26187 <blockquote><pre>
26188 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26189 cn: dhcp
26190 objectClass: top
26191 objectClass: dhcpServer
26192 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26193 </pre></blockquote>
26194
26195 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
26196 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
26197 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
26198 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
26199 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
26200 The search result is this entry:</p>
26201
26202 <blockquote><pre>
26203 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26204 cn: DHCP Config
26205 objectClass: top
26206 objectClass: dhcpService
26207 objectClass: dhcpOptions
26208 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26209 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
26210 dhcpStatements: authoritative
26211 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
26212 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
26213 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
26214 </pre></blockquote>
26215
26216 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
26217 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
26218 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
26219 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
26220 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
26221 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
26222 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
26223 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
26224 related computer objects.</p>
26225
26226 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
26227 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
26228 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
26229 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
26230 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
26231 like:</p>
26232
26233 <blockquote><pre>
26234 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26235 cn: hostname
26236 objectClass: top
26237 objectClass: dhcpHost
26238 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
26239 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
26240 </pre></blockquote>
26241
26242 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
26243 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
26244 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
26245 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
26246 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
26247 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
26248 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
26249 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
26250 structural object class.
26251
26252 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
26253
26254 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
26255 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
26256 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
26257 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
26258 in the configuration.</p>
26259
26260 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
26261 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
26262 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
26263 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
26264 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
26265 structure.</p>
26266
26267 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
26268 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
26269
26270 <blockquote><pre>
26271 ou=services
26272   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
26273     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
26274     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
26275       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
26276         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
26277     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
26278       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
26279         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
26280     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
26281       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
26282 </pre></blockquote>
26283
26284 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
26285 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
26286 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
26287 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
26288
26289 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
26290 like this:</p>
26291
26292 <blockquote><pre>
26293 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26294 dc: hostname
26295 objectClass: top
26296 objectClass: dhcpHost
26297 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
26298 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
26299 associateddomain: hostname.intern
26300 arecord: 10.11.12.13
26301 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
26302 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
26303 </pre></blockquote>
26304
26305 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
26306 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
26307 auxiliary object class.</p>
26308
26309       </div>
26310       <div class="tags">
26311
26312
26313         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>.
26314
26315
26316       </div>
26317     </div>
26318     <div class="padding"></div>
26319
26320     <div class="entry">
26321       <div class="title">
26322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
26323       </div>
26324       <div class="date">
26325         14th July 2010
26326       </div>
26327       <div class="body">
26328         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
26329 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
26330 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
26331 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
26332 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
26333
26334 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
26335 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
26336
26337 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
26338 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
26339 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
26340 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
26341 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
26342 to a slave DNS server.</p>
26343
26344 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
26345 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
26346 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
26347 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
26348 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
26349 seem to work.</p>
26350
26351 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
26352 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
26353 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
26354 this:</p>
26355
26356 <blockquote><pre>
26357   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26358   cn: hostname
26359   objectClass: dhcphost
26360   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
26361   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
26362   associateddomain: hostname.intern
26363   arecord: 10.11.12.13
26364   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
26365   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
26366   ldapconfigsound: Y
26367 </pre></blockquote>
26368
26369 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
26370 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
26371 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
26372 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
26373
26374 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
26375 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
26376 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
26377 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
26378 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
26379 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
26380 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
26381 might be a good place to put it.</p>
26382
26383 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26384 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26385
26386       </div>
26387       <div class="tags">
26388
26389
26390         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>.
26391
26392
26393       </div>
26394     </div>
26395     <div class="padding"></div>
26396
26397     <div class="entry">
26398       <div class="title">
26399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
26400       </div>
26401       <div class="date">
26402         11th July 2010
26403       </div>
26404       <div class="body">
26405         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
26406 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
26407 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
26408 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
26409
26410 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
26411 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
26412 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
26413 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
26414 LTSP clients.</p>
26415
26416 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
26417 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
26418 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
26419
26420 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
26421 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
26422 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
26423
26424 <blockquote><pre>
26425 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
26426 #
26427 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
26428 #
26429 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
26430 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
26431 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
26432 #
26433 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
26434 # existence of attribute names.
26435 #
26436 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
26437 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
26438 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
26439 #
26440 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
26441 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
26442 #
26443 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
26444 #     SUP top
26445 #     AUXILIARY
26446 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
26447
26448 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
26449 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
26450     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
26451     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
26452         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
26453         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
26454             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
26455             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
26456             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
26457             # bass value on to clients
26458             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
26459         done
26460     done
26461 fi
26462 </pre></blockquote>
26463
26464 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
26465 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
26466 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
26467 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
26468 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
26469
26470 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26471 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26472
26473 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
26474 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
26475 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
26476 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
26477 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
26478 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
26479
26480       </div>
26481       <div class="tags">
26482
26483
26484         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>.
26485
26486
26487       </div>
26488     </div>
26489     <div class="padding"></div>
26490
26491     <div class="entry">
26492       <div class="title">
26493         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
26494       </div>
26495       <div class="date">
26496          9th July 2010
26497       </div>
26498       <div class="body">
26499         <p>Since
26500 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
26501 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
26502 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
26503 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
26504 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
26505 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
26506 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
26507 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
26508 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
26509 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
26510 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
26511 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
26512 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
26513
26514       </div>
26515       <div class="tags">
26516
26517
26518         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>.
26519
26520
26521       </div>
26522     </div>
26523     <div class="padding"></div>
26524
26525     <div class="entry">
26526       <div class="title">
26527         <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>
26528       </div>
26529       <div class="date">
26530          3rd July 2010
26531       </div>
26532       <div class="body">
26533         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
26534 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
26535 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
26536 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
26537 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
26538 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
26539 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
26540 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
26541
26542 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
26543 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
26544 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
26545 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
26546 publish the difference.</p>
26547
26548 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
26549
26550 <blockquote><p>
26551   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
26552   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
26553   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
26554   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
26555   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
26556   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
26557   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
26558   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
26559 </p></blockquote>
26560
26561 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
26562
26563 <blockquote><p>
26564   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
26565   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
26566   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
26567   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
26568   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
26569   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
26570   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
26571   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
26572   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
26573   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
26574   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
26575   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
26576   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
26577   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
26578   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
26579   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
26580   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
26581   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
26582   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
26583   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
26584 </p></blockquote>
26585
26586 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
26587
26588 <blockquote><p>
26589   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
26590   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
26591   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
26592   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
26593   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
26594   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
26595   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
26596   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
26597   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
26598   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
26599   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
26600   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
26601   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
26602   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
26603   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
26604   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
26605   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
26606   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
26607   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
26608   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
26609   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
26610 </p></blockquote>
26611
26612 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
26613
26614 <blockquote><p>
26615   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
26616   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
26617   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
26618 </p></blockquote>
26619
26620 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
26621 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
26622 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
26623 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
26624 the difference somewhat.
26625
26626       </div>
26627       <div class="tags">
26628
26629
26630         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>.
26631
26632
26633       </div>
26634     </div>
26635     <div class="padding"></div>
26636
26637     <div class="entry">
26638       <div class="title">
26639         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
26640       </div>
26641       <div class="date">
26642          1st July 2010
26643       </div>
26644       <div class="body">
26645         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
26646 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
26647 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
26648 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
26649 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
26650 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
26651 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
26652 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
26653 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
26654
26655 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
26656
26657 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
26658 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
26659 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
26660 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
26661 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
26662 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
26663 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
26664 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
26665 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
26666 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
26667 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
26668 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
26669 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
26670 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
26671 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
26672
26673 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
26674
26675 <blockquote><pre>
26676 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
26677 </pre></blockquote>
26678
26679 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
26680 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
26681 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
26682 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
26683 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
26684 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
26685 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
26686 on how to get this working.</p>
26687
26688 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
26689 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
26690 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
26691 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
26692 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
26693 instructions I found in the
26694 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
26695 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
26696
26697 <blockquote><pre>
26698         debug-level             0
26699         reload-count            unlimited
26700         paranoia                no
26701
26702         enable-cache            passwd          yes
26703         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
26704         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
26705         suggested-size          passwd          211
26706         check-files             passwd          yes
26707         persistent              passwd          yes
26708         shared                  passwd          yes
26709         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
26710         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
26711
26712         enable-cache            group           yes
26713         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
26714         negative-time-to-live   group           20
26715         suggested-size          group           211
26716         check-files             group           yes
26717         persistent              group           yes
26718         shared                  group           yes
26719         max-db-size             group           33554432
26720         auto-propagate          group           yes
26721
26722         enable-cache            hosts           no
26723         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
26724         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
26725         suggested-size          hosts           211
26726         check-files             hosts           yes
26727         persistent              hosts           yes
26728         shared                  hosts           yes
26729         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
26730
26731         enable-cache            services        yes
26732         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
26733         negative-time-to-live   services        20
26734         suggested-size          services        211
26735         check-files             services        yes
26736         persistent              services        yes
26737         shared                  services        yes
26738         max-db-size             services        33554432
26739 </pre></blockquote>
26740
26741 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
26742 automatically like the one provided in
26743 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
26744 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
26745 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
26746 look like this:</p>
26747
26748 <blockquote><pre>
26749 passwd:         files ldap
26750 group:          files ldap
26751 shadow:         files ldap
26752 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
26753 networks:       files
26754 protocols:      files
26755 services:       files
26756 ethers:         files
26757 rpc:            files
26758 netgroup:       files ldap
26759 </pre></blockquote>
26760
26761 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
26762 shadow and netgroup.</p>
26763
26764 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
26765 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
26766 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
26767 attributes cached.
26768
26769 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
26770   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
26771
26772 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
26773 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
26774 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
26775 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
26776 discovered sssd.</p>
26777
26778 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
26779
26780 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
26781 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
26782 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
26783 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
26784 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
26785 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
26786 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
26787 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
26788 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
26789 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
26790 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
26791 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
26792 version 1.2 is now in testing.
26793
26794 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
26795 roaming setup I want</p>
26796
26797 <blockquote><pre>
26798 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
26799 </pre></blockquote>
26800
26801 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
26802 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
26803
26804 <blockquote><pre>
26805 [sssd]
26806 config_file_version = 2
26807 reconnection_retries = 3
26808 sbus_timeout = 30
26809 services = nss, pam
26810 domains = INTERN
26811
26812 [nss]
26813 filter_groups = root
26814 filter_users = root
26815 reconnection_retries = 3
26816
26817 [pam]
26818 reconnection_retries = 3
26819
26820 [domain/INTERN]
26821 enumerate = false
26822 cache_credentials = true
26823
26824 id_provider = ldap
26825 auth_provider = ldap
26826 chpass_provider = ldap
26827
26828 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
26829 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26830 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
26831 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
26832 </pre></blockquote>
26833
26834 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
26835 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
26836
26837 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
26838 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
26839 modify it manually.</p>
26840
26841 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26842 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26843
26844       </div>
26845       <div class="tags">
26846
26847
26848         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26849
26850
26851       </div>
26852     </div>
26853     <div class="padding"></div>
26854
26855     <div class="entry">
26856       <div class="title">
26857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
26858       </div>
26859       <div class="date">
26860         28th June 2010
26861       </div>
26862       <div class="body">
26863         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
26864 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
26865 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
26866 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
26867 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
26868 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
26869 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
26870 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
26871 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
26872 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
26873
26874 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
26875 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
26876 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
26877 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
26878 released.</p>
26879
26880 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
26881 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
26882 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
26883 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
26884
26885 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
26886 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26887
26888 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
26889 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
26890 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
26891 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
26892 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
26893
26894       </div>
26895       <div class="tags">
26896
26897
26898         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>.
26899
26900
26901       </div>
26902     </div>
26903     <div class="padding"></div>
26904
26905     <div class="entry">
26906       <div class="title">
26907         <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>
26908       </div>
26909       <div class="date">
26910         24th June 2010
26911       </div>
26912       <div class="body">
26913         <p>A while back, I
26914 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
26915 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
26916 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
26917 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
26918
26919 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
26920 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
26921 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
26922 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
26923
26924 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
26925 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
26926 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
26927 Debian Edu.</p>
26928
26929 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
26930 the
26931 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
26932 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
26933 available today from IETF.</p>
26934
26935 <pre>
26936 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
26937 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
26938 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
26939  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
26940         NAME 'dhcpHost'
26941         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
26942 -       SUP top
26943 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
26944         MUST cn
26945         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
26946         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
26947 </pre>
26948
26949 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
26950 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
26951 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
26952
26953 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26954 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26955
26956       </div>
26957       <div class="tags">
26958
26959
26960         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>.
26961
26962
26963       </div>
26964     </div>
26965     <div class="padding"></div>
26966
26967     <div class="entry">
26968       <div class="title">
26969         <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>
26970       </div>
26971       <div class="date">
26972         16th June 2010
26973       </div>
26974       <div class="body">
26975         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
26976 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
26977 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
26978 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
26979 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
26980 this:
26981
26982 <blockquote><pre>
26983 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
26984 tasksel --new-install
26985 </pre></blockquote>
26986
26987 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
26988 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
26989 any output what so ever.
26990
26991 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
26992 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
26993 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
26994 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
26995 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
26996 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
26997 code like this:
26998
26999 <blockquote><pre>
27000 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
27001 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
27002 $cmd
27003 </pre></blockquote>
27004
27005 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
27006 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
27007 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
27008 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
27009 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
27010 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
27011 installation.</p>
27012
27013 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
27014 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
27015 like this.</p>
27016
27017       </div>
27018       <div class="tags">
27019
27020
27021         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
27022
27023
27024       </div>
27025     </div>
27026     <div class="padding"></div>
27027
27028     <div class="entry">
27029       <div class="title">
27030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
27031       </div>
27032       <div class="date">
27033         13th June 2010
27034       </div>
27035       <div class="body">
27036         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
27037 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
27038 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
27039 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
27040 pages.</p>
27041
27042 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
27043 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
27044 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
27045 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
27046 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
27047 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
27048 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
27049 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
27050 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
27051 see how the project is doing.</p>
27052
27053 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
27054 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
27055 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
27056 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
27057 Windows.  This is great.</p>
27058
27059       </div>
27060       <div class="tags">
27061
27062
27063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
27064
27065
27066       </div>
27067     </div>
27068     <div class="padding"></div>
27069
27070     <div class="entry">
27071       <div class="title">
27072         <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>
27073       </div>
27074       <div class="date">
27075         13th June 2010
27076       </div>
27077       <div class="body">
27078         <p>My
27079 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
27080 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
27081 finally made the upgrade logs available from
27082 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
27083 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
27084 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
27085 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
27086
27087 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
27088 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
27089 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
27090 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
27091 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
27092 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
27093 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
27094 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
27095
27096 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
27097 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
27098 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
27099 too surprising.</p>
27100
27101 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
27102 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
27103 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
27104 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
27105 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
27106 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
27107 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
27108 continue.</p>
27109
27110 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
27111 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
27112   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
27113   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
27114   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
27115   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
27116   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
27117   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
27118   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
27119   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
27120   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
27121   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
27122   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
27123   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
27124   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
27125   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
27126   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
27127   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
27128   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
27129   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
27130   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
27131   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
27132   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
27133   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
27134   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
27135   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
27136   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
27137   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
27138   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
27139   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
27140
27141 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
27142
27143 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
27144   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
27145   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
27146   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
27147   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
27148   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
27149   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
27150   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
27151   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
27152   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
27153   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
27154   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
27155   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
27156   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
27157   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
27158   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
27159   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
27160   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
27161   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
27162   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
27163   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
27164   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
27165   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
27166   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
27167   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
27168   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
27169   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
27170   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
27171   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
27172   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
27173   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
27174   zip</p>
27175
27176 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
27177
27178 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
27179   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
27180   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
27181   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
27182   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
27183   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
27184   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
27185   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
27186   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
27187   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
27188   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
27189   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
27190   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
27191   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
27192   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
27193   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
27194   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
27195   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
27196   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
27197   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
27198   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
27199   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
27200   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
27201   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
27202   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
27203   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
27204   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
27205   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
27206
27207 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
27208 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
27209   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
27210   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
27211   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
27212   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
27213   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
27214   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
27215   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
27216   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
27217   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
27218   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
27219   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
27220   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
27221   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
27222   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
27223   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
27224   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
27225   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
27226   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
27227   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
27228   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
27229   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
27230   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
27231   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
27232   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
27233   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
27234   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
27235   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
27236   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
27237   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
27238   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
27239   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
27240   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
27241   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
27242   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
27243   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
27244   xulrunner-1.9</p>
27245
27246
27247       </div>
27248       <div class="tags">
27249
27250
27251         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>.
27252
27253
27254       </div>
27255     </div>
27256     <div class="padding"></div>
27257
27258     <div class="entry">
27259       <div class="title">
27260         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
27261       </div>
27262       <div class="date">
27263         11th June 2010
27264       </div>
27265       <div class="body">
27266         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
27267 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
27268 have been discovered and reported in the process
27269 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
27270 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
27271 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
27272 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
27273 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
27274
27275 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
27276 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
27277 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
27278 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
27279 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
27280 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
27281
27282 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
27283 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
27284 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
27285 is created.  The bug report
27286 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
27287 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
27288 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
27289 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
27290 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
27291 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
27292 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
27293 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
27294 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
27295 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
27296 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
27297 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
27298 Debian Squeeze.</p>
27299
27300 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
27301 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
27302 trick:</p>
27303
27304 <blockquote><pre>
27305 #!/bin/sh
27306 set -ex
27307
27308 if [ "$1" ] ; then
27309     desktop=$1
27310 else
27311     desktop=gnome
27312 fi
27313
27314 from=lenny
27315 to=squeeze
27316
27317 exec &lt; /dev/null
27318 unset LANG
27319 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
27320 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
27321 fuser -mv .
27322 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
27323 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
27324 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
27325 #!/bin/sh
27326 exit 101
27327 EOF
27328 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
27329 exit_cleanup() {
27330     umount $tmpdir/proc
27331 }
27332 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
27333 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
27334 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
27335
27336 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
27337
27338 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
27339 # to return the correct answers.
27340 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
27341     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
27342
27343 # Include the desktop and laptop task
27344 for test in desktop laptop ; do
27345     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
27346 #!/bin/sh
27347 exit 2
27348 EOF
27349     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
27350 done
27351
27352 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
27353 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
27354 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
27355 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
27356
27357 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
27358 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
27359 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
27360 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
27361 fuser -mv
27362 </pre></blockquote>
27363
27364 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
27365 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
27366 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
27367 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
27368 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
27369 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
27370
27371 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
27372 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
27373 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
27374 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
27375 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
27376 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
27377 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
27378
27379 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
27380 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
27381 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
27382 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
27383 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
27384 packages.</p>
27385
27386       </div>
27387       <div class="tags">
27388
27389
27390         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>.
27391
27392
27393       </div>
27394     </div>
27395     <div class="padding"></div>
27396
27397     <div class="entry">
27398       <div class="title">
27399         <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>
27400       </div>
27401       <div class="date">
27402          6th June 2010
27403       </div>
27404       <div class="body">
27405         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
27406 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
27407 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
27408 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
27409 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
27410 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
27411 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
27412
27413 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
27414 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
27415 COLUMNS):</p>
27416
27417 <blockquote><pre>
27418 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
27419 previous=N
27420 PREVLEVEL=
27421 RUNLEVEL=
27422 runlevel=S
27423 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
27424 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
27425 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
27426 </pre></blockquote>
27427
27428 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
27429 script.</p>
27430
27431 <blockquote><pre>
27432 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
27433 previous=N
27434 PREVLEVEL=N
27435 RUNLEVEL=S
27436 runlevel=S
27437 </pre></blockquote>
27438
27439 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
27440 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
27441 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
27442
27443 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
27444 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
27445 choice.</p>
27446
27447       </div>
27448       <div class="tags">
27449
27450
27451         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>.
27452
27453
27454       </div>
27455     </div>
27456     <div class="padding"></div>
27457
27458     <div class="entry">
27459       <div class="title">
27460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
27461       </div>
27462       <div class="date">
27463          6th June 2010
27464       </div>
27465       <div class="body">
27466         <p>Via the
27467 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
27468 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
27469 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
27470 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
27471 following the standards wars of today.</p>
27472
27473       </div>
27474       <div class="tags">
27475
27476
27477         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>.
27478
27479
27480       </div>
27481     </div>
27482     <div class="padding"></div>
27483
27484     <div class="entry">
27485       <div class="title">
27486         <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>
27487       </div>
27488       <div class="date">
27489          3rd June 2010
27490       </div>
27491       <div class="body">
27492         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
27493 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
27494 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
27495 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
27496 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
27497
27498 <blockquote><pre>
27499 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
27500   vendor                    count
27501   Dell Computer Corporation     1
27502     PowerEdge 1750              1
27503   IBM                           1
27504     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
27505   Intel                         2
27506   [no-dmi-info]                 3
27507 maintainer:~#
27508 </pre></blockquote>
27509
27510 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
27511 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
27512 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
27513 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
27514 option to list the individual machines.</p>
27515
27516 <p>A larger list is
27517 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
27518 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
27519 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
27520 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
27521 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
27522 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
27523 collector.</p>
27524
27525       </div>
27526       <div class="tags">
27527
27528
27529         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>.
27530
27531
27532       </div>
27533     </div>
27534     <div class="padding"></div>
27535
27536     <div class="entry">
27537       <div class="title">
27538         <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>
27539       </div>
27540       <div class="date">
27541          1st June 2010
27542       </div>
27543       <div class="body">
27544         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
27545 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
27546 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
27547 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
27548 wait.</p>
27549
27550 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
27551 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
27552 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
27553 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
27554 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
27555 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
27556
27557 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
27558 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
27559 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
27560 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
27561 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
27562 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
27563 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
27564 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
27565
27566 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
27567
27568       </div>
27569       <div class="tags">
27570
27571
27572         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>.
27573
27574
27575       </div>
27576     </div>
27577     <div class="padding"></div>
27578
27579     <div class="entry">
27580       <div class="title">
27581         <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>
27582       </div>
27583       <div class="date">
27584         27th May 2010
27585       </div>
27586       <div class="body">
27587         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
27588 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
27589 issues are known and should be solved:
27590
27591 <p><ul>
27592
27593 <li>The wicd package seen to
27594 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
27595 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
27596 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
27597 seem to be on the case.</li>
27598
27599 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
27600 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
27601 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
27602 maintainer is on the case.</li>
27603
27604 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
27605 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
27606 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
27607 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
27608 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
27609 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
27610 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
27611 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
27612
27613 </ul></p>
27614
27615 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
27616 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
27617 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
27618 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
27619
27620 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
27621 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
27622 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
27623 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
27624
27625 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
27626
27627       </div>
27628       <div class="tags">
27629
27630
27631         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>.
27632
27633
27634       </div>
27635     </div>
27636     <div class="padding"></div>
27637
27638     <div class="entry">
27639       <div class="title">
27640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
27641       </div>
27642       <div class="date">
27643         22nd May 2010
27644       </div>
27645       <div class="body">
27646         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
27647 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
27648 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
27649 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
27650
27651 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
27652 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
27653 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
27654 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
27655 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
27656 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
27657 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
27658 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
27659 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
27660 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
27661 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
27662 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
27663 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
27664 going to work.</p>
27665
27666 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
27667 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
27668 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
27669 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
27670 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
27671 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
27672 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
27673 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
27674 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
27675 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
27676 Edu.</p>
27677
27678 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
27679 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
27680 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
27681 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
27682 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
27683 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
27684
27685 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
27686 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
27687
27688       </div>
27689       <div class="tags">
27690
27691
27692         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>.
27693
27694
27695       </div>
27696     </div>
27697     <div class="padding"></div>
27698
27699     <div class="entry">
27700       <div class="title">
27701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
27702       </div>
27703       <div class="date">
27704         19th May 2010
27705       </div>
27706       <div class="body">
27707         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
27708 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
27709 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
27710 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
27711 into unstable.  The
27712 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
27713 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
27714 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
27715 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
27716 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
27717 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
27718 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
27719
27720 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
27721 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
27722 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
27723 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
27724 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
27725 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
27726 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
27727 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
27728
27729 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
27730 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
27731 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
27732 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
27733 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
27734 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
27735 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
27736
27737 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
27738 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
27739 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
27740 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
27741 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
27742 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
27743 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
27744 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
27745 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
27746 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
27747 on the home directory servers.</p>
27748
27749 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
27750 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
27751 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
27752 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
27753 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
27754 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
27755
27756 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
27757 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
27758
27759       </div>
27760       <div class="tags">
27761
27762
27763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
27764
27765
27766       </div>
27767     </div>
27768     <div class="padding"></div>
27769
27770     <div class="entry">
27771       <div class="title">
27772         <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>
27773       </div>
27774       <div class="date">
27775         14th May 2010
27776       </div>
27777       <div class="body">
27778         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
27779 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
27780 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
27781 expected, if I am to believe the
27782 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
27783 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
27784 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
27785 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
27786 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
27787 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
27788 version.</p>
27789
27790 More information about
27791 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
27792 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
27793 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
27794 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
27795
27796 <blockquote><pre>
27797 CONCURRENCY=none
27798 </pre></blockquote>
27799
27800 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
27801 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
27802 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
27803 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
27804
27805       </div>
27806       <div class="tags">
27807
27808
27809         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>.
27810
27811
27812       </div>
27813     </div>
27814     <div class="padding"></div>
27815
27816     <div class="entry">
27817       <div class="title">
27818         <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>
27819       </div>
27820       <div class="date">
27821         14th May 2010
27822       </div>
27823       <div class="body">
27824         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
27825 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
27826 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
27827 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
27828 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
27829 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
27830 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
27831 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
27832
27833 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
27834 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
27835 this on the collector host:</p>
27836
27837 <blockquote><pre>
27838 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
27839 </pre></blockquote>
27840
27841 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
27842 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
27843
27844 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
27845 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
27846 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
27847 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
27848 written yet.</p>
27849
27850       </div>
27851       <div class="tags">
27852
27853
27854         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>.
27855
27856
27857       </div>
27858     </div>
27859     <div class="padding"></div>
27860
27861     <div class="entry">
27862       <div class="title">
27863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
27864       </div>
27865       <div class="date">
27866         13th May 2010
27867       </div>
27868       <div class="body">
27869         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
27870 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
27871 has been
27872 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
27873
27874 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
27875 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
27876 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
27877 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
27878 based boot system.  Tollef is
27879 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
27880 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
27881 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
27882 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
27883 at the moment do not.</p>
27884
27885 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
27886 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
27887 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
27888 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
27889 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
27890 way forward.</p>
27891
27892 <p>In the mean time, based on the
27893 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
27894 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
27895 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
27896 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
27897 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
27898 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
27899 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
27900 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
27901
27902       </div>
27903       <div class="tags">
27904
27905
27906         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>.
27907
27908
27909       </div>
27910     </div>
27911     <div class="padding"></div>
27912
27913     <div class="entry">
27914       <div class="title">
27915         <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>
27916       </div>
27917       <div class="date">
27918          6th May 2010
27919       </div>
27920       <div class="body">
27921         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
27922 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
27923 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
27924 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
27925 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
27926 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
27927 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
27928
27929 <blockquote><pre>
27930 CONCURRENCY=makefile
27931 </pre></blockquote>
27932
27933 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
27934 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
27935 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
27936 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
27937 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
27938 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
27939 make this happen.</p>
27940
27941 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
27942 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
27943 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
27944 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
27945 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
27946
27947 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
27948 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
27949 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
27950 fix the remaining issues.</p>
27951
27952 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
27953 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
27954 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
27955 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
27956
27957       </div>
27958       <div class="tags">
27959
27960
27961         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>.
27962
27963
27964       </div>
27965     </div>
27966     <div class="padding"></div>
27967
27968     <div class="entry">
27969       <div class="title">
27970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
27971       </div>
27972       <div class="date">
27973          2nd May 2010
27974       </div>
27975       <div class="body">
27976         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
27977 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
27978 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
27979
27980 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
27981 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
27982 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
27983 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
27984 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
27985
27986 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
27987 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
27988
27989 <blockquote><pre>
27990 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
27991 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
27992 Password expires                                        : never
27993 Password inactive                                       : never
27994 Account expires                                         : never
27995 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
27996 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
27997 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
27998 root@tjener:~#
27999 </pre></blockquote>
28000
28001 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
28002 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
28003 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
28004 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
28005 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
28006 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
28007
28008 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
28009 intended:</p>
28010
28011 <blockquote><pre>
28012 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
28013 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
28014 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
28015 Password expires                                        : never
28016 Password inactive                                       : never
28017 Account expires                                         : never
28018 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
28019 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
28020 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
28021 root@tjener:~#
28022 </pre></blockquote>
28023
28024 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
28025 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
28026 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
28027
28028 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
28029 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
28030
28031 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
28032 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
28033
28034 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
28035 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
28036 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
28037 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
28038 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
28039 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
28040 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
28041
28042 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
28043 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
28044 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
28045 change.</p>
28046
28047       </div>
28048       <div class="tags">
28049
28050
28051         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
28052
28053
28054       </div>
28055     </div>
28056     <div class="padding"></div>
28057
28058     <div class="entry">
28059       <div class="title">
28060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
28061       </div>
28062       <div class="date">
28063         28th April 2010
28064       </div>
28065       <div class="body">
28066         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
28067 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
28068 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
28069 and go.</p>
28070
28071 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
28072 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
28073 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
28074 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
28075
28076 <ul>
28077
28078  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
28079    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
28080    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
28081    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
28082    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
28083    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
28084    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
28085    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
28086    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
28087    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
28088    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
28089    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
28090
28091  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
28092    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
28093    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
28094    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
28095    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
28096    or the Fedora developed
28097    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
28098    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
28099
28100  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
28101    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
28102    directory, using unison.</li>
28103
28104  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
28105    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
28106    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
28107    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
28108    implemented.</li>
28109
28110  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
28111    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
28112
28113  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
28114    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
28115    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
28116
28117 </ul>
28118
28119 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
28120 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
28121 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
28122 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
28123 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
28124 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
28125 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
28126 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
28127 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
28128
28129 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
28130 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
28131
28132       </div>
28133       <div class="tags">
28134
28135
28136         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
28137
28138
28139       </div>
28140     </div>
28141     <div class="padding"></div>
28142
28143     <div class="entry">
28144       <div class="title">
28145         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
28146       </div>
28147       <div class="date">
28148         19th April 2010
28149       </div>
28150       <div class="body">
28151         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
28152 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
28153 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
28154 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
28155 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
28156 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
28157 restrictions on the web, for example from
28158 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
28159 epub-version from
28160 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
28161 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
28162 strongly recommend this book.</p>
28163
28164       </div>
28165       <div class="tags">
28166
28167
28168         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
28169
28170
28171       </div>
28172     </div>
28173     <div class="padding"></div>
28174
28175     <div class="entry">
28176       <div class="title">
28177         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
28178       </div>
28179       <div class="date">
28180         14th April 2010
28181       </div>
28182       <div class="body">
28183         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
28184 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
28185 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
28186 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
28187 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
28188 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
28189 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
28190 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
28191 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
28192
28193 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
28194 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
28195 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
28196 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
28197 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
28198
28199 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
28200 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
28201
28202 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
28203 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
28204 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
28205 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
28206 to work properly.</p>
28207
28208 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
28209 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
28210 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
28211 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
28212 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
28213 time.</p>
28214
28215 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
28216 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
28217 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
28218 up in a few days.</p>
28219
28220       </div>
28221       <div class="tags">
28222
28223
28224         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
28225
28226
28227       </div>
28228     </div>
28229     <div class="padding"></div>
28230
28231     <div class="entry">
28232       <div class="title">
28233         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
28234       </div>
28235       <div class="date">
28236          6th March 2010
28237       </div>
28238       <div class="body">
28239         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
28240 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
28241 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
28242 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
28243 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
28244 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
28245
28246 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
28247 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
28248 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
28249 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
28250
28251 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
28252 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
28253 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
28254 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
28255 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
28256 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
28257
28258       </div>
28259       <div class="tags">
28260
28261
28262         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
28263
28264
28265       </div>
28266     </div>
28267     <div class="padding"></div>
28268
28269     <div class="entry">
28270       <div class="title">
28271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
28272       </div>
28273       <div class="date">
28274         11th February 2010
28275       </div>
28276       <div class="body">
28277         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
28278 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
28279 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
28280 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
28281 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
28282 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
28283 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
28284
28285 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
28286
28287 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
28288 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
28289 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
28290 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
28291
28292       </div>
28293       <div class="tags">
28294
28295
28296         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
28297
28298
28299       </div>
28300     </div>
28301     <div class="padding"></div>
28302
28303     <div class="entry">
28304       <div class="title">
28305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
28306       </div>
28307       <div class="date">
28308         27th January 2010
28309       </div>
28310       <div class="body">
28311         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
28312 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
28313 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
28314 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
28315 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
28316 further.</p>
28317
28318 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
28319 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
28320 configured to be a server for the
28321 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
28322 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
28323 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
28324 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
28325 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
28326 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
28327 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
28328 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
28329 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
28330 and Nagios configuration.</p>
28331
28332 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
28333 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
28334 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
28335 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
28336
28337 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
28338 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
28339 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
28340 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
28341 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
28342 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
28343 the machine.</p>
28344
28345 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
28346 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
28347 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
28348 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
28349
28350 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
28351 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
28352 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
28353 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
28354 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
28355 everything is taken care of.</p>
28356
28357       </div>
28358       <div class="tags">
28359
28360
28361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
28362
28363
28364       </div>
28365     </div>
28366     <div class="padding"></div>
28367
28368     <div class="entry">
28369       <div class="title">
28370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
28371       </div>
28372       <div class="date">
28373         12th August 2009
28374       </div>
28375       <div class="body">
28376         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
28377 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
28378 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
28379 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
28380
28381 <table>
28382 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
28383 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
28384 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
28385 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
28386 </table>
28387
28388 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
28389 got these numbers:</p>
28390
28391 <table>
28392 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
28393 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
28394 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
28395 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
28396 </table>
28397
28398 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
28399
28400 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
28401 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
28402 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
28403 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
28404 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
28405
28406
28407 <table>
28408 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
28409 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
28410 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
28411 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
28412 </table>
28413
28414 <p>And with 'site:no':
28415
28416 <table>
28417 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
28418 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
28419 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
28420 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
28421 </table>
28422
28423 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
28424 numbers.</p>
28425
28426       </div>
28427       <div class="tags">
28428
28429
28430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
28431
28432
28433       </div>
28434     </div>
28435     <div class="padding"></div>
28436
28437     <div class="entry">
28438       <div class="title">
28439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
28440       </div>
28441       <div class="date">
28442          8th August 2009
28443       </div>
28444       <div class="body">
28445         <p>According to <a
28446 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
28447 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
28448 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
28449 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
28450 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
28451 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
28452 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
28453 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
28454 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
28455 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
28456
28457 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
28458 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
28459 seminar this autumn.</p>
28460
28461       </div>
28462       <div class="tags">
28463
28464
28465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
28466
28467
28468       </div>
28469     </div>
28470     <div class="padding"></div>
28471
28472     <div class="entry">
28473       <div class="title">
28474         <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>
28475       </div>
28476       <div class="date">
28477         27th July 2009
28478       </div>
28479       <div class="body">
28480         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
28481 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
28482 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
28483 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
28484 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
28485 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
28486 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
28487
28488 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
28489 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
28490 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
28491
28492       </div>
28493       <div class="tags">
28494
28495
28496         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>.
28497
28498
28499       </div>
28500     </div>
28501     <div class="padding"></div>
28502
28503     <div class="entry">
28504       <div class="title">
28505         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
28506       </div>
28507       <div class="date">
28508         22nd July 2009
28509       </div>
28510       <div class="body">
28511         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
28512 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
28513 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
28514 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
28515 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
28516 the package up to date.</p>
28517
28518 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
28519 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
28520 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
28521 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
28522 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
28523 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
28524 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
28525 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
28526 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
28527 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
28528 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
28529 working on the future release.</p>
28530
28531 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
28532 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
28533
28534       </div>
28535       <div class="tags">
28536
28537
28538         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>.
28539
28540
28541       </div>
28542     </div>
28543     <div class="padding"></div>
28544
28545     <div class="entry">
28546       <div class="title">
28547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
28548       </div>
28549       <div class="date">
28550         24th June 2009
28551       </div>
28552       <div class="body">
28553         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
28554 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
28555 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
28556 funded
28557 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
28558 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
28559 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
28560 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
28561 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
28562 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
28563
28564 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
28565 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
28566 boot:</p>
28567
28568 <ul>
28569
28570 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
28571
28572 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
28573    clock is in UTC.</li>
28574
28575 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
28576    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
28577    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
28578
28579 </ul>
28580
28581 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
28582 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
28583 Villegas</a>.
28584
28585 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
28586 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
28587 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
28588 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
28589 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
28590 using this.</p>
28591
28592 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
28593 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
28594 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
28595 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
28596 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
28597 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
28598 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
28599
28600       </div>
28601       <div class="tags">
28602
28603
28604         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>.
28605
28606
28607       </div>
28608     </div>
28609     <div class="padding"></div>
28610
28611     <div class="entry">
28612       <div class="title">
28613         <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>
28614       </div>
28615       <div class="date">
28616          2nd May 2009
28617       </div>
28618       <div class="body">
28619         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
28620 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
28621 do not yet know them.</p>
28622
28623 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
28624 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
28625 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
28626 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
28627 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
28628 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
28629 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
28630 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
28631 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
28632 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
28633 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
28634
28635 <p>The second one is
28636 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
28637 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
28638 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
28639 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
28640 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
28641 and the company behind it is running
28642 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
28643 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
28644 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
28645 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
28646 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
28647 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
28648 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
28649 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
28650
28651 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
28652 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
28653 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
28654 surrounded by today.</p>
28655
28656       </div>
28657       <div class="tags">
28658
28659
28660         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>.
28661
28662
28663       </div>
28664     </div>
28665     <div class="padding"></div>
28666
28667     <div class="entry">
28668       <div class="title">
28669         <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>
28670       </div>
28671       <div class="date">
28672         28th April 2009
28673       </div>
28674       <div class="body">
28675         <p>Julien Blache
28676 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
28677 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
28678 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
28679 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
28680 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
28681 properties.</p>
28682
28683       </div>
28684       <div class="tags">
28685
28686
28687         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>.
28688
28689
28690       </div>
28691     </div>
28692     <div class="padding"></div>
28693
28694     <div class="entry">
28695       <div class="title">
28696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
28697       </div>
28698       <div class="date">
28699          5th April 2009
28700       </div>
28701       <div class="body">
28702         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
28703 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
28704 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
28705 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
28706 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
28707 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
28708 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
28709 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
28710
28711 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
28712 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
28713 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
28714   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
28715   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
28716
28717 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
28718 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
28719 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
28720 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
28721
28722 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
28723 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
28724 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
28725 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
28726
28727 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
28728 set -e
28729 URL="$1"
28730 SAVEFILE="$2"
28731 DURATION="$3"
28732 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
28733   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
28734   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
28735 pid=$!
28736 sleep $DURATION
28737 kill $pid
28738 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
28739
28740       </div>
28741       <div class="tags">
28742
28743
28744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
28745
28746
28747       </div>
28748     </div>
28749     <div class="padding"></div>
28750
28751     <div class="entry">
28752       <div class="title">
28753         <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>
28754       </div>
28755       <div class="date">
28756         30th March 2009
28757       </div>
28758       <div class="body">
28759         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
28760 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
28761 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
28762 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
28763 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
28764 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
28765 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
28766 application.</p>
28767
28768 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
28769 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
28770 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
28771 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
28772 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
28773 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
28774 blocked from doing so.</p>
28775
28776 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
28777 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
28778 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
28779 requirements change.</p>
28780
28781 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
28782 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
28783 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
28784
28785       </div>
28786       <div class="tags">
28787
28788
28789         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>.
28790
28791
28792       </div>
28793     </div>
28794     <div class="padding"></div>
28795
28796     <div class="entry">
28797       <div class="title">
28798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
28799       </div>
28800       <div class="date">
28801         29th March 2009
28802       </div>
28803       <div class="body">
28804         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
28805 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
28806 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
28807 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
28808 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
28809 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
28810 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
28811 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
28812 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
28813 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
28814 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
28815 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
28816 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
28817 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
28818 now. :)</p>
28819
28820       </div>
28821       <div class="tags">
28822
28823
28824         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>.
28825
28826
28827       </div>
28828     </div>
28829     <div class="padding"></div>
28830
28831     <div class="entry">
28832       <div class="title">
28833         <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>
28834       </div>
28835       <div class="date">
28836         29th March 2009
28837       </div>
28838       <div class="body">
28839         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
28840 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
28841 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
28842 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
28843 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
28844 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
28845
28846 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
28847 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
28848 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
28849 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
28850 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
28851 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
28852 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
28853 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
28854 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
28855 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
28856 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
28857 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
28858 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
28859
28860 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
28861 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
28862 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
28863 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
28864
28865 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
28866 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
28867
28868 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
28869 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
28870 new IETF work group?</p>
28871
28872       </div>
28873       <div class="tags">
28874
28875
28876         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>.
28877
28878
28879       </div>
28880     </div>
28881     <div class="padding"></div>
28882
28883     <div class="entry">
28884       <div class="title">
28885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
28886       </div>
28887       <div class="date">
28888         28th February 2009
28889       </div>
28890       <div class="body">
28891         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
28892 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
28893 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
28894 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
28895 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
28896 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
28897 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
28898 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
28899 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
28900 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
28901 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
28902 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
28903 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
28904 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
28905 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
28906 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
28907 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
28908 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
28909 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
28910 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
28911 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
28912 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
28913 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
28914 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
28915 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
28916 machine.</p>
28917
28918 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
28919 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
28920 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
28921 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
28922 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
28923 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
28924 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
28925
28926 <pre>
28927 use LWP::Simple;
28928 use POSIX;
28929 use WWW::Mechanize;
28930 use Date::Parse;
28931 [...]
28932 sub get_support_info {
28933     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
28934     my $str;
28935
28936     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
28937         # fetch website from Dell support
28938         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
28939         my $webpage = get($url);
28940         return undef unless ($webpage);
28941
28942         my $daysleft = -1;
28943         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
28944         foreach my $line (@lines) {
28945             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
28946             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
28947             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
28948
28949             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
28950             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
28951             my $lastend = "";
28952             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
28953                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
28954
28955                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
28956                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
28957                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
28958                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
28959                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
28960                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
28961                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
28962             }
28963             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
28964             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
28965                 if ($lastend lt $today);
28966         }
28967     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
28968         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
28969         my $url =
28970             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
28971         $mech->get($url);
28972         my $fields = {
28973             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
28974             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
28975             'country' => 'NO',
28976             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
28977             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
28978         };
28979         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
28980                             fields      => $fields );
28981         # Next step is screen scraping
28982         my $content = $mech->content();
28983
28984         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
28985         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
28986         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
28987         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
28988
28989         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
28990
28991         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
28992             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
28993                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
28994             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
28995             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
28996                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
28997             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
28998                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
28999
29000             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
29001
29002             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
29003                 if ($end lt $today);
29004         }
29005     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
29006         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
29007         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
29008         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
29009             my $content =
29010                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
29011             if ($content) {
29012                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
29013                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
29014                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
29015                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
29016
29017                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
29018                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
29019
29020                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
29021
29022                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
29023                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
29024                     if ($end lt $today);
29025             }
29026         }
29027     }
29028     return $str;
29029 }
29030 </pre>
29031
29032 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
29033 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
29034 from dmidecode.</p>
29035
29036 <pre>
29037 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
29038                        "447707-B21");
29039 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
29040 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
29041                        "1234567");
29042 </pre>
29043
29044 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
29045 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
29046
29047 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
29048 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
29049 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
29050 do so.</p>
29051
29052       </div>
29053       <div class="tags">
29054
29055
29056         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
29057
29058
29059       </div>
29060     </div>
29061     <div class="padding"></div>
29062
29063     <div class="entry">
29064       <div class="title">
29065         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
29066       </div>
29067       <div class="date">
29068         20th February 2009
29069       </div>
29070       <div class="body">
29071         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
29072 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
29073 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
29074 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
29075 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
29076 the "missing" computer.</p>
29077
29078 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
29079 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
29080 code blocks as defined in the
29081 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
29082 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
29083 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
29084 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
29085 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
29086 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
29087 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
29088 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
29089 codes.</p>
29090
29091 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
29092 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
29093 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
29094 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
29095 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
29096 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
29097
29098 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
29099 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
29100 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
29101 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
29102 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
29103 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
29104 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
29105 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
29106 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
29107 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
29108
29109 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
29110 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
29111 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
29112
29113       </div>
29114       <div class="tags">
29115
29116
29117         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
29118
29119
29120       </div>
29121     </div>
29122     <div class="padding"></div>
29123
29124     <div class="entry">
29125       <div class="title">
29126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
29127       </div>
29128       <div class="date">
29129         17th January 2009
29130       </div>
29131       <div class="body">
29132         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
29133 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
29134 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
29135 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
29136 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
29137 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
29138 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
29139 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
29140 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
29141 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
29142 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
29143 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
29144 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
29145 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
29146
29147 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
29148 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
29149 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
29150 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
29151 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
29152 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
29153 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
29154 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
29155 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
29156 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
29157 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
29158 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
29159 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
29160 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
29161 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
29162 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
29163 playing when the download is done.</p>
29164
29165 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
29166 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
29167 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
29168 too.</p>
29169
29170 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
29171 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
29172 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
29173 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
29174
29175       </div>
29176       <div class="tags">
29177
29178
29179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
29180
29181
29182       </div>
29183     </div>
29184     <div class="padding"></div>
29185
29186     <div class="entry">
29187       <div class="title">
29188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
29189       </div>
29190       <div class="date">
29191         28th December 2008
29192       </div>
29193       <div class="body">
29194         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
29195 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
29196 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
29197 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
29198 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
29199 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
29200 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
29201 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
29202 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
29203 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
29204 source, sink and mixer applications and
29205 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
29206 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
29207 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
29208 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
29209 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
29210 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
29211 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
29212 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
29213 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
29214
29215 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
29216 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
29217 larger stick as well.</p>
29218
29219       </div>
29220       <div class="tags">
29221
29222
29223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
29224
29225
29226       </div>
29227     </div>
29228     <div class="padding"></div>
29229
29230     <div class="entry">
29231       <div class="title">
29232         <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>
29233       </div>
29234       <div class="date">
29235          7th December 2008
29236       </div>
29237       <div class="body">
29238         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
29239 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
29240 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
29241 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
29242 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
29243 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
29244 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
29245 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
29246
29247 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
29248 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
29249 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
29250 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
29251 of these cards.</p>
29252
29253       </div>
29254       <div class="tags">
29255
29256
29257         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>.
29258
29259
29260       </div>
29261     </div>
29262     <div class="padding"></div>
29263
29264     <div class="entry">
29265       <div class="title">
29266         <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>
29267       </div>
29268       <div class="date">
29269         25th November 2008
29270       </div>
29271       <div class="body">
29272         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
29273 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
29274 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
29275 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
29276 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
29277 notes are available on
29278 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
29279 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
29280 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
29281 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
29282 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
29283 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
29284 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
29285 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
29286 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
29287
29288 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
29289 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
29290
29291       </div>
29292       <div class="tags">
29293
29294
29295         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>.
29296
29297
29298       </div>
29299     </div>
29300     <div class="padding"></div>
29301
29302     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
29303     <div id="sidebar">
29304
29305
29306
29307 <h2>Archive</h2>
29308 <ul>
29309
29310 <li>2017
29311 <ul>
29312
29313 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
29314
29315 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
29316
29317 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
29318
29319 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
29320
29321 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
29322
29323 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
29324
29325 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
29326
29327 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
29328
29329 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
29330
29331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (2)</a></li>
29332
29333 </ul></li>
29334
29335 <li>2016
29336 <ul>
29337
29338 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
29339
29340 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
29341
29342 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
29343
29344 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
29345
29346 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
29347
29348 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
29349
29350 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
29351
29352 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
29353
29354 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
29355
29356 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
29357
29358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
29359
29360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
29361
29362 </ul></li>
29363
29364 <li>2015
29365 <ul>
29366
29367 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
29368
29369 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
29370
29371 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
29372
29373 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
29374
29375 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
29376
29377 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
29378
29379 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
29380
29381 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
29382
29383 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
29384
29385 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
29386
29387 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
29388
29389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
29390
29391 </ul></li>
29392
29393 <li>2014
29394 <ul>
29395
29396 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
29397
29398 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
29399
29400 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
29401
29402 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
29403
29404 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
29405
29406 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
29407
29408 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
29409
29410 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
29411
29412 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
29413
29414 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
29415
29416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
29417
29418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
29419
29420 </ul></li>
29421
29422 <li>2013
29423 <ul>
29424
29425 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
29426
29427 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
29428
29429 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
29430
29431 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
29432
29433 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
29434
29435 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
29436
29437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
29438
29439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
29440
29441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
29442
29443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
29444
29445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
29446
29447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
29448
29449 </ul></li>
29450
29451 <li>2012
29452 <ul>
29453
29454 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
29455
29456 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
29457
29458 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
29459
29460 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
29461
29462 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
29463
29464 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
29465
29466 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
29467
29468 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
29469
29470 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
29471
29472 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
29473
29474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
29475
29476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
29477
29478 </ul></li>
29479
29480 <li>2011
29481 <ul>
29482
29483 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
29484
29485 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
29486
29487 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
29488
29489 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
29490
29491 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
29492
29493 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
29494
29495 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
29496
29497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
29498
29499 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
29500
29501 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
29502
29503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
29504
29505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
29506
29507 </ul></li>
29508
29509 <li>2010
29510 <ul>
29511
29512 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
29513
29514 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
29515
29516 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
29517
29518 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
29519
29520 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
29521
29522 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
29523
29524 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
29525
29526 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
29527
29528 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
29529
29530 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
29531
29532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
29533
29534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
29535
29536 </ul></li>
29537
29538 <li>2009
29539 <ul>
29540
29541 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
29542
29543 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
29544
29545 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
29546
29547 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
29548
29549 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
29550
29551 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
29552
29553 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
29554
29555 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
29556
29557 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
29558
29559 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
29560
29561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
29562
29563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
29564
29565 </ul></li>
29566
29567 <li>2008
29568 <ul>
29569
29570 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
29571
29572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
29573
29574 </ul></li>
29575
29576 </ul>
29577
29578
29579
29580 <h2>Tags</h2>
29581 <ul>
29582
29583  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (14)</a></li>
29584
29585  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
29586
29587  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
29588
29589  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
29590
29591  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
29592
29593  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (16)</a></li>
29594
29595  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
29596
29597  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
29598
29599  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (154)</a></li>
29600
29601  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
29602
29603  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (4)</a></li>
29604
29605  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
29606
29607  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (17)</a></li>
29608
29609  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (24)</a></li>
29610
29611  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
29612
29613  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (359)</a></li>
29614
29615  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
29616
29617  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
29618
29619  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (30)</a></li>
29620
29621  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
29622
29623  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
29624
29625  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
29626
29627  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
29628
29629  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (15)</a></li>
29630
29631  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (20)</a></li>
29632
29633  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
29634
29635  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (4)</a></li>
29636
29637  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
29638
29639  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
29640
29641  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
29642
29643  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
29644
29645  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (39)</a></li>
29646
29647  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (9)</a></li>
29648
29649  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (293)</a></li>
29650
29651  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (189)</a></li>
29652
29653  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (33)</a></li>
29654
29655  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
29656
29657  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (66)</a></li>
29658
29659  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (104)</a></li>
29660
29661  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (2)</a></li>
29662
29663  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
29664
29665  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
29666
29667  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
29668
29669  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
29670
29671  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
29672
29673  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (5)</a></li>
29674
29675  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
29676
29677  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (53)</a></li>
29678
29679  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
29680
29681  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
29682
29683  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (55)</a></li>
29684
29685  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (6)</a></li>
29686
29687  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (12)</a></li>
29688
29689  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (52)</a></li>
29690
29691  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (4)</a></li>
29692
29693  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
29694
29695  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
29696
29697  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (59)</a></li>
29698
29699  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
29700
29701  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (40)</a></li>
29702
29703 </ul>
29704
29705
29706     </div>
29707     <p style="text-align: right">
29708  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
29709 </p>
29710
29711   </body>
29712 </html>