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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/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          4th April 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
  32 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
  33 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
  34 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
  35 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
  36 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
  37 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
  38 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
  39 project pages.  You can also check out the
  40 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
  41 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
  42 and HTML version available in the
  43 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
  44 directory</a>.</p>
  45
  46 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
  47 you find any.</p>
  48
  49       </div>
  50       <div class="tags">
  51
  52
  53         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>.
  54
  55
  56       </div>
  57     </div>
  58     <div class="padding"></div>
  59
  60     <div class="entry">
  61       <div class="title">
  62         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
  63       </div>
  64       <div class="date">
  65          9th March 2015
  66       </div>
  67       <div class="body">
  68         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
  69 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
  70 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
  71 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
  72 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
  73 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
  74 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
  75 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
  76 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
  77 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
  78 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
  79 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
  80 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
  81 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
  82
  83 <p>The list of NUUG videos
  84 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
  85 include things like a
  86 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
  87 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
  88 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
  89 re-implementation</a>, the
  90 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
  91 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
  92 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
  93 video</A> and many others.</p>
  94
  95 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
  96 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
  97 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
  98 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
  99 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
 100 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
 101 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
 102 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
 103 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
 104 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
 105
 106 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
 107 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
 108 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
 109 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
 110 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
 111 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
 112 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
 113 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
 114 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
 115 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
 116
 117       </div>
 118       <div class="tags">
 119
 120
 121         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>.
 122
 123
 124       </div>
 125     </div>
 126     <div class="padding"></div>
 127
 128     <div class="entry">
 129       <div class="title">
 130         <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>
 131       </div>
 132       <div class="date">
 133         28th February 2015
 134       </div>
 135       <div class="body">
 136         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
 137 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
 138 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
 139 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
 140 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
 141 made for
 142 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
 143 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
 144 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
 145 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
 146 a friend have
 147 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
 148 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
 149 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
 150 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
 151 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
 152 it happen ourselves.
 153 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
 154 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
 155 is.</p>
 156
 157 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
 158 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
 159
 160       </div>
 161       <div class="tags">
 162
 163
 164         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>.
 165
 166
 167       </div>
 168     </div>
 169     <div class="padding"></div>
 170
 171     <div class="entry">
 172       <div class="title">
 173         <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>
 174       </div>
 175       <div class="date">
 176         25th February 2015
 177       </div>
 178       <div class="body">
 179         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
 180 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
 181 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
 182 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
 183 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
 184 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
 185 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
 186 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
 187 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
 188 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
 189 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
 190 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
 191 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
 192 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
 193 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
 194 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
 195 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
 196
 197 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
 198 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
 199 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
 200 with VLC.</p>
 201
 202 <ul>
 203   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
 204   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
 205 </ul>
 206
 207 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
 208 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
 209 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
 210 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
 211 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
 212 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
 213 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
 214
 215 <blockquote><pre>
 216 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
 217  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
 218  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
 219 </pre></blockquote>
 220
 221 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
 222 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
 223 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
 224 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
 225
 226       </div>
 227       <div class="tags">
 228
 229
 230         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>.
 231
 232
 233       </div>
 234     </div>
 235     <div class="padding"></div>
 236
 237     <div class="entry">
 238       <div class="title">
 239         <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>
 240       </div>
 241       <div class="date">
 242         10th February 2015
 243       </div>
 244       <div class="body">
 245         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
 246 that
 247 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
 248 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
 249 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
 250 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
 251 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
 252 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
 253 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
 254 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
 255 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
 256 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
 257 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
 258 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
 259 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
 260 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
 261 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
 262
 263 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
 264 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
 265 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
 266 controversy about these scanners.</p>
 267
 268 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
 269 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
 270 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
 271
 272       </div>
 273       <div class="tags">
 274
 275
 276         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>.
 277
 278
 279       </div>
 280     </div>
 281     <div class="padding"></div>
 282
 283     <div class="entry">
 284       <div class="title">
 285         <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>
 286       </div>
 287       <div class="date">
 288          8th February 2015
 289       </div>
 290       <div class="body">
 291         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
 292 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
 293 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
 294 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
 295 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
 296 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
 297 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
 298 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
 299 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
 300 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
 301 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
 302 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
 303
 304 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
 305 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
 306 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
 307 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
 308
 309 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
 310 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
 311 distribute the TV content.  The
 312 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
 313 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
 314 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
 315 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
 316 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
 317 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
 318 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
 319 following activity, we now have the schedule
 320 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
 321 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
 322 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
 323 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
 324
 325 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
 326 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
 327 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
 328 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
 329 streams are working as they should.</p>
 330
 331       </div>
 332       <div class="tags">
 333
 334
 335         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>.
 336
 337
 338       </div>
 339     </div>
 340     <div class="padding"></div>
 341
 342     <div class="entry">
 343       <div class="title">
 344         <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>
 345       </div>
 346       <div class="date">
 347         12th January 2015
 348       </div>
 349       <div class="body">
 350         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
 351 Foundation</a> announced a new video
 352 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
 353 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
 354 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
 355 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
 356 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
 357 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
 358
 359 <p>But today I was told that
 360 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
 361 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
 362 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
 363 available in
 364 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
 365 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
 366 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
 367
 368 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
 369 Libreplanet
 370 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
 371 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
 372
 373       </div>
 374       <div class="tags">
 375
 376
 377         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>.
 378
 379
 380       </div>
 381     </div>
 382     <div class="padding"></div>
 383
 384     <div class="entry">
 385       <div class="title">
 386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
 387       </div>
 388       <div class="date">
 389         30th December 2014
 390       </div>
 391       <div class="body">
 392         <p>I am very happy that we in the
 393 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
 394 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
 395 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
 396 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
 397 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
 398 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
 399 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
 400 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
 401 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
 402 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
 403
 404 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
 405 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
 406 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
 407 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
 408 reports in public.</p>
 409
 410       </div>
 411       <div class="tags">
 412
 413
 414         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>.
 415
 416
 417       </div>
 418     </div>
 419     <div class="padding"></div>
 420
 421     <div class="entry">
 422       <div class="title">
 423         <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>
 424       </div>
 425       <div class="date">
 426         19th December 2014
 427       </div>
 428       <div class="body">
 429         <p>So, Sony caved in
 430 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
 431 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
 432 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
 433 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
 434 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
 435 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
 436 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
 437 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
 438 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
 439 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
 440 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
 441 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
 442 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
 443
 444 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
 445 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
 446 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
 447 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
 448
 449 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
 450 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
 451 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
 452 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
 453 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
 454 income. :)</p>
 455
 456       </div>
 457       <div class="tags">
 458
 459
 460         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>.
 461
 462
 463       </div>
 464     </div>
 465     <div class="padding"></div>
 466
 467     <div class="entry">
 468       <div class="title">
 469         <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>
 470       </div>
 471       <div class="date">
 472         22nd November 2014
 473       </div>
 474       <div class="body">
 475         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
 476 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
 477 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
 478 courtesy of
 479 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
 480 Schubert</a> and
 481 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
 482 McVittie</a>.
 483
 484 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
 485 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
 486 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
 487 you upgrade:</p>
 488
 489 <p><blockquote><pre>
 490 Package: systemd-sysv
 491 Pin: release o=Debian
 492 Pin-Priority: -1
 493 </pre></blockquote><p>
 494
 495 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
 496 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
 497 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
 498 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
 499 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
 500
 501 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
 502 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
 503 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
 504 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
 505 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
 506 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
 507
 508 <p><blockquote><pre>
 509 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
 510 </pre></blockquote><p>
 511
 512 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
 513
 514 <p><blockquote><pre>
 515 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
 516 </pre></blockquote><p>
 517
 518 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
 519 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
 520
 521 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
 522 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
 523 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
 524 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
 525 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
 526 Jessie is released.</p>
 527
 528 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 529 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
 530 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
 531 line.</p>
 532
 533       </div>
 534       <div class="tags">
 535
 536
 537         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>.
 538
 539
 540       </div>
 541     </div>
 542     <div class="padding"></div>
 543
 544     <div class="entry">
 545       <div class="title">
 546         <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>
 547       </div>
 548       <div class="date">
 549         10th November 2014
 550       </div>
 551       <div class="body">
 552         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 553 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 554 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
 555
 556 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 557 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 558 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 559 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 560 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 561 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 562 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 563 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
 564 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
 565 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 566 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 567 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 568 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
 569 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
 570 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
 571
 572 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 573 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 574 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 575 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 576 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 577 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 578 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 579 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 580 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 581 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 582 were fairly easy, and
 583 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
 584 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
 585 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 586 useful approach.</p>
 587
 588 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 589 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
 590 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 591 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 592 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
 593 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 594 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 595 this:</p>
 596
 597 <p><blockquote><pre>
 598 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 599   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 600 </pre></blockquote></p>
 601
 602 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 603 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
 604
 605 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 606 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 607 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 608 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 609 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 610 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 611 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 612 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 613 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 614 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 615 system.</p>
 616
 617 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 618 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
 619 SMTorP. :)</p>
 620
 621       </div>
 622       <div class="tags">
 623
 624
 625         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>.
 626
 627
 628       </div>
 629     </div>
 630     <div class="padding"></div>
 631
 632     <div class="entry">
 633       <div class="title">
 634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
 635       </div>
 636       <div class="date">
 637         27th October 2014
 638       </div>
 639       <div class="body">
 640         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
 641 sent out
 642 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
 643 announcement</a>:</p>
 644
 645 <pre>
 646 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
 647 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
 648
 649 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
 650 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
 651 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
 652 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
 653 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
 654 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
 655 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
 656
 657 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 658 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 659 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
 660 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
 661 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
 662 of at least 5 characters!
 663
 664  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
 665
 666 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
 667 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
 668 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
 669 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
 670 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
 671
 672 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
 673 mostly in Germany and Norway.
 674
 675 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
 676 ===============================
 677
 678 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
 679 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 680 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
 681 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 682 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 683 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 684 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 685 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
 686 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 687 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 688 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 689 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
 690 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 691 environment.
 692
 693  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
 694  [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;
 695
 696 Full release notes and manual
 697 =============================
 698
 699 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
 700 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
 701 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
 702 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
 703 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
 704
 705  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
 706  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
 707
 708 Where to get it
 709 ---------------
 710
 711 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
 712
 713  * <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>
 714  * <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>
 715  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
 716
 717 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
 718
 719 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
 720 ===============================================================================
 721
 722
 723 Installation changes
 724 --------------------
 725
 726  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
 727
 728 Software updates
 729 ----------------
 730
 731 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
 732
 733  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
 734  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
 735    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
 736    choose one of the others see manual.)
 737  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
 738  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
 739  * GOsa 2.7.4
 740  * LTSP 5.5.4
 741  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 742  * new boot framework: systemd
 743  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
 744  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 745  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 746  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
 747  * golearn 0.9
 748  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 749  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 750  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
 751    installation.
 752  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
 753    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
 754
 755  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
 756  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
 757
 758 Fixed bugs
 759 ----------
 760
 761  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 762    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 763    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
 764  * and many others.
 765
 766 Documentation and translation updates
 767 -------------------------------------
 768
 769  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
 770    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
 771    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
 772
 773 Other changes
 774 -------------
 775
 776  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
 777    server takes more time.
 778  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
 779    doesn't work.
 780
 781 Regressions / known problems
 782 ----------------------------
 783
 784  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
 785    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
 786    and Debian bug #762103).
 787  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
 788    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
 789  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
 790    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
 791    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
 792
 793 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
 794
 795  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
 796
 797 How to report bugs
 798 ------------------
 799
 800 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
 801
 802 About Debian
 803 ============
 804
 805 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 806 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 807 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 808 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 809 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 810 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 811 operating system.
 812
 813 Contact Information
 814 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
 815 mail to press@debian.org.
 816
 817  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
 818 </pre>
 819
 820       </div>
 821       <div class="tags">
 822
 823
 824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 825
 826
 827       </div>
 828     </div>
 829     <div class="padding"></div>
 830
 831     <div class="entry">
 832       <div class="title">
 833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
 834       </div>
 835       <div class="date">
 836         23rd October 2014
 837       </div>
 838       <div class="body">
 839         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
 840 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
 841 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
 842 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
 843 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
 844 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
 845 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
 846 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
 847 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
 848 live.</p>
 849
 850 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
 851 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
 852 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
 853 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
 854 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
 855 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
 856 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
 857 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
 858
 859       </div>
 860       <div class="tags">
 861
 862
 863         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>.
 864
 865
 866       </div>
 867     </div>
 868     <div class="padding"></div>
 869
 870     <div class="entry">
 871       <div class="title">
 872         <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>
 873       </div>
 874       <div class="date">
 875         22nd October 2014
 876       </div>
 877       <div class="body">
 878         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 879 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 880 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 881 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 882 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 883 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 884 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 885 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
 886 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 887 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 888 lists I recently took over:</p>
 889
 890 <p><blockquote><pre>
 891 % time listadmin xiph
 892 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 893 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 894
 895 real    0m1.709s
 896 user    0m0.232s
 897 sys     0m0.012s
 898 %
 899 </pre></blockquote></p>
 900
 901 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 902 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 903 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 904 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 905 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 906 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 907 program.</p>
 908
 909 <p>If you install
 910 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
 911 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
 912 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
 913
 914 <p><blockquote><pre>
 915 username username@example.org
 916 spamlevel 23
 917 default discard
 918 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
 919
 920 password secret
 921 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 922 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 923
 924 password hidden
 925 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 926 </pre></blockquote></p>
 927
 928 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 929 learn the details.</p>
 930
 931 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 932 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 933 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 934 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
 935
 936 <p><blockquote><pre>
 937 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 938 </pre></blockquote></p>
 939
 940 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 941 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 942 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 943 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 944 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 945 email.</p>
 946
 947 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 948 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 949 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 950 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 951 software.</p>
 952
 953 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 954 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 955 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 956
 957 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
 958 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
 959 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 960 sure why.</p>
 961
 962       </div>
 963       <div class="tags">
 964
 965
 966         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>.
 967
 968
 969       </div>
 970     </div>
 971     <div class="padding"></div>
 972
 973     <div class="entry">
 974       <div class="title">
 975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 976       </div>
 977       <div class="date">
 978         17th October 2014
 979       </div>
 980       <div class="body">
 981         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 982 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 983 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 984 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 985 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
 986 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 987 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
 988
 989 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 990 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 991 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 992 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 993 of this story.)</p>
 994
 995 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 996 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 997 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 998 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 999 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1000 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1001 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1002 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1003 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1004 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1005
1006 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1007 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1008 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1009 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1010
1011 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1012 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1013
1014 <p><blockquote><pre>
1015 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1016 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1017 </pre></blockquote></p>
1018
1019 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1020 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1021 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1022 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1023 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1024 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1025 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1026 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1027
1028 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1029 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1030
1031 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1032 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1033 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1034 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1035 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1036
1037 <p><blockquote><pre>
1038 Task: isenkram-packages
1039 Section: hardware
1040 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1041  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1042  proposed.
1043 Test-new-install: show show
1044 Relevance: 8
1045 Packages: for-current-hardware
1046
1047 Task: isenkram-firmware
1048 Section: hardware
1049 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1050  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1051  packages are proposed.
1052 Test-new-install: mark show
1053 Relevance: 8
1054 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1055 </pre></blockquote></p>
1056
1057 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1058 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1059 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1060 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1061 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1062
1063 <p><blockquote><pre>
1064 #!/bin/sh
1065 #
1066 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1067 export PATH
1068 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1069 </pre></blockquote></p>
1070
1071 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1072 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1073
1074 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1075 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1076 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1077 install.</p>
1078
1079 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1080 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1081 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1082
1083       </div>
1084       <div class="tags">
1085
1086
1087         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>.
1088
1089
1090       </div>
1091     </div>
1092     <div class="padding"></div>
1093
1094     <div class="entry">
1095       <div class="title">
1096         <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>
1097       </div>
1098       <div class="date">
1099          4th October 2014
1100       </div>
1101       <div class="body">
1102         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1103 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1104 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1105 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1106
1107 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1108
1109 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1110 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1111 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1112
1113       </div>
1114       <div class="tags">
1115
1116
1117         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>.
1118
1119
1120       </div>
1121     </div>
1122     <div class="padding"></div>
1123
1124     <div class="entry">
1125       <div class="title">
1126         <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>
1127       </div>
1128       <div class="date">
1129          4th October 2014
1130       </div>
1131       <div class="body">
1132         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1133 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1134 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1135 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1136 Dibb.</p>
1137
1138 <p>I just wrapped up
1139 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1140 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1141 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1142 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1143 0.17.</p>
1144
1145 <ul>
1146
1147  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1148  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1149    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1150  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1151  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1152  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1153  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1154  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1155  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1156    the palette size is the same.</li>
1157  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1158  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1159  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1160  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1161    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1162
1163 </ul>
1164
1165 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1166 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1167 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1168
1169       </div>
1170       <div class="tags">
1171
1172
1173         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>.
1174
1175
1176       </div>
1177     </div>
1178     <div class="padding"></div>
1179
1180     <div class="entry">
1181       <div class="title">
1182         <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>
1183       </div>
1184       <div class="date">
1185         26th September 2014
1186       </div>
1187       <div class="body">
1188         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1189 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1190 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1191 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1192 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1193 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1194 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1195 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1196 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1197 future.  The
1198 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1199 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1200 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1201 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1202 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1203
1204 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1205 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1206 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1207 or rsync (use
1208 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1209 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1210 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1211 install with some tweaking.</p>
1212
1213 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1214 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1215
1216 <p><blockquote><pre>
1217 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1218 </pre></blockquote></p>
1219
1220 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1221 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1222 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1223 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1224
1225 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1226 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1227 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1228 your need.</p>
1229
1230 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1231 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1232 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1233 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1234 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1235 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1236 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1237 days.</p>
1238
1239 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1240 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1241 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1242 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1243 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1244 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1245 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1246 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1247 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1248
1249 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1250 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1251 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1252
1253       </div>
1254       <div class="tags">
1255
1256
1257         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>.
1258
1259
1260       </div>
1261     </div>
1262     <div class="padding"></div>
1263
1264     <div class="entry">
1265       <div class="title">
1266         <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>
1267       </div>
1268       <div class="date">
1269         25th September 2014
1270       </div>
1271       <div class="body">
1272         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1273 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1274 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1275 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1276 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1277 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1278 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1279 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1280 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1281 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1282 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1283 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1284 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1285
1286 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1287 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1288 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1289 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1290 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1291 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1292 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1293 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1294 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1295 list</a>. :)</p>
1296
1297       </div>
1298       <div class="tags">
1299
1300
1301         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>.
1302
1303
1304       </div>
1305     </div>
1306     <div class="padding"></div>
1307
1308     <div class="entry">
1309       <div class="title">
1310         <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>
1311       </div>
1312       <div class="date">
1313         16th September 2014
1314       </div>
1315       <div class="body">
1316         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1317 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1318 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1319 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1320 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1321 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1322 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1323 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1324 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1325 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1326 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1327 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1328 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1329 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1330
1331 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1332 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1333 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1334 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1335 depend on the small and clever package
1336 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1337 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1338 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1339 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1340 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1341 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1342 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1343 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1344 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1345 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1346 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1347
1348 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1349 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1350 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1351 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1352 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1353 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1354 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1355 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1356 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1357 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1358 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1359 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1360 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1361 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1362 dialog.</p>
1363
1364 <p><table>
1365
1366 <tr>
1367 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1368 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1369 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1370 <th>Reduction</th>
1371 </tr>
1372
1373 <tr>
1374 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1375 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1376 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1377 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1378 </tr>
1379
1380 <tr>
1381 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1382 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1383 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1384 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1385 </tr>
1386
1387 <tr>
1388 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1389 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1390 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1391 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1392 </tr>
1393
1394 <tr>
1395 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1396 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1397 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1398 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1399 </tr>
1400
1401 <tr>
1402 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1403 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1404 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1405 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1406 </tr>
1407
1408 </table></p>
1409
1410 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1411 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1412 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1413 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1414 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1415 installed.</p>
1416
1417 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1418 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1419 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1420 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1421 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1422 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1423 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1424 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1425 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1426 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1427 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1428 for the entire installation.</p>
1429
1430 <p>I've implemented this in the
1431 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1432 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1433 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1434 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1435 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1436
1437 <p><blockquote><pre>
1438 #!/bin/sh
1439 set -e
1440 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1441 info() {
1442     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1443 }
1444 error() {
1445     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1446 }
1447 override_install() {
1448     apt-install eatmydata || true
1449     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1450         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1451             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1452             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1453             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1454                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1455                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1456                     > /target$file.edu
1457                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1458                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1459                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1460                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1461             else
1462                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1463             fi
1464         done
1465     else
1466         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1467     fi
1468 }
1469
1470 override_install
1471 </pre></blockquote></p>
1472
1473 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1474 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1475
1476 <p><blockquote><pre>
1477 #! /bin/sh -e
1478 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1479 error() {
1480     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1481 }
1482 remove_install_override() {
1483     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1484         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1485         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1486             rm /target$file
1487             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1488                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1489             rm /target$file.edu
1490         else
1491             error "Missing divert for $file."
1492         fi
1493     done
1494     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1495 }
1496
1497 remove_install_override
1498 </pre></blockquote></p>
1499
1500 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1501 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1502 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1503
1504 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1505 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1506 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1507 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1508 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1509 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1510 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1511 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1512 everyone.</p>
1513
1514 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1515 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1516 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1517 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1518
1519 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1520 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1521 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1522 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1523 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1524
1525 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1526 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1527 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1528 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1529 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1530
1531       </div>
1532       <div class="tags">
1533
1534
1535         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>.
1536
1537
1538       </div>
1539     </div>
1540     <div class="padding"></div>
1541
1542     <div class="entry">
1543       <div class="title">
1544         <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>
1545       </div>
1546       <div class="date">
1547         10th September 2014
1548       </div>
1549       <div class="body">
1550         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1551 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1552 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1553 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1554 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1555 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1556 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1557 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1558 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1559 those problems are gone now.</p>
1560
1561 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1562 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1563 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1564 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1565 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1566
1567 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1568 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1569 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1570
1571 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1572 line:</p>
1573
1574 <p><blockquote><pre>
1575 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1576 </pre></blockquote></p>
1577
1578 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1579 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1580 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1581 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1582
1583 <p><blockquote><pre>
1584 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1585 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1586 %
1587 </pre></blockquote></p>
1588
1589 <p>Now if only
1590 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1591 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1592 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1593 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1594 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1595 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1596 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1597 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1598 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1599
1600       </div>
1601       <div class="tags">
1602
1603
1604         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>.
1605
1606
1607       </div>
1608     </div>
1609     <div class="padding"></div>
1610
1611     <div class="entry">
1612       <div class="title">
1613         <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>
1614       </div>
1615       <div class="date">
1616         25th August 2014
1617       </div>
1618       <div class="body">
1619         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
1620 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
1621 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
1622 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
1623 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
1624 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
1625 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
1626 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
1627 am not sure.
1628 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
1629 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
1630 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
1631 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
1632 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
1633 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
1634 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
1635 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
1636 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
1637 licenses are.</p>
1638
1639 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
1640 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
1641 end user</a>
1642 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
1643 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
1644
1645 <p><blockquote>
1646 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
1647 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
1648
1649 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
1650 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
1651 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
1652 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
1653 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
1654 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
1655 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
1656 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
1657 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
1658 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
1659 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
1660 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
1661 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
1662 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
1663 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
1664 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
1665 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
1666 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
1667
1668 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
1669 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
1670
1671 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
1672 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
1673 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
1674 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
1675 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
1676 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
1677 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
1678 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
1679 </blockquote></p>
1680
1681 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
1682 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
1683
1684 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
1685 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
1686
1687 <p><blockquote>
1688
1689 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
1690 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
1691 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
1692 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
1693 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
1694 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
1695 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
1696 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
1697 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
1698 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
1699 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
1700 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
1701
1702 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
1703 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
1704 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
1705 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
1706 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
1707 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
1708 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
1709 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
1710 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
1711 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
1712 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
1713 additional details.</p>
1714
1715 </blockquote></p>
1716
1717 <p>Some free software like
1718 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
1719 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
1720 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
1721 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
1722
1723       </div>
1724       <div class="tags">
1725
1726
1727         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/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>.
1728
1729
1730       </div>
1731     </div>
1732     <div class="padding"></div>
1733
1734     <div class="entry">
1735       <div class="title">
1736         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
1737       </div>
1738       <div class="date">
1739         31st July 2014
1740       </div>
1741       <div class="body">
1742         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
1743 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1744 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
1745 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
1746 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
1747 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
1748
1749 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1750
1751 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
1752 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
1753 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
1754 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
1755 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
1756 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
1757 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
1758 works with Windows . :-(</p>
1759
1760 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
1761 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
1762 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
1763 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
1764 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
1765 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
1766
1767 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1768 project?</strong></p>
1769
1770 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
1771 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
1772 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
1773 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
1774 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
1775 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
1776 with this job.</p>
1777
1778 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1779 Edu?</strong></p>
1780
1781 <p>The independence.</p>
1782
1783 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
1784 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
1785 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
1786
1787 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
1788 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
1789 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
1790 working reliable. </p>
1791
1792 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
1793 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
1794 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
1795 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
1796 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
1797 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
1798 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
1799 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
1800
1801 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1802 Edu?</strong></p>
1803
1804 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
1805 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
1806 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
1807
1808 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1809
1810 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
1811 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
1812
1813 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1814 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1815
1816 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
1817 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
1818 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
1819 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
1820 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
1821 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
1822 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
1823
1824       </div>
1825       <div class="tags">
1826
1827
1828         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
1829
1830
1831       </div>
1832     </div>
1833     <div class="padding"></div>
1834
1835     <div class="entry">
1836       <div class="title">
1837         <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>
1838       </div>
1839       <div class="date">
1840         23rd July 2014
1841       </div>
1842       <div class="body">
1843         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
1844 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1845 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1846 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
1847 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
1848 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
1849 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
1850 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
1851 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
1852 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
1853 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
1854 the translation show this very well:</p>
1855
1856 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
1857
1858 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
1859 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1860 project pages and the
1861 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1862 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1863 and HTML version available in the
1864 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1865 directory</a>.</p>
1866
1867 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1868 you find any.</p>
1869
1870       </div>
1871       <div class="tags">
1872
1873
1874         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>.
1875
1876
1877       </div>
1878     </div>
1879     <div class="padding"></div>
1880
1881     <div class="entry">
1882       <div class="title">
1883         <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>
1884       </div>
1885       <div class="date">
1886         17th June 2014
1887       </div>
1888       <div class="body">
1889         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1890 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1891 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1892 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1893 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1894
1895 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1896 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1897 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1898 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1899 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1900 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1901 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1902 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1903 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1904 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1905 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1906 goals.</p>
1907
1908 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1909 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1910 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1911 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1912 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1913 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1914 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1915 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1916 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1917 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1918 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1919 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1920 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1921 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1922 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1923 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1924 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1925 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1926 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1927 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1928 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1929 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1930 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1931 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1932
1933 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1934 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1935 track the English original.  For this we use the
1936 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1937 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1938 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1939 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1940 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1941 files), which the translations update with the native language
1942 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1943 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1944 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1945 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1946 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1947 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1948 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1949 of the documentation.</p>
1950
1951 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1952 recommend using
1953 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1954 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1955 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1956 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1957 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1958 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1959 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1960 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1961
1962 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1963 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1964 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1965 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1966 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1967 translated images by storing translated versions in
1968 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1969 package maintainers know more.</p>
1970
1971 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1972 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1973 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1974 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1975 PDF version</a> or the
1976 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1977 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1978 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1979
1980 <p>To learn more, check out
1981 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1982 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1983 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1984 manual on the wiki</a> and
1985 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1986 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1987
1988       </div>
1989       <div class="tags">
1990
1991
1992         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>.
1993
1994
1995       </div>
1996     </div>
1997     <div class="padding"></div>
1998
1999     <div class="entry">
2000       <div class="title">
2001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
2002       </div>
2003       <div class="date">
2004         29th May 2014
2005       </div>
2006       <div class="body">
2007         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
2008 in my car, connected to
2009 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
2010 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
2011 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
2012 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
2013 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
2014 such car computer.</p>
2015
2016 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
2017
2018 <ul>
2019
2020  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
2021
2022  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
2023    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
2024    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
2025    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
2026    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
2027
2028  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
2029    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
2030    route.</li>
2031
2032  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
2033
2034  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
2035    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
2036    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
2037    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
2038    connection do not work.</li>
2039
2040  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
2041    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
2042
2043  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
2044    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
2045
2046  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
2047    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
2048
2049 </ul>
2050
2051 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
2052 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
2053
2054       </div>
2055       <div class="tags">
2056
2057
2058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2059
2060
2061       </div>
2062     </div>
2063     <div class="padding"></div>
2064
2065     <div class="entry">
2066       <div class="title">
2067         <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>
2068       </div>
2069       <div class="date">
2070         29th April 2014
2071       </div>
2072       <div class="body">
2073         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
2074 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
2075 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
2076 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
2077 newer AVM2 format - see
2078 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
2079 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
2080 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
2081 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
2082 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
2083 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
2084 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
2085 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
2086 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
2087 sites do not work yet.</p>
2088
2089 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
2090 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
2091 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
2092 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
2093 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
2094 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
2095 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
2096 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
2097 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
2098 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
2099 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
2100
2101 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
2102 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
2103 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
2104 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
2105 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
2106 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
2107 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
2108
2109 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
2110 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
2111 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
2112 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
2113 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
2114
2115       </div>
2116       <div class="tags">
2117
2118
2119         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>.
2120
2121
2122       </div>
2123     </div>
2124     <div class="padding"></div>
2125
2126     <div class="entry">
2127       <div class="title">
2128         <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>
2129       </div>
2130       <div class="date">
2131         23rd April 2014
2132       </div>
2133       <div class="body">
2134         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2135 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2136 So I implemented one, using
2137 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2138 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2139 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2140 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2141 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2142 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2143
2144 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2145 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2146 packages to install.  The first part is in
2147 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2148 this:</p>
2149
2150 <p><blockquote><pre>
2151 Task: isenkram
2152 Section: hardware
2153 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2154  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2155  proposed.
2156 Test-new-install: mark show
2157 Relevance: 8
2158 Packages: for-current-hardware
2159 </pre></blockquote></p>
2160
2161 <p>The second part is in
2162 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2163 this:</p>
2164
2165 <p><blockquote><pre>
2166 #!/bin/sh
2167 #
2168 (
2169     isenkram-lookup
2170     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2171 ) | sort -u
2172 </pre></blockquote></p>
2173
2174 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2175 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2176 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2177 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2178 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2179 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2180
2181 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2182 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2183 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2184 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2185 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2186 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2187 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2188 the python-apt code (bug
2189 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2190 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2191 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2192 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2193 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2194 unstable today.</p>
2195
2196 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2197 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2198 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2199 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2200 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2201 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2202 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2203 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2204 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2205
2206 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2207 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2208 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2209 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2210 package.  See also
2211 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2212 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2213 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2214 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2215
2216       </div>
2217       <div class="tags">
2218
2219
2220         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>.
2221
2222
2223       </div>
2224     </div>
2225     <div class="padding"></div>
2226
2227     <div class="entry">
2228       <div class="title">
2229         <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>
2230       </div>
2231       <div class="date">
2232         15th April 2014
2233       </div>
2234       <div class="body">
2235         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2236 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2237 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2238 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2239 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2240 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2241
2242 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2243 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2244 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2245 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2246 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2247 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2248 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2249
2250 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2251 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2252 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2253 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2254 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2255 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2256 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2257 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2258 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2259 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2260 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2261 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2262
2263 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2264 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2265 become root:</p>
2266
2267 <p><pre>
2268 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2269   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2270   u-boot-tools
2271 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2272   freedom-maker
2273 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2274 </pre></p>
2275
2276 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2277 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2278 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2279 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2280 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2281 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2282 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2283 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2284
2285 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2286 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2287 the preseed values:</p>
2288
2289 <p><pre>
2290 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2291 </pre></p>
2292
2293 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2294 it still work.</p>
2295
2296 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2297 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2298 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2299 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2300 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2301 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2302 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2303
2304 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2305 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2306 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2307 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2308 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2309 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2310
2311       </div>
2312       <div class="tags">
2313
2314
2315         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>.
2316
2317
2318       </div>
2319     </div>
2320     <div class="padding"></div>
2321
2322     <div class="entry">
2323       <div class="title">
2324         <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>
2325       </div>
2326       <div class="date">
2327          9th April 2014
2328       </div>
2329       <div class="body">
2330         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2331 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2332 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2333 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2334 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2335 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2336 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2337 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2338 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2339 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2340 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2341 have looked at a system called
2342 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2343 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2344
2345 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2346 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2347 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2348 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2349 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2350 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2351 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2352 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2353 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2354 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2355 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2356 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2357 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2358
2359 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2360 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2361 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2362 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2363 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2364 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2365 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2366 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2367 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2368 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2369 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2370 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2371 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2372 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2373 account.</p>
2374
2375 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2376 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2377 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2378 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2379 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2380 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2381 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2382
2383 <p><blockquote><pre>
2384 [s3c]
2385 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2386 backend-login: API-login
2387 backend-password: API-password
2388 fs-passphrase: local-password
2389 </pre></blockquote></p>
2390
2391 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2392 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2393 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2394 details and password to create it:</p>
2395
2396 <p><blockquote><pre>
2397 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2398 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2399   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2400 Enter backend login:
2401 Enter backend password:
2402 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2403 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2404 Enter encryption password:
2405 Confirm encryption password:
2406 Generating random encryption key...
2407 Creating metadata tables...
2408 Dumping metadata...
2409 ..objects..
2410 ..blocks..
2411 ..inodes..
2412 ..inode_blocks..
2413 ..symlink_targets..
2414 ..names..
2415 ..contents..
2416 ..ext_attributes..
2417 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2418 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2419 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2420
2421 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2422
2423 <p><blockquote><pre>
2424 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2425   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2426 Using 4 upload threads.
2427 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2428 Reading metadata...
2429 ..objects..
2430 ..blocks..
2431 ..inodes..
2432 ..inode_blocks..
2433 ..symlink_targets..
2434 ..names..
2435 ..contents..
2436 ..ext_attributes..
2437 Mounting filesystem...
2438 # df -h /s3ql
2439 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2440 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2441 #
2442 </pre></blockquote></p>
2443
2444 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2445 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2446 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2447 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2448 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2449 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2450
2451 <p><blockquote><pre>
2452 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2453 #
2454 </pre></blockquote></p>
2455
2456 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2457 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2458 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2459 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2460 file system:</p>
2461
2462 <p><blockquote><pre>
2463 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2464 Using cached metadata.
2465 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2466 Checking DB integrity...
2467 Creating temporary extra indices...
2468 Checking lost+found...
2469 Checking cached objects...
2470 Checking names (refcounts)...
2471 Checking contents (names)...
2472 Checking contents (inodes)...
2473 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2474 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2475 Checking objects (backend)...
2476 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2477 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2478 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2479 Checking objects (sizes)...
2480 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2481 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2482 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2483 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2484 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2485 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2486 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2487 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2488 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2489 Checking directory reachability...
2490 Checking unix conventions...
2491 Checking referential integrity...
2492 Dropping temporary indices...
2493 Backing up old metadata...
2494 Dumping metadata...
2495 ..objects..
2496 ..blocks..
2497 ..inodes..
2498 ..inode_blocks..
2499 ..symlink_targets..
2500 ..names..
2501 ..contents..
2502 ..ext_attributes..
2503 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2504 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2505 #
2506 </pre></blockquote></p>
2507
2508 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2509 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2510 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2511 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2512 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2513 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2514 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2515 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2516 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2517 working set.</p>
2518
2519 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2520 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2521 busy:</p>
2522
2523 <p><blockquote><pre>
2524 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2525   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2526 Using 8 upload threads.
2527 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2528 #
2529 </pre></blockquote></p>
2530
2531 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2532 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2533 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2534 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2535 s3qlctrl:
2536
2537 <p><blockquote><pre>
2538 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2539 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2540 #
2541 </pre></blockquote></p>
2542
2543 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2544 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2545 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2546 a report:</p>
2547
2548 <p><blockquote><pre>
2549 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2550 Directory entries:    9141
2551 Inodes:               9143
2552 Data blocks:          8851
2553 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2554 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2555 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2556 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2557 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2558 #
2559 </pre></blockquote></p>
2560
2561 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2562 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2563 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2564 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2565 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2566 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2567 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2568 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2569 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2570 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2571 best.</p>
2572
2573 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2574 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2575 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2576 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2577 poster is titled
2578 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2579 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2580 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2581 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2582 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2583
2584 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2585 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2586 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2587 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2588 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2589 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2590 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2591 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2592
2593 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2594 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2595 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2596 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2597 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2598 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2599 only read from it.</p>
2600
2601 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2602 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2603 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2604
2605       </div>
2606       <div class="tags">
2607
2608
2609         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>.
2610
2611
2612       </div>
2613     </div>
2614     <div class="padding"></div>
2615
2616     <div class="entry">
2617       <div class="title">
2618         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
2619       </div>
2620       <div class="date">
2621          1st April 2014
2622       </div>
2623       <div class="body">
2624         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
2625 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
2626 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
2627 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
2628 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
2629 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
2630 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
2631 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
2632 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
2633 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
2634 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
2635 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
2636 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
2637
2638 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
2639 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
2640 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
2641 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
2642 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
2643 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
2644 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
2645 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
2646 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
2647 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
2648 Linux.</p>
2649
2650 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
2651 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
2652 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
2653 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
2654 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
2655 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
2656 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
2657 Windows before metro).</p>
2658
2659 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
2660 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
2661 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
2662 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
2663 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
2664 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
2665 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
2666 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
2667 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
2668 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
2669 old Windows binaries, check it out by
2670 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
2671 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
2672 image.</p>
2673
2674       </div>
2675       <div class="tags">
2676
2677
2678         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
2679
2680
2681       </div>
2682     </div>
2683     <div class="padding"></div>
2684
2685     <div class="entry">
2686       <div class="title">
2687         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
2688       </div>
2689       <div class="date">
2690         30th March 2014
2691       </div>
2692       <div class="body">
2693         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2694 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
2695 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
2696 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
2697 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
2698
2699 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2700
2701 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
2702 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
2703 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
2704 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
2705 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
2706
2707 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
2708 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
2709 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
2710
2711 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
2712 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
2713 hunger.</p>
2714
2715 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2716 project?</strong></p>
2717
2718 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
2719 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
2720 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
2721 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
2722 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
2723 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
2724 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
2725 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
2726 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
2727 running.  I just loved it.</p>
2728
2729 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2730 Edu?</strong></p>
2731
2732 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
2733 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
2734 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
2735 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
2736 be made of steel.</p>
2737
2738 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2739 Edu?</strong></p>
2740
2741 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
2742
2743 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
2744 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
2745 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
2746 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
2747 or dropped.</p>
2748
2749 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
2750 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
2751 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
2752 discourage many people too.</p>
2753
2754 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2755
2756 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
2757 Virtualbox.</p>
2758
2759
2760 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2761 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2762
2763 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
2764 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
2765 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
2766 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
2767 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
2768 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
2769 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
2770 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
2771 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
2772
2773       </div>
2774       <div class="tags">
2775
2776
2777         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
2778
2779
2780       </div>
2781     </div>
2782     <div class="padding"></div>
2783
2784     <div class="entry">
2785       <div class="title">
2786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
2787       </div>
2788       <div class="date">
2789         25th March 2014
2790       </div>
2791       <div class="body">
2792         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
2793 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
2794 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
2795 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
2796 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
2797 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
2798 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
2799 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
2800 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
2801
2802 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
2803 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
2804 looked a given way.  Such
2805 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
2806 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
2807 called a
2808 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
2809 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
2810 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
2811 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
2812 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
2813 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
2814 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
2815 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
2816 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
2817 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
2818 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
2819 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
2820 There are several commercial services around providing such
2821 timestamping.  A quick search for
2822 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
2823 service</a>" pointed me to at least
2824 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
2825 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
2826 Vadis</a>,
2827 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
2828 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
2829 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
2830 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
2831
2832 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
2833 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
2834 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
2835 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
2836 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
2837 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
2838 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
2839 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
2840 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
2841 Greifswald.</p>
2842
2843 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
2844 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
2845 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
2846 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
2847 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
2848
2849 <p><blockquote><pre>
2850 #!/bin/sh
2851 set -e
2852 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
2853 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
2854 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
2855 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
2856 cafile=chain.txt
2857 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
2858     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
2859 fi
2860 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
2861     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
2862 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
2863 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
2864 base64 < "$resfile"
2865 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
2866 </pre></blockquote></p>
2867
2868 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
2869 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
2870 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
2871 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
2872 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
2873 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
2874 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
2875 changed.</p>
2876
2877 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
2878 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
2879 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
2880 to set up?</p>
2881
2882       </div>
2883       <div class="tags">
2884
2885
2886         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>.
2887
2888
2889       </div>
2890     </div>
2891     <div class="padding"></div>
2892
2893     <div class="entry">
2894       <div class="title">
2895         <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>
2896       </div>
2897       <div class="date">
2898         21st March 2014
2899       </div>
2900       <div class="body">
2901         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
2902 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
2903 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
2904 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
2905 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
2906 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
2907 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
2908
2909 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
2910 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
2911 tried using
2912 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
2913 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
2914 and program
2915 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
2916 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
2917 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
2918 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
2919 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
2920 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
2921 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
2922 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
2923 this method.</p>
2924
2925 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
2926 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
2927 problem is
2928 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
2929 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
2930 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
2931 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
2932 DVD structures, as the python library
2933 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
2934 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
2935 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
2936 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
2937 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
2938 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
2939
2940 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
2941 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
2942
2943       </div>
2944       <div class="tags">
2945
2946
2947         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2948
2949
2950       </div>
2951     </div>
2952     <div class="padding"></div>
2953
2954     <div class="entry">
2955       <div class="title">
2956         <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>
2957       </div>
2958       <div class="date">
2959         14th March 2014
2960       </div>
2961       <div class="body">
2962         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2963 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2964 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2965 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2966 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2967 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2968 release (0.2).</p>
2969
2970 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2971 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2972 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2973 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2974 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2975 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2976 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2977 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2978 and build using
2979 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2980 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2981
2982 <pre>
2983 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2984   freedom-maker
2985 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2986   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2987   u-boot-tools
2988 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2989 </pre>
2990
2991 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2992 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2993 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2994 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2995 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2996 kpartx call.</p>
2997
2998 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2999 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3000 the preseed values:</p>
3001
3002 <pre>
3003 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3004 </pre>
3005
3006 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
3007 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
3008 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
3009 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
3010 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
3011 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
3012
3013 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3014 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3015 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3016 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3017 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3018 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3019
3020       </div>
3021       <div class="tags">
3022
3023
3024         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>.
3025
3026
3027       </div>
3028     </div>
3029     <div class="padding"></div>
3030
3031     <div class="entry">
3032       <div class="title">
3033         <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>
3034       </div>
3035       <div class="date">
3036         12th March 2014
3037       </div>
3038       <div class="body">
3039         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
3040 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
3041 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
3042 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
3043 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
3044 document this better when one of the customers of
3045 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
3046 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
3047 get this working are the following:</p>
3048
3049 <p><ol>
3050
3051 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
3052 example host here.</li>
3053
3054 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
3055 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
3056
3057 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
3058 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
3059
3060 </ol></p>
3061
3062 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
3063 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
3064 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
3065 started).</p>
3066
3067 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
3068 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
3069
3070 <p><blockquote><pre>
3071 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
3072 Export list for nas-server:
3073 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
3074 root@tjener:~#
3075 </pre></blockquote></p>
3076
3077 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
3078 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
3079 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
3080 NFS access.</p>
3081
3082 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
3083 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
3084 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
3085
3086 <p><blockquote><pre>
3087 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3088 </pre></blockquote></p>
3089
3090 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
3091 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
3092 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
3093 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
3094
3095 <p><blockquote><pre>
3096 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3097 objectClass: automount
3098 cn: nas-server
3099 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3100
3101 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3102 objectClass: top
3103 objectClass: automountMap
3104 ou: auto.nas-server
3105
3106 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3107 objectClass: automount
3108 cn: /
3109 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
3110 </pre></blockquote></p>
3111
3112 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
3113 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
3114 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
3115
3116 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
3117 the storage server directly by just visiting the
3118 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
3119 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
3120
3121       </div>
3122       <div class="tags">
3123
3124
3125         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3126
3127
3128       </div>
3129     </div>
3130     <div class="padding"></div>
3131
3132     <div class="entry">
3133       <div class="title">
3134         <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>
3135       </div>
3136       <div class="date">
3137         22nd February 2014
3138       </div>
3139       <div class="body">
3140         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
3141 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
3142 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
3143 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
3144 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
3145 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
3146 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
3147 proper home since then.</p>
3148
3149 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
3150 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
3151 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
3152 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
3153 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
3154
3155 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
3156 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
3157 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
3158 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
3159 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
3160 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
3161 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
3162 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
3163 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
3164
3165       </div>
3166       <div class="tags">
3167
3168
3169         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3170
3171
3172       </div>
3173     </div>
3174     <div class="padding"></div>
3175
3176     <div class="entry">
3177       <div class="title">
3178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
3179       </div>
3180       <div class="date">
3181          3rd February 2014
3182       </div>
3183       <div class="body">
3184         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
3185 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
3186 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
3187 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
3188 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
3189 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
3190 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
3191 <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>,
3192 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
3193
3194 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
3195 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
3196 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
3197 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
3198 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
3199 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
3200
3201 <p><blockquote><pre>
3202 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
3203 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
3204 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
3205 dhclient /dev/eth0
3206 </pre></blockquote></p>
3207
3208 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
3209 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
3210 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
3211
3212 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
3213 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
3214 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
3215 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
3216 side.</p>
3217
3218 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
3219 stuff:</p>
3220
3221 <p><blockquote><pre>
3222 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3223 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
3224 EOF
3225 apt-get update
3226 apt-get dist-upgrade
3227 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
3228     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
3229 update-alternatives --config runsystem
3230 </pre></blockquote></p>
3231
3232 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
3233 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
3234 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
3235 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
3236 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
3237 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
3238 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
3239 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
3240 ssh instead.
3241
3242 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
3243 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
3244 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
3245 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
3246 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
3247 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
3248
3249 <p><blockquote><pre>
3250 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3251 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
3252 EOF
3253 </pre></blockquote></p>
3254
3255 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
3256 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
3257 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
3258 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
3259
3260 <p><blockquote><pre>
3261 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
3262 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
3263 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
3264 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
3265 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
3266 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
3267 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
3268 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
3269 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
3270 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
3271 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
3272 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
3273 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
3274 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
3275 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
3276 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
3277 #
3278 </pre></blockquote></p>
3279
3280 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
3281 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
3282 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
3283 command line stuff.<p>
3284
3285       </div>
3286       <div class="tags">
3287
3288
3289         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>.
3290
3291
3292       </div>
3293     </div>
3294     <div class="padding"></div>
3295
3296     <div class="entry">
3297       <div class="title">
3298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
3299       </div>
3300       <div class="date">
3301         29th January 2014
3302       </div>
3303       <div class="body">
3304         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
3305 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
3306 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
3307 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
3308 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
3309 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
3310 investigated in
3311 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
3312 from December 2013, in the article
3313 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
3314 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
3315 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
3316 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
3317 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
3318 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
3319 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
3320 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
3321
3322 <p><blockquote>
3323 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
3324 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
3325 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
3326 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
3327 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
3328 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
3329 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
3330 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
3331 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
3332 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
3333 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
3334 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
3335
3336 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
3337 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
3338 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
3339 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
3340 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
3341 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
3342 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
3343 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
3344 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
3345 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
3346 </blockquote><p>
3347
3348 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
3349 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
3350 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
3351 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
3352 summarized like this:</p>
3353
3354 <p><blockquote>
3355 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
3356 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
3357 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
3358 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
3359 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
3360 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
3361 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
3362 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
3363 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
3364 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
3365 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
3366 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
3367 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
3368 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
3369 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
3370 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
3371 </blockquote></p>
3372
3373 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
3374 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
3375 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
3376 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
3377
3378 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3379 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3380 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3381
3382       </div>
3383       <div class="tags">
3384
3385
3386         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>.
3387
3388
3389       </div>
3390     </div>
3391     <div class="padding"></div>
3392
3393     <div class="entry">
3394       <div class="title">
3395         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
3396       </div>
3397       <div class="date">
3398         14th January 2014
3399       </div>
3400       <div class="body">
3401         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
3402 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
3403 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
3404 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
3405 the source.  The company behind it provide
3406 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
3407 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
3408 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
3409 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
3410 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
3411 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
3412 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
3413 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
3414 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
3415 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
3416 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
3417 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
3418 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
3419 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
3420 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
3421 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
3422 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
3423 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
3424 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
3425
3426 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
3427
3428 <ul>
3429
3430   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
3431   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
3432   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
3433
3434 </ul>
3435
3436 <p>You can
3437 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3438 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3439 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3440 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3441 include a test suite check.</p>
3442
3443       </div>
3444       <div class="tags">
3445
3446
3447         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>.
3448
3449
3450       </div>
3451     </div>
3452     <div class="padding"></div>
3453
3454     <div class="entry">
3455       <div class="title">
3456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
3457       </div>
3458       <div class="date">
3459         25th December 2013
3460       </div>
3461       <div class="body">
3462         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3463 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
3464 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
3465 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
3466 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
3467 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
3468 George</a>.</p>
3469
3470 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
3471
3472 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3473
3474 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
3475 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
3476 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
3477 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
3478 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
3479 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
3480
3481 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
3482 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
3483 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
3484 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
3485 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
3486 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
3487 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
3488 to help building another school's informational education concept from
3489 scratch.</p>
3490
3491 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
3492 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
3493 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
3494
3495 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
3496 and cycling.</p>
3497
3498 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3499 project?</strong></p>
3500
3501 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
3502 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
3503 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
3504 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
3505 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
3506 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
3507
3508 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
3509 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
3510 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
3511 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
3512 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
3513 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
3514 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
3515 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
3516 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
3517
3518 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
3519 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
3520 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
3521 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
3522
3523 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3524 Edu?</strong></p>
3525
3526 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
3527 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
3528 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
3529 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
3530 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
3531 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
3532 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
3533 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
3534 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
3535 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
3536 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
3537 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
3538 that it rocks!</p>
3539
3540 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
3541 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
3542 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
3543 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
3544 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
3545 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
3546 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
3547
3548 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3549 Edu?</strong></p>
3550
3551 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
3552 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
3553 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
3554 can list a few points about that:</p>
3555
3556 <ul>
3557
3558  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
3559  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
3560  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
3561
3562 </ul>
3563
3564 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
3565
3566 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3567
3568 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
3569 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
3570 year.</p>
3571
3572 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
3573 run text tools. I use
3574 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
3575 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
3576 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
3577 based full-featured student management software with the two),
3578 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
3579 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
3580 coloured world called the WWW, I use
3581 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
3582 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
3583 e-mail.</p>
3584
3585 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
3586 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
3587 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
3588 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
3589 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
3590 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
3591 Facebook now ;).</p>
3592
3593 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3594 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3595
3596 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
3597 side is what I have experienced.</p>
3598
3599 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
3600 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
3601 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
3602 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
3603 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
3604 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
3605 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
3606 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
3607 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
3608 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
3609 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
3610 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
3611 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
3612 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
3613 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
3614 plain criminal.</p>
3615
3616 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
3617 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
3618 founded an association named
3619 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
3620 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
3621 area of free and open source software, for example the
3622 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
3623 Teckids and are the youth programme of
3624 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
3625 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
3626 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
3627 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
3628 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
3629 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
3630
3631 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
3632 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
3633 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
3634 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
3635 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
3636 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
3637 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
3638 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
3639 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
3640 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
3641 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
3642 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
3643
3644 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
3645 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
3646 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
3647 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
3648
3649 <!--
3650
3651 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
3652
3653 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
3654 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
3655
3656  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
3657    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
3658    of the decision makers above;
3659  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
3660    knowledge about free software
3661
3662 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
3663
3664 -->
3665
3666       </div>
3667       <div class="tags">
3668
3669
3670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3671
3672
3673       </div>
3674     </div>
3675     <div class="padding"></div>
3676
3677     <div class="entry">
3678       <div class="title">
3679         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
3680       </div>
3681       <div class="date">
3682          6th December 2013
3683       </div>
3684       <div class="body">
3685         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
3686 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3687 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
3688 had a new school administrator show up on
3689 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
3690 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
3691 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
3692 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
3693 Germany a few years ago.</p>
3694
3695 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3696
3697 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
3698 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
3699 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
3700 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
3701
3702 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
3703 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
3704 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
3705 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
3706 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
3707 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
3708 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
3709 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
3710 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
3711
3712 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3713 project?</strong></p>
3714
3715 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
3716 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
3717 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
3718 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
3719
3720 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3721 Edu?</strong></p>
3722
3723 <ul>
3724   <li>Quick installation,</li>
3725   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
3726   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
3727   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
3728     single company,</li>
3729   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
3730     experience and problem solutions.</li>
3731 </ul>
3732
3733 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3734 Edu?</strong></p>
3735
3736 <ul>
3737   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
3738   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
3739   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
3740   working again reliably.
3741
3742   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
3743   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
3744   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
3745   as their base.
3746
3747   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
3748   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
3749   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
3750   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
3751   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
3752   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
3753
3754   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
3755   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
3756   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
3757   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
3758   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
3759   schemes.</li>
3760
3761   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
3762   compared to Debian.</li>
3763
3764 </ul>
3765
3766 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
3767 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
3768 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
3769 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
3770
3771 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3772
3773 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
3774 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
3775 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
3776 programming languages for teaching.</p>
3777
3778 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3779 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3780
3781 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
3782
3783 <ul>
3784
3785   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
3786     teaching and learning.</li>
3787
3788   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
3789     home, and at their working place without running into license or
3790     conversion problems.</li>
3791
3792   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
3793     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
3794     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
3795     science, not products.</li>
3796
3797   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
3798     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
3799
3800 </ul>
3801
3802       </div>
3803       <div class="tags">
3804
3805
3806         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3807
3808
3809       </div>
3810     </div>
3811     <div class="padding"></div>
3812
3813     <div class="entry">
3814       <div class="title">
3815         <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>
3816       </div>
3817       <div class="date">
3818         30th November 2013
3819       </div>
3820       <div class="body">
3821         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
3822 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
3823 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
3824 experiment with interesting network technology, the
3825 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
3826 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
3827 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
3828 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
3829 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
3830 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
3831 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
3832 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
3833 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
3834 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
3835 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
3836 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
3837 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
3838 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
3839 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
3840 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
3841
3842       </div>
3843       <div class="tags">
3844
3845
3846         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>.
3847
3848
3849       </div>
3850     </div>
3851     <div class="padding"></div>
3852
3853     <div class="entry">
3854       <div class="title">
3855         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
3856       </div>
3857       <div class="date">
3858         24th November 2013
3859       </div>
3860       <div class="body">
3861         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
3862 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
3863 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
3864 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
3865 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
3866 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
3867 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
3868 is working on.  I checked the
3869 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
3870 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
3871 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
3872 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
3873 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
3874 These are the release notes:</p>
3875
3876 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
3877
3878 <ul>
3879
3880   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3881    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3882    up.</li>
3883
3884   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
3885
3886   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3887    Matthias Klose.</li>
3888
3889   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3890    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
3891
3892   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3893    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
3894    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
3895
3896 </ul>
3897
3898 <p>You can
3899 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3900 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3901 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3902 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3903 include a testsuite check.</p>
3904
3905       </div>
3906       <div class="tags">
3907
3908
3909         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>.
3910
3911
3912       </div>
3913     </div>
3914     <div class="padding"></div>
3915
3916     <div class="entry">
3917       <div class="title">
3918         <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>
3919       </div>
3920       <div class="date">
3921         21st November 2013
3922       </div>
3923       <div class="body">
3924         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
3925 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
3926 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
3927 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
3928 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
3929 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
3930 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
3931 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
3932 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
3933 TED talk
3934 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
3935 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
3936 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
3937
3938 <blockquote>
3939
3940 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
3941 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
3942 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
3943 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
3944 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
3945 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
3946 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
3947 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
3948 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
3949 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
3950 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
3951
3952 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
3953 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
3954 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
3955
3956 </blockquote>
3957
3958 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
3959 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
3960 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
3961 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
3962 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
3963 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
3964 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
3965 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
3966 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
3967
3968       </div>
3969       <div class="tags">
3970
3971
3972         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>.
3973
3974
3975       </div>
3976     </div>
3977     <div class="padding"></div>
3978
3979     <div class="entry">
3980       <div class="title">
3981         <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>
3982       </div>
3983       <div class="date">
3984         13th November 2013
3985       </div>
3986       <div class="body">
3987         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
3988 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
3989 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
3990 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
3991 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
3992 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
3993 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
3994 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
3995 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
3996 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
3997 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
3998 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
3999 right away. :)</p>
4000
4001       </div>
4002       <div class="tags">
4003
4004
4005         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>.
4006
4007
4008       </div>
4009     </div>
4010     <div class="padding"></div>
4011
4012     <div class="entry">
4013       <div class="title">
4014         <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>
4015       </div>
4016       <div class="date">
4017         10th November 2013
4018       </div>
4019       <div class="body">
4020         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
4021 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
4022 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
4023 MR3040 as a mesh node using
4024 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
4025
4026 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
4027 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
4028 and downloaded
4029 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
4030 recommended firmware image</a>
4031 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
4032 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
4033 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
4034 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
4035 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
4036
4037 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
4038 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
4039 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
4040 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
4041 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
4042 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
4043 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
4044 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
4045 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
4046 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
4047 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
4048 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
4049 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
4050
4051 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
4052 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
4053 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
4054 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
4055 them:</p>
4056
4057 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
4058
4059 <pre>
4060
4061 config interface 'loopback'
4062         option ifname 'lo'
4063         option proto 'static'
4064         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
4065         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
4066
4067 config globals 'globals'
4068         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
4069
4070 config interface 'lan'
4071         option ifname 'eth0'
4072         option type 'bridge'
4073         option proto 'dhcp'
4074         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
4075         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
4076         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
4077         option ip6assign '60'
4078
4079 config interface 'mesh'
4080         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4081         option mtu '1528'
4082         option proto 'batadv'
4083         option mesh 'bat0'
4084 </pre>
4085
4086 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
4087 <pre>
4088
4089 config wifi-device 'radio0'
4090         option type 'mac80211'
4091         option channel '11'
4092         option hwmode '11ng'
4093         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
4094         option htmode 'HT20'
4095         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
4096         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
4097         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
4098         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
4099         option disabled '0'
4100
4101 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
4102         option device 'radio0'
4103         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4104         option network 'mesh'
4105         option encryption 'none'
4106         option mode 'adhoc'
4107         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
4108         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
4109 </pre>
4110 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
4111 <pre>
4112
4113 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
4114         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
4115         option 'aggregated_ogms'
4116         option 'ap_isolation'
4117         option 'bonding'
4118         option 'fragmentation'
4119         option 'gw_bandwidth'
4120         option 'gw_mode'
4121         option 'gw_sel_class'
4122         option 'log_level'
4123         option 'orig_interval'
4124         option 'vis_mode'
4125         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
4126         option 'distributed_arp_table'
4127         option 'network_coding'
4128         option 'hop_penalty'
4129
4130 # yet another batX instance
4131 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
4132 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
4133 </pre>
4134
4135 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
4136 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
4137 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
4138
4139       </div>
4140       <div class="tags">
4141
4142
4143         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>.
4144
4145
4146       </div>
4147     </div>
4148     <div class="padding"></div>
4149
4150     <div class="entry">
4151       <div class="title">
4152         <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>
4153       </div>
4154       <div class="date">
4155          2nd November 2013
4156       </div>
4157       <div class="body">
4158         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
4159 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
4160 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
4161 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
4162 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
4163
4164 <p><pre>
4165 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
4166 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
4167 # Provides:          rsyslog
4168 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
4169 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
4170 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
4171 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
4172 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
4173 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
4174 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
4175 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
4176 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
4177 ### END INIT INFO
4178 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
4179 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
4180 </pre></p>
4181
4182 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
4183 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
4184 info/comments.</p>
4185
4186 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
4187 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
4188
4189 <p><pre>
4190 #!/bin/sh
4191
4192 # Define LSB log_* functions.
4193 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
4194 # and status_of_proc is working.
4195 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
4196
4197 #
4198 # Function that starts the daemon/service
4199
4200 #
4201 do_start()
4202 {
4203         # Return
4204         #   0 if daemon has been started
4205         #   1 if daemon was already running
4206         #   2 if daemon could not be started
4207         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
4208                 || return 1
4209         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
4210                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
4211                 || return 2
4212         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
4213         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
4214         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
4215 }
4216
4217 #
4218 # Function that stops the daemon/service
4219 #
4220 do_stop()
4221 {
4222         # Return
4223         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
4224         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
4225         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
4226         #   other if a failure occurred
4227         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4228         RETVAL="$?"
4229         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
4230         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
4231         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
4232         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
4233         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
4234         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
4235         # sleep for some time.
4236         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
4237         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
4238         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
4239         rm -f $PIDFILE
4240         return "$RETVAL"
4241 }
4242
4243 #
4244 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
4245 #
4246 do_reload() {
4247         #
4248         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
4249         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
4250         # then implement that here.
4251         #
4252         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4253         return 0
4254 }
4255
4256 SCRIPTNAME=$1
4257 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
4258 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
4259 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
4260     script="$1"
4261     shift
4262     . $script
4263 else
4264     exit 0
4265 fi
4266
4267 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
4268 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
4269
4270 # Exit if the package is not installed
4271 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
4272
4273 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
4274 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
4275
4276 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
4277 . /lib/init/vars.sh
4278
4279 case "$1" in
4280   start)
4281         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
4282         do_start
4283         case "$?" in
4284                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4285                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4286         esac
4287         ;;
4288   stop)
4289         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
4290         do_stop
4291         case "$?" in
4292                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4293                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4294         esac
4295         ;;
4296   status)
4297         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
4298         ;;
4299   #reload|force-reload)
4300         #
4301         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
4302         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
4303         #
4304         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
4305         #do_reload
4306         #log_end_msg $?
4307         #;;
4308   restart|force-reload)
4309         #
4310         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
4311         # 'force-reload' alias
4312         #
4313         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
4314         do_stop
4315         case "$?" in
4316           0|1)
4317                 do_start
4318                 case "$?" in
4319                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
4320                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
4321                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
4322                 esac
4323                 ;;
4324           *)
4325                 # Failed to stop
4326                 log_end_msg 1
4327                 ;;
4328         esac
4329         ;;
4330   *)
4331         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
4332         exit 3
4333         ;;
4334 esac
4335
4336 :
4337 </pre></p>
4338
4339 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
4340 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
4341 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
4342 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
4343
4344 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
4345 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
4346 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
4347 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
4348 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
4349
4350       </div>
4351       <div class="tags">
4352
4353
4354         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>.
4355
4356
4357       </div>
4358     </div>
4359     <div class="padding"></div>
4360
4361     <div class="entry">
4362       <div class="title">
4363         <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>
4364       </div>
4365       <div class="date">
4366          1st November 2013
4367       </div>
4368       <div class="body">
4369         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
4370 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
4371 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
4372 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
4373 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
4374 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
4375 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
4376 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
4377 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
4378 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
4379 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
4380 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
4381
4382 <p>The source is now available from
4383 <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>
4384
4385       </div>
4386       <div class="tags">
4387
4388
4389         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>.
4390
4391
4392       </div>
4393     </div>
4394     <div class="padding"></div>
4395
4396     <div class="entry">
4397       <div class="title">
4398         <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>
4399       </div>
4400       <div class="date">
4401         27th October 2013
4402       </div>
4403       <div class="body">
4404         <p>The
4405 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
4406 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
4407 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
4408 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
4409 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
4410 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
4411 of a plan to simplify the build system for
4412 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
4413 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
4414 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
4415 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
4416 Raspberry Pi.</p>
4417
4418 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
4419 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
4420 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
4421 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
4422 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
4423 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
4424 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
4425 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
4426 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
4427 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
4428 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
4429 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
4430 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
4431 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
4432 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
4433 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
4434 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
4435 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
4436 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
4437 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
4438 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
4439 available from
4440 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
4441 upstream project page</a>.</p>
4442
4443 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
4444 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
4445 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
4446 list:</p>
4447
4448 <p><pre>
4449 #!/bin/sh
4450 set -e # Exit on first error
4451 rootdir="$1"
4452 cd "$rootdir"
4453 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
4454 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
4455 EOF
4456 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
4457 # install a kernel somewhere too.
4458 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
4459     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4460 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4461 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
4462 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
4463 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
4464 </pre></p>
4465
4466 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
4467 to build the image:</p>
4468
4469 <pre>
4470 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
4471     --variant minbase \
4472     --arch armel \
4473     --distribution jessie \
4474     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
4475     --image test.img \
4476     --size 600M \
4477     --bootsize 64M \
4478     --boottype vfat \
4479     --log-level debug \
4480     --verbose \
4481     --no-kernel \
4482     --no-extlinux \
4483     --root-password raspberry \
4484     --hostname raspberrypi \
4485     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
4486     --customize `pwd`/customize \
4487     --package netbase \
4488     --package git-core \
4489     --package binutils \
4490     --package ca-certificates \
4491     --package wget \
4492     --package kmod
4493 </pre></p>
4494
4495 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
4496 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
4497 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
4498 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
4499 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
4500 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
4501 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
4502
4503 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
4504 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
4505 build dependency list.</p>
4506
4507 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
4508 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
4509 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
4510 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
4511
4512       </div>
4513       <div class="tags">
4514
4515
4516         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>.
4517
4518
4519       </div>
4520     </div>
4521     <div class="padding"></div>
4522
4523     <div class="entry">
4524       <div class="title">
4525         <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>
4526       </div>
4527       <div class="date">
4528         21st October 2013
4529       </div>
4530       <div class="body">
4531         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
4532 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
4533 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
4534 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
4535 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
4536 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
4537 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
4538 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
4539
4540 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
4541 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
4542 instead, I started playing with a
4543 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
4544 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
4545 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
4546 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
4547 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
4548 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
4549 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
4550 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
4551 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
4552 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
4553 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
4554 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
4555 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
4556 every client on the local network.</p>
4557
4558 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
4559 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
4560 and a script
4561 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
4562 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
4563 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
4564 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
4565 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
4566 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
4567 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
4568 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
4569 support.</p>
4570
4571 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
4572 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
4573
4574 <p><pre>
4575 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
4576     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
4577 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
4578 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
4579 %
4580 </pre></p>
4581
4582 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
4583 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
4584 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
4585 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
4586 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
4587 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
4588
4589 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
4590 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
4591 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
4592
4593 <p><table>
4594
4595 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
4596 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
4597 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
4598 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
4599 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
4600 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
4601
4602 </table></p>
4603
4604 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
4605 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
4606 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
4607 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
4608 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
4609 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
4610 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
4611
4612       </div>
4613       <div class="tags">
4614
4615
4616         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>.
4617
4618
4619       </div>
4620     </div>
4621     <div class="padding"></div>
4622
4623     <div class="entry">
4624       <div class="title">
4625         <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>
4626       </div>
4627       <div class="date">
4628         19th October 2013
4629       </div>
4630       <div class="body">
4631         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
4632 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
4633 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
4634 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
4635 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
4636 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
4637 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
4638 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
4639
4640       </div>
4641       <div class="tags">
4642
4643
4644         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>.
4645
4646
4647       </div>
4648     </div>
4649     <div class="padding"></div>
4650
4651     <div class="entry">
4652       <div class="title">
4653         <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>
4654       </div>
4655       <div class="date">
4656         15th October 2013
4657       </div>
4658       <div class="body">
4659         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
4660 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
4661 these. :)</p>
4662
4663 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
4664 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
4665 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
4666 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
4667 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
4668 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
4669 hope you will to. :)</p>
4670
4671 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
4672 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
4673 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
4674 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
4675 donated.  Are you next?</p>
4676
4677 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
4678 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
4679 statement under the heading
4680 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
4681 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
4682 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
4683 too.</p>
4684
4685       </div>
4686       <div class="tags">
4687
4688
4689         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>.
4690
4691
4692       </div>
4693     </div>
4694     <div class="padding"></div>
4695
4696     <div class="entry">
4697       <div class="title">
4698         <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>
4699       </div>
4700       <div class="date">
4701         11th October 2013
4702       </div>
4703       <div class="body">
4704         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
4705 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
4706 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
4707 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
4708 successful examples like
4709 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
4710 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
4711 (see
4712 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
4713 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
4714 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
4715 can be seen from their
4716 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
4717 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
4718 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
4719 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
4720 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
4721
4722 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
4723 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
4724 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
4725 my recent involvement in
4726 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
4727 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
4728 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
4729 when possible, given that most communication between people are
4730 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
4731 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
4732 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
4733 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
4734 important over the years.</p>
4735
4736 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
4737 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
4738 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
4739 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
4740 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
4741 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
4742 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
4743 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
4744 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
4745 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
4746 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
4747 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
4748 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
4749 speakers about this talk (from
4750 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
4751
4752 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
4753
4754 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
4755 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
4756 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
4757 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
4758 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
4759 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
4760 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
4761 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
4762 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
4763 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
4764 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
4765 that project (from
4766 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
4767
4768 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
4769
4770 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
4771 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
4772 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
4773 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
4774 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
4775 based community mesh networks.</p>
4776
4777 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
4778 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
4779 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
4780 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
4781 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
4782 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
4783 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
4784 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
4785 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
4786
4787 <p><table>
4788 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
4789 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
4790 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
4791 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
4792 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
4793 </table></p>
4794
4795 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
4796 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
4797 VillageTelco about
4798 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
4799 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
4800 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
4801 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
4802 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
4803 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
4804
4805 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
4806 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
4807 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
4808 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
4809
4810 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
4811 us on IRC, either channel
4812 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
4813 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
4814 irc.freenode.net.</p>
4815
4816 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
4817 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
4818 and Innovation called
4819 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
4820 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
4821 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
4822 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
4823 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
4824 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
4825 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
4826 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
4827
4828 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
4829 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
4830 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
4831 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
4832 mesh system.</p>
4833
4834       </div>
4835       <div class="tags">
4836
4837
4838         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>.
4839
4840
4841       </div>
4842     </div>
4843     <div class="padding"></div>
4844
4845     <div class="entry">
4846       <div class="title">
4847         <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>
4848       </div>
4849       <div class="date">
4850          8th October 2013
4851       </div>
4852       <div class="body">
4853         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
4854 Salvador had published a
4855 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
4856 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
4857 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
4858 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
4859 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
4860 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
4861 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
4862 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
4863 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
4864 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
4865 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
4866 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
4867 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
4868 computers without hard drives by installing one central
4869 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
4870
4871 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
4872
4873 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
4874
4875 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
4876 me know. :)</p>
4877
4878       </div>
4879       <div class="tags">
4880
4881
4882         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4883
4884
4885       </div>
4886     </div>
4887     <div class="padding"></div>
4888
4889     <div class="entry">
4890       <div class="title">
4891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
4892       </div>
4893       <div class="date">
4894         29th September 2013
4895       </div>
4896       <div class="body">
4897         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
4898 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
4899 complete announcement text can be found at
4900 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
4901 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
4902
4903 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
4904 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
4905 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
4906 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
4907
4908       </div>
4909       <div class="tags">
4910
4911
4912         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4913
4914
4915       </div>
4916     </div>
4917     <div class="padding"></div>
4918
4919     <div class="entry">
4920       <div class="title">
4921         <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>
4922       </div>
4923       <div class="date">
4924         27th September 2013
4925       </div>
4926       <div class="body">
4927         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
4928 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
4929 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
4930 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
4931
4932 <ul>
4933
4934 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
4935 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
4936
4937 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
4938 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
4939
4940 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
4941 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
4942 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
4943 (Youtube)</li>
4944
4945 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
4946 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
4947
4948 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
4949 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
4950
4951 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
4952 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
4953 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
4954
4955 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
4956 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
4957 (Youtube)</li>
4958
4959 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
4960 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
4961
4962 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
4963 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
4964
4965 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
4966 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
4967 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
4968
4969 </ul>
4970
4971 <p>A larger list is available from
4972 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
4973 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
4974
4975 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
4976 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
4977 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
4978 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
4979 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
4980 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
4981 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
4982 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
4983 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
4984 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4985 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4986
4987       </div>
4988       <div class="tags">
4989
4990
4991         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>.
4992
4993
4994       </div>
4995     </div>
4996     <div class="padding"></div>
4997
4998     <div class="entry">
4999       <div class="title">
5000         <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>
5001       </div>
5002       <div class="date">
5003         16th September 2013
5004       </div>
5005       <div class="body">
5006         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5007 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
5008
5009 <blockquote>
5010 <p>Hi,</p>
5011
5012 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
5013 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5014 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
5015
5016 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
5017 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
5018 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
5019 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
5020
5021 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
5022 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
5023
5024 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
5025 compared to beta1:</p>
5026
5027 <ul>
5028
5029 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
5030 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
5031 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
5032 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
5033 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
5034 main server.</li>
5035 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
5036 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
5037 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
5038 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
5039 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
5040
5041 </ul>
5042
5043 <p>Where to get it:</p>
5044
5045 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5046
5047 <ul>
5048 <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>
5049 <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>
5050 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
5051 </ul>
5052
5053 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
5054
5055 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
5056 <ul>
5057 <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>
5058 <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>
5059 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
5060 </ul>
5061
5062 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
5063
5064 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
5065 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
5066 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
5067 as the other isos.</p>
5068
5069 <p>How to report bugs</p>
5070
5071 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
5072 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5073
5074
5075 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
5076
5077 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
5078 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5079 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
5080 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5081 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5082 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5083 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
5084 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
5085 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
5086 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
5087 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
5088 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
5089 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5090
5091 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5092 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5093 Squeeze release.</p>
5094
5095 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
5096
5097 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5098 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5099 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5100 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5101 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
5102 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
5103 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
5104 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
5105 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
5106 directory.</p>
5107
5108
5109 <p>cheers,
5110 <br>        Holger</p>
5111 </blockquote>
5112
5113       </div>
5114       <div class="tags">
5115
5116
5117         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5118
5119
5120       </div>
5121     </div>
5122     <div class="padding"></div>
5123
5124     <div class="entry">
5125       <div class="title">
5126         <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>
5127       </div>
5128       <div class="date">
5129         10th September 2013
5130       </div>
5131       <div class="body">
5132         <p>I was introduced to the
5133 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
5134 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
5135 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
5136 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
5137 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
5138 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
5139 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
5140 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
5141
5142 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
5143 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
5144 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
5145 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
5146 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
5147
5148 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
5149 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
5150 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
5151 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
5152 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
5153 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
5154 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
5155 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
5156 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
5157 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
5158 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
5159 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
5160 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
5161 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
5162 missing in Debian).</p>
5163
5164 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
5165 scripts
5166 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
5167 and a administrative web interface
5168 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
5169 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
5170 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
5171 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
5172 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
5173 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5174 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
5175 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
5176 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
5177 this is really working yet, see
5178 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
5179 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
5180 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
5181 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
5182 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
5183 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
5184 with lots of half baked features.</p>
5185
5186 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
5187 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
5188 at.</p>
5189
5190 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
5191
5192 <ol>
5193
5194 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
5195 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
5196 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
5197 to the Debian installer:<p>
5198 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
5199
5200 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
5201 install on.</li>
5202
5203 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
5204 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
5205
5206 </ol>
5207
5208 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
5209
5210 <ol>
5211
5212 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
5213 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
5214 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
5215 <pre>
5216 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
5217 </pre></li>
5218 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
5219 <pre>
5220 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
5221    apt-key add -
5222 apt-get update
5223 apt-get install freedombox-setup
5224 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
5225 </pre></li>
5226 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
5227
5228 </ol>
5229
5230 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
5231 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
5232 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
5233 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
5234 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
5235
5236 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
5237 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
5238 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
5239 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
5240
5241 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
5242 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
5243 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
5244 irc.debian.org and the
5245 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
5246 mailing list</a>.</p>
5247
5248 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
5249 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
5250 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
5251 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
5252 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
5253 default password is 'secret'.</p>
5254
5255       </div>
5256       <div class="tags">
5257
5258
5259         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>.
5260
5261
5262       </div>
5263     </div>
5264     <div class="padding"></div>
5265
5266     <div class="entry">
5267       <div class="title">
5268         <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>
5269       </div>
5270       <div class="date">
5271         22nd August 2013
5272       </div>
5273       <div class="body">
5274         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5275 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
5276 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
5277
5278 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
5279
5280 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5281 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5282
5283 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5284
5285 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5286 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5287 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5288 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5289 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5290 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5291 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5292 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
5293 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5294 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5295 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5296 desktop contains
5297 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5298 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5299 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5300 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5301
5302 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
5303 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
5304 release.</p>
5305
5306 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5307 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5308 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5309 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5310 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
5311 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
5312 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
5313 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
5314 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
5315 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
5316 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
5317
5318 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5319
5320 <ul>
5321
5322 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
5323     work also without a attached tty.</li>
5324 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
5325     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
5326     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
5327     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
5328     required).</li>
5329
5330 </ul>
5331
5332 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5333
5334 <ul>
5335
5336 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
5337 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
5338 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
5339 stick ISO image.</li>
5340 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
5341 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
5342 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
5343     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
5344     cope with this.</li>
5345 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
5346 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
5347     empty password hashes.</li>
5348 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
5349     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
5350     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
5351
5352 </ul>
5353
5354 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5355
5356 <ul>
5357
5358 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
5359     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
5360 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
5361     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
5362
5363 </ul>
5364
5365 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5366
5367 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5368
5369 <ul>
5370
5371 <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>
5372
5373 <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>
5374
5375 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
5376
5377 </ul>
5378
5379 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
5380 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
5381
5382 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5383
5384 <ul>
5385
5386 <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>
5387 <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>
5388 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
5389
5390 </ul>
5391
5392 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
5393 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
5394
5395
5396 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5397
5398 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5399
5400       </div>
5401       <div class="tags">
5402
5403
5404         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5405
5406
5407       </div>
5408     </div>
5409     <div class="padding"></div>
5410
5411     <div class="entry">
5412       <div class="title">
5413         <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>
5414       </div>
5415       <div class="date">
5416         18th August 2013
5417       </div>
5418       <div class="body">
5419         <p>Earlier, I reported about
5420 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
5421 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
5422 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
5423 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
5424 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
5425 currently on the disk.</p>
5426
5427 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
5428 <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>
5429 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
5430 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
5431 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
5432 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
5433 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
5434 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
5435 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
5436 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
5437 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
5438 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
5439 the broken disks.</p>
5440
5441       </div>
5442       <div class="tags">
5443
5444
5445         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>.
5446
5447
5448       </div>
5449     </div>
5450     <div class="padding"></div>
5451
5452     <div class="entry">
5453       <div class="title">
5454         <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>
5455       </div>
5456       <div class="date">
5457          2nd August 2013
5458       </div>
5459       <div class="body">
5460         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
5461 have worked on a Norwegian
5462 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
5463 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
5464 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
5465 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
5466 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
5467 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
5468 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
5469 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
5470 progress of the translation:</p>
5471
5472 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
5473
5474 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
5475 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
5476 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
5477 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
5478 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
5479 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
5480 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
5481 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
5482 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
5483 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
5484 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
5485
5486 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
5487 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
5488 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
5489 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
5490 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
5491 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
5492 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
5493 project files currently available from
5494 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
5495
5496 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
5497 the updated
5498 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
5499 and
5500 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
5501 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
5502 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
5503 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
5504
5505       </div>
5506       <div class="tags">
5507
5508
5509         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>.
5510
5511
5512       </div>
5513     </div>
5514     <div class="padding"></div>
5515
5516     <div class="entry">
5517       <div class="title">
5518         <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>
5519       </div>
5520       <div class="date">
5521         27th July 2013
5522       </div>
5523       <div class="body">
5524         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5525 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5526
5527 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
5528 2013-07-27</strong></p>
5529
5530 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5531 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5532
5533 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5534
5535 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5536 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5537 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5538 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5539 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5540 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5541 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5542 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5543 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5544 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5545 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5546 desktop contains
5547 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5548 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5549 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5550 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5551
5552 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5553 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5554 Squeeze release.</p>
5555
5556 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5557 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5558 release.</p>
5559
5560 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5561
5562 <ul>
5563
5564 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
5565    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
5566 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
5567    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
5568    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
5569    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
5570    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
5571 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
5572 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
5573 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
5574    crash bugs.</li>
5575
5576 </ul>
5577
5578 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5579
5580 <ul>
5581
5582 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
5583    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
5584 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
5585    netinst CD.</li>
5586 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
5587    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
5588 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
5589    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
5590    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
5591 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
5592    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
5593    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
5594 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
5595    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
5596    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
5597 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
5598    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
5599 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
5600
5601 </ul>
5602
5603 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5604
5605 <ul>
5606
5607 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
5608 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
5609     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
5610 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
5611
5612 </ul>
5613
5614 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5615
5616 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5617
5618 <ul>
5619
5620 <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>
5621
5622 <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>
5623
5624 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
5625
5626 </ul>
5627
5628 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
5629 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
5630
5631 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5632
5633 <ul>
5634
5635 <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>
5636 <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>
5637 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
5638
5639 </ul>
5640
5641 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
5642 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
5643
5644
5645 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5646
5647 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5648
5649       </div>
5650       <div class="tags">
5651
5652
5653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5654
5655
5656       </div>
5657     </div>
5658     <div class="padding"></div>
5659
5660     <div class="entry">
5661       <div class="title">
5662         <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>
5663       </div>
5664       <div class="date">
5665         17th July 2013
5666       </div>
5667       <div class="body">
5668         <p>Today I switched to
5669 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
5670 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
5671 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
5672 <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
5673 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
5674 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
5675 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
5676 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
5677 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
5678 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
5679 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
5680 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
5681 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
5682 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
5683 station from now on.</p>
5684
5685 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
5686 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
5687 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
5688 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
5689 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
5690 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
5691 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
5692 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
5693 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
5694 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
5695 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
5696 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
5697
5698 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
5699 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
5700 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
5701 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
5702 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
5703 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
5704 parameters are tuned:</p>
5705
5706 <ul>
5707
5708 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
5709     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
5710
5711 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
5712     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
5713     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
5714
5715 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
5716     systems.</li>
5717
5718 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
5719     /etc/fstab.</li>
5720
5721 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
5722
5723 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
5724     cron.daily).</li>
5725
5726 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
5727     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
5728
5729 </ul>
5730
5731 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
5732 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
5733 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
5734 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
5735 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
5736 from getting the data on the disk (see
5737 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
5738 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
5739 right thing to do.</p>
5740
5741 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
5742 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
5743 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
5744
5745 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
5746 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
5747 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
5748 instead of during my work.</p>
5749
5750 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
5751 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
5752
5753 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
5754 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
5755 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
5756
5757 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
5758 there.</p>
5759
5760 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
5761 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
5762 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
5763 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
5764 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
5765 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
5766 back.</p>
5767
5768       </div>
5769       <div class="tags">
5770
5771
5772         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>.
5773
5774
5775       </div>
5776     </div>
5777     <div class="padding"></div>
5778
5779     <div class="entry">
5780       <div class="title">
5781         <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>
5782       </div>
5783       <div class="date">
5784         10th July 2013
5785       </div>
5786       <div class="body">
5787         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
5788 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
5789 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
5790 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
5791 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
5792 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
5793 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
5794 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
5795
5796 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
5797 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
5798 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
5799 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
5800 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
5801 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
5802 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
5803 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
5804 lock up when I download a new
5805 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
5806 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
5807 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
5808
5809 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5810 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
5811 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5812 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
5813 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5814 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5815
5816 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5817 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
5818 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5819 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
5820 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5821 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5822
5823 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
5824 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
5825 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
5826 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
5827 exist).</p>
5828
5829       </div>
5830       <div class="tags">
5831
5832
5833         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>.
5834
5835
5836       </div>
5837     </div>
5838     <div class="padding"></div>
5839
5840     <div class="entry">
5841       <div class="title">
5842         <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>
5843       </div>
5844       <div class="date">
5845          9th July 2013
5846       </div>
5847       <div class="body">
5848         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
5849 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
5850 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
5851 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
5852 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5853 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
5854 Bitraf</a>.</p>
5855
5856 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
5857 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
5858 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
5859 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
5860 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
5861
5862       </div>
5863       <div class="tags">
5864
5865
5866         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>.
5867
5868
5869       </div>
5870     </div>
5871     <div class="padding"></div>
5872
5873     <div class="entry">
5874       <div class="title">
5875         <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>
5876       </div>
5877       <div class="date">
5878          5th July 2013
5879       </div>
5880       <div class="body">
5881         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
5882 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
5883 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
5884 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
5885 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
5886 ended up picking a
5887 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
5888 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
5889 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
5890 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
5891 on that below.</p>
5892
5893 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5894 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5895 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5896 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5897 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5898 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
5899 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
5900 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
5901 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
5902
5903 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
5904 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
5905 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
5906 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
5907 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
5908 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
5909 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
5910
5911 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
5912 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
5913
5914 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
5915 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
5916 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
5917 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
5918 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
5919 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
5920 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
5921 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
5922 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
5923 kernel developers as
5924 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
5925 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
5926 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
5927 Lenovo forums, both for
5928 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
5929 2012-11-10</a> and for
5930 <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
5931 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
5932 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
5933 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
5934 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
5935 There is even a
5936 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
5937 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
5938 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
5939
5940 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
5941 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
5942 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
5943 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
5944 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
5945 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
5946 fixed. :)</p>
5947
5948       </div>
5949       <div class="tags">
5950
5951
5952         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>.
5953
5954
5955       </div>
5956     </div>
5957     <div class="padding"></div>
5958
5959     <div class="entry">
5960       <div class="title">
5961         <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>
5962       </div>
5963       <div class="date">
5964          4th July 2013
5965       </div>
5966       <div class="body">
5967         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
5968 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
5969 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
5970 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
5971 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
5972 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
5973 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
5974 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
5975 with an expencive door stop.</p>
5976
5977 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5978 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5979 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5980 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5981 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5982 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
5983 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
5984
5985 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
5986 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
5987 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
5988 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
5989 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
5990 new laptop now. :)</p>
5991
5992 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
5993
5994       </div>
5995       <div class="tags">
5996
5997
5998         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>.
5999
6000
6001       </div>
6002     </div>
6003     <div class="padding"></div>
6004
6005     <div class="entry">
6006       <div class="title">
6007         <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>
6008       </div>
6009       <div class="date">
6010          3rd July 2013
6011       </div>
6012       <div class="body">
6013         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6014 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6015
6016 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
6017 2013-07-03</strong></p>
6018
6019 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6020 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6021
6022 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6023
6024 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6025 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6026 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6027 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6028 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6029 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6030 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6031 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6032 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6033 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6034 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6035 desktop contains
6036 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6037 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6038 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6039 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6040
6041 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6042 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6043 Squeeze release.</p>
6044
6045 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6046 <ul>
6047   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
6048   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
6049     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
6050     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
6051   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
6052     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
6053     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
6054   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
6055     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
6056     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
6057     too.</li>
6058   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
6059     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
6060 </ul>
6061 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6062 <ul>
6063   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
6064   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
6065   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
6066     up for some language options.</li>
6067   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
6068   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
6069   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
6070     d-i is doing it.</li>
6071   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
6072     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
6073   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
6074     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
6075     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
6076   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
6077     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
6078   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
6079   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
6080     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
6081   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
6082     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
6083 </ul>
6084 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6085 <ul>
6086   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6087     available yet (698840).</li>
6088   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
6089 </ul>
6090 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6091
6092 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6093 <ul>
6094   <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>
6095   <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>
6096   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
6097 </ul>
6098
6099 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
6100 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
6101
6102 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6103 <ul>
6104   <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>
6105   <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>
6106   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
6107 </ul>
6108
6109 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
6110 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
6111
6112 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6113
6114 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6115
6116       </div>
6117       <div class="tags">
6118
6119
6120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6121
6122
6123       </div>
6124     </div>
6125     <div class="padding"></div>
6126
6127     <div class="entry">
6128       <div class="title">
6129         <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>
6130       </div>
6131       <div class="date">
6132         25th June 2013
6133       </div>
6134       <div class="body">
6135         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
6136 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
6137 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
6138 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
6139 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
6140 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
6141 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
6142 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
6143 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
6144 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
6145 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
6146
6147 <p><pre>
6148 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6149 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
6150 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
6151 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
6152 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
6153 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
6154 firmware-ipw2x00
6155 firmware-ipw2x00
6156 Preconfiguring packages ...
6157 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
6158 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
6159 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
6160 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
6161 #
6162 </pre></p>
6163
6164 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
6165 printed instead:</p>
6166
6167 <p><pre>
6168 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6169 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
6170 #
6171 </pre></p>
6172
6173 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
6174 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
6175
6176 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
6177 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
6178 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
6179 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
6180 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
6181 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
6182 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
6183 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
6184 machine.</p>
6185
6186 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
6187 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
6188 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
6189 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
6190 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
6191 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
6192
6193       </div>
6194       <div class="tags">
6195
6196
6197         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>.
6198
6199
6200       </div>
6201     </div>
6202     <div class="padding"></div>
6203
6204     <div class="entry">
6205       <div class="title">
6206         <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>
6207       </div>
6208       <div class="date">
6209         22nd June 2013
6210       </div>
6211       <div class="body">
6212         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6213 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
6214 which check that services are running, working, and return the
6215 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
6216 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
6217 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
6218 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
6219 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
6220 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
6221
6222 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
6223 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
6224 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
6225 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
6226 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
6227 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
6228 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
6229 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
6230 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
6231 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
6232 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
6233 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
6234 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
6235 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
6236
6237 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
6238 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
6239 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
6240 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
6241 the problem.</p>
6242
6243 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
6244 please join us on
6245 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
6246 irc.debian.org</a> and the
6247 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
6248 list.</p>
6249
6250       </div>
6251       <div class="tags">
6252
6253
6254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6255
6256
6257       </div>
6258     </div>
6259     <div class="padding"></div>
6260
6261     <div class="entry">
6262       <div class="title">
6263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
6264       </div>
6265       <div class="date">
6266         17th June 2013
6267       </div>
6268       <div class="body">
6269         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
6270 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
6271 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
6272 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
6273 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
6274 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
6275 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
6276 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
6277
6278 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6279
6280 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
6281 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
6282 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
6283 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
6284 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
6285 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
6286 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
6287 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
6288 field.</p>
6289
6290 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
6291 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
6292 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
6293 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
6294 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
6295 the only one we have in our country.</p>
6296
6297 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6298 project?</strong></p>
6299
6300 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
6301 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
6302 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
6303 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
6304 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
6305 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
6306 ways to contribute.</p>
6307
6308 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
6309 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
6310 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
6311 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
6312 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
6313 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
6314 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
6315 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
6316 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
6317 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
6318
6319 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6320 Edu?</strong></p>
6321
6322 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
6323 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
6324 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
6325 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
6326 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
6327 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
6328 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
6329 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
6330
6331 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
6332 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
6333 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
6334 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
6335 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
6336 project.</p>
6337
6338 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6339 Edu?</strong></p>
6340
6341 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
6342 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
6343 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
6344 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
6345 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
6346 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
6347 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
6348 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
6349 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
6350
6351 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
6352 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
6353 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
6354 on.</p>
6355
6356 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6357
6358 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
6359 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
6360 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
6361 Enlightenment project a lot!),
6362 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
6363 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
6364 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
6365 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
6366 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
6367
6368 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6369 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6370
6371 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
6372 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
6373 that:</p>
6374
6375 <ul>
6376
6377 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
6378
6379 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
6380     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
6381     of teenagers more?</li>
6382
6383 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
6384     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
6385     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
6386     them!)</li>
6387
6388 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
6389     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
6390     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
6391
6392 </ul>
6393
6394 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
6395 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
6396 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
6397 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
6398 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
6399
6400       </div>
6401       <div class="tags">
6402
6403
6404         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
6405
6406
6407       </div>
6408     </div>
6409     <div class="padding"></div>
6410
6411     <div class="entry">
6412       <div class="title">
6413         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
6414       </div>
6415       <div class="date">
6416         12th June 2013
6417       </div>
6418       <div class="body">
6419         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
6420 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6421 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
6422 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
6423 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
6424 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
6425
6426 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6427
6428 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
6429 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
6430 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
6431
6432 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
6433 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
6434 each other.</p>
6435
6436 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6437 project?</strong></p>
6438
6439 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
6440 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
6441 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
6442 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
6443 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
6444 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
6445 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
6446 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
6447 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
6448 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
6449 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
6450 we'll get there one day.</p>
6451
6452 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6453 Edu?</strong></p>
6454
6455 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
6456 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
6457 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
6458 very high quality work.</p>
6459
6460 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
6461 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
6462 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
6463 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
6464 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
6465
6466 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6467 Edu?</strong></p>
6468
6469 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
6470 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
6471 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
6472
6473 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
6474 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
6475 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
6476 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
6477 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
6478 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
6479 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
6480 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
6481 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
6482 currently.</p>
6483
6484 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
6485 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
6486 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
6487 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
6488 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
6489 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
6490 autonomous.</p>
6491
6492 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6493
6494 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
6495 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
6496 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
6497 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
6498 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
6499
6500 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
6501 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
6502 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
6503 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
6504 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
6505 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
6506 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
6507 X.</p>
6508
6509 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
6510 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
6511 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
6512 it :p)
6513
6514 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6515 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6516
6517 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
6518 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
6519 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
6520 that.</p>
6521
6522 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
6523 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
6524 advantage of that.</p>
6525
6526 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
6527 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
6528 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
6529 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
6530 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
6531 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
6532 best solution for them.</p>
6533
6534 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
6535 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
6536 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
6537
6538       </div>
6539       <div class="tags">
6540
6541
6542         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
6543
6544
6545       </div>
6546     </div>
6547     <div class="padding"></div>
6548
6549     <div class="entry">
6550       <div class="title">
6551         <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>
6552       </div>
6553       <div class="date">
6554         11th June 2013
6555       </div>
6556       <div class="body">
6557         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
6558 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
6559 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
6560 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
6561 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
6562 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
6563 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
6564 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
6565 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
6566 i915 driver used by the
6567 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6568 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
6569
6570 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
6571 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
6572 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
6573 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
6574 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
6575
6576 <pre>
6577 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
6578 update-initramfs -u -k all
6579 </pre>
6580
6581 <p>Since March 2012 there is
6582 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
6583 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
6584 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
6585 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
6586 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
6587 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
6588 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
6589 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
6590 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
6591 number.</p>
6592
6593 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
6594 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
6595
6596 <p><pre>
6597 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
6598     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
6599     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
6600  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
6601  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
6602     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
6603  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
6604     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
6605  Latency: 0
6606  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
6607  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
6608  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
6609  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
6610  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
6611  Capabilities: <access denied>
6612  Kernel driver in use: i915
6613 </pre></p>
6614
6615 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
6616
6617 <p><pre>
6618 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
6619        ...
6620         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
6621         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
6622        ...
6623 }
6624 </pre></p>
6625
6626 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
6627 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
6628 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
6629 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
6630 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
6631 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
6632 yet shown up in
6633 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
6634 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
6635 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
6636 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
6637 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
6638 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
6639
6640 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
6641 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
6642 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
6643 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
6644 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
6645 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
6646 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
6647 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
6648 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
6649 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
6650 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
6651 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
6652
6653 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
6654 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
6655 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
6656 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
6657 backlight.</p>
6658
6659       </div>
6660       <div class="tags">
6661
6662
6663         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>.
6664
6665
6666       </div>
6667     </div>
6668     <div class="padding"></div>
6669
6670     <div class="entry">
6671       <div class="title">
6672         <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>
6673       </div>
6674       <div class="date">
6675         10th June 2013
6676       </div>
6677       <div class="body">
6678         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6679 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6680
6681 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
6682 2013-06-10</strong></p>
6683
6684 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
6685 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6686
6687 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6688
6689 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6690 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6691 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6692 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6693 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6694 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6695 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6696 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6697 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6698 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6699 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6700 desktop contains
6701 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6702 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6703 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6704 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6705
6706 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6707 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6708 Squeeze release.</p>
6709
6710 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6711
6712 <ul>
6713
6714 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
6715 <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).
6716 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
6717 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
6718 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
6719
6720 </ul>
6721
6722 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6723
6724 <ul>
6725
6726 <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.
6727 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
6728 <li>New Romanian translation.
6729 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
6730 <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).
6731 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
6732 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
6733 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
6734 <li>More testsuite tests.
6735 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
6736 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
6737
6738 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
6739 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
6740
6741 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
6742 them up with GOsa².</li>
6743
6744 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
6745
6746 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
6747 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
6748 entered password). </li>
6749
6750 </ul>
6751
6752 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6753
6754 <ul>
6755
6756 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
6757
6758 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6759 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
6760 missing import feature).</li>
6761
6762 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
6763
6764 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
6765 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
6766 unfixed.</li>
6767
6768 </ul>
6769
6770 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6771
6772 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6773
6774 <ul>
6775
6776 <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>
6777
6778 <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>
6779
6780 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
6781
6782 </ul>
6783
6784 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
6785 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
6786
6787 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6788
6789 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6790
6791       </div>
6792       <div class="tags">
6793
6794
6795         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6796
6797
6798       </div>
6799     </div>
6800     <div class="padding"></div>
6801
6802     <div class="entry">
6803       <div class="title">
6804         <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>
6805       </div>
6806       <div class="date">
6807          5th June 2013
6808       </div>
6809       <div class="body">
6810         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
6811 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
6812 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
6813 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
6814 the project:
6815
6816 <ol>
6817
6818 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
6819   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
6820   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
6821   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
6822   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
6823
6824 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
6825   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
6826   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
6827   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
6828   #698840</a>.</li>
6829
6830 </ol>
6831
6832 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
6833 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
6834 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
6835
6836       </div>
6837       <div class="tags">
6838
6839
6840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6841
6842
6843       </div>
6844     </div>
6845     <div class="padding"></div>
6846
6847     <div class="entry">
6848       <div class="title">
6849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
6850       </div>
6851       <div class="date">
6852          4th June 2013
6853       </div>
6854       <div class="body">
6855         <p>It has been a while since my last English
6856 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6857 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
6858 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
6859 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
6860 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
6861
6862 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6863
6864 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
6865 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
6866 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
6867 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
6868
6869 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
6870 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
6871 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
6872
6873 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6874 project?</strong></p>
6875
6876 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
6877 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
6878 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
6879 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
6880 manual.
6881
6882 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
6883 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
6884 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
6885 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
6886
6887 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
6888 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
6889 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
6890 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
6891 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
6892 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
6893 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
6894 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
6895 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
6896 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
6897
6898 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
6899 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
6900 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
6901 beautiful project.</p>
6902
6903 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6904 Edu?</strong></p>
6905
6906 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
6907 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
6908 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
6909
6910 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
6911 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
6912 of educational free software.</p>
6913
6914 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6915 Edu?</strong></p>
6916
6917 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
6918 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
6919 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
6920 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
6921 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
6922
6923 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
6924 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
6925 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
6926 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
6927 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
6928 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
6929 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
6930 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
6931
6932 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6933
6934 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
6935 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
6936 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
6937 also using the mathematical software
6938 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
6939 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
6940 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
6941
6942 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
6943 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
6944 statistics?</strong></p>
6945
6946 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
6947 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
6948 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
6949 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
6950
6951 <ul>
6952
6953 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
6954 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
6955 constructions in planar geometry
6956
6957 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
6958 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
6959 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
6960
6961 </ul>
6962
6963 <p>I like also
6964 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
6965 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
6966 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
6967
6968 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6969 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6970
6971 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
6972
6973 <ul>
6974
6975 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
6976
6977 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
6978     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
6979     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
6980
6981 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
6982
6983 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
6984     system.</li>
6985
6986 </ul>
6987
6988       </div>
6989       <div class="tags">
6990
6991
6992         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
6993
6994
6995       </div>
6996     </div>
6997     <div class="padding"></div>
6998
6999     <div class="entry">
7000       <div class="title">
7001         <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>
7002       </div>
7003       <div class="date">
7004          1st June 2013
7005       </div>
7006       <div class="body">
7007         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7008 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
7009 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
7010 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
7011 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
7012 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
7013 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
7014 program.</p>
7015
7016 <!-- 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 -->
7017
7018 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
7019 <p>
7020 <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>
7021 <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>
7022 <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>
7023 <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>
7024 <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>
7025 <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>
7026 <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>
7027 <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>
7028 <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>
7029 <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>
7030 <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>
7031 <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>
7032 <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>
7033 <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>
7034 </p>
7035
7036 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
7037 <p>
7038 <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>
7039 <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>
7040 <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>
7041 <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>
7042 <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>
7043 <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>
7044 </p>
7045
7046 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
7047 <p>
7048 <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>
7049 </p>
7050
7051 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
7052 <p>
7053 <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>
7054 <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>
7055 <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>
7056 <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>
7057 <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>
7058 <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>
7059 <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>
7060 <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>
7061 <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>
7062 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
7063 <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>
7064 </p>
7065
7066 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
7067 <p>
7068 <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>
7069 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
7070 </p>
7071
7072 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
7073 <p>
7074 <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>
7075 <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>
7076 <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>
7077 </p>
7078
7079 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
7080 <p>
7081 <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>
7082 <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>
7083 <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>
7084 <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>
7085 <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>
7086 </p>
7087
7088 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
7089 <p>
7090 <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>
7091 <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>
7092 <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>
7093 <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>
7094 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
7095 <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>
7096 <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>
7097 <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>
7098 <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>
7099 <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>
7100 <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>
7101 <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>
7102 <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>
7103 <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>
7104 <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>
7105 <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>
7106 <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>
7107 </p>
7108
7109 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
7110 <p>
7111 <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>
7112 <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>
7113 </p>
7114
7115 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
7116 <p>
7117 <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>
7118 <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>
7119 <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>
7120 <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>
7121 <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>
7122 <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>
7123 <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>
7124 <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>
7125 <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>
7126 <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>
7127 </p>
7128
7129 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
7130 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
7131 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
7132 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
7133 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
7134 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
7135 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
7136
7137       </div>
7138       <div class="tags">
7139
7140
7141         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7142
7143
7144       </div>
7145     </div>
7146     <div class="padding"></div>
7147
7148     <div class="entry">
7149       <div class="title">
7150         <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>
7151       </div>
7152       <div class="date">
7153         27th May 2013
7154       </div>
7155       <div class="body">
7156         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7157 <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
7158 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7159 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7160 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7161 and Windows 8.</p>
7162
7163 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7164 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7165 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7166 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7167 enough to tell.</p>
7168
7169 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7170 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7171 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7172 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7173 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7174 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
7175 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
7176 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
7177 to follow.</p>
7178
7179 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
7180 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
7181 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
7182 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
7183 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
7184 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
7185 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
7186 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
7187
7188 <p>I've updated the
7189 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
7190 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
7191 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
7192 machine.</p>
7193
7194 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
7195 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
7196
7197       </div>
7198       <div class="tags">
7199
7200
7201         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>.
7202
7203
7204       </div>
7205     </div>
7206     <div class="padding"></div>
7207
7208     <div class="entry">
7209       <div class="title">
7210         <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>
7211       </div>
7212       <div class="date">
7213         25th May 2013
7214       </div>
7215       <div class="body">
7216         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
7217 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
7218 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
7219 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
7220 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
7221 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
7222
7223 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
7224 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
7225 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
7226 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
7227 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
7228 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
7229 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
7230 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
7231 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
7232 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
7233
7234 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
7235 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7236 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
7237 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
7238 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
7239 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
7240
7241 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
7242 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
7243 on new Laptops?</p>
7244
7245       </div>
7246       <div class="tags">
7247
7248
7249         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>.
7250
7251
7252       </div>
7253     </div>
7254     <div class="padding"></div>
7255
7256     <div class="entry">
7257       <div class="title">
7258         <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>
7259       </div>
7260       <div class="date">
7261         17th May 2013
7262       </div>
7263       <div class="body">
7264         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
7265 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
7266 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
7267 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
7268 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
7269 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
7270 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
7271 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
7272 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
7273 donate some money</a>.
7274
7275 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
7276 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
7277 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
7278 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
7279 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
7280
7281 <p>The script,
7282 <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/>
7283 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
7284 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
7285 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
7286
7287 <ol>
7288
7289 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
7290 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
7291 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
7292     our configuration.</li>
7293 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
7294     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
7295     according to the profile specified in the config above,
7296     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
7297 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
7298     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
7299 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
7300
7301 </ol>
7302
7303 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
7304 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
7305 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
7306 the needed packages.</p>
7307
7308 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
7309 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
7310 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
7311 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
7312 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
7313 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
7314
7315 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
7316 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
7317 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
7318
7319 <p><pre>
7320 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
7321 DESKTOP="lxde"
7322 </pre></p>
7323
7324 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
7325 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
7326 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
7327 boot.</p>
7328
7329       </div>
7330       <div class="tags">
7331
7332
7333         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>.
7334
7335
7336       </div>
7337     </div>
7338     <div class="padding"></div>
7339
7340     <div class="entry">
7341       <div class="title">
7342         <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>
7343       </div>
7344       <div class="date">
7345         14th May 2013
7346       </div>
7347       <div class="body">
7348         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7349 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
7350 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7351
7352 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
7353 2013-05-14</strong></p>
7354
7355 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
7356 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
7357 codename "Wheezy".</p>
7358
7359 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7360
7361 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
7362 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
7363 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
7364 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
7365 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
7366 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
7367 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
7368 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
7369
7370 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
7371 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
7372 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
7373
7374 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7375 <ul>
7376   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
7377     default.</li>
7378   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
7379   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
7380   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
7381     ibus-anthy.</li>
7382 </ul>
7383
7384 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7385 <ul>
7386
7387   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
7388     reliability improvements.</li>
7389   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
7390     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
7391   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
7392     problems.</li>
7393   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
7394     direct:// URL.</li>
7395   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
7396   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
7397   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
7398   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
7399     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
7400   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
7401     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
7402 </ul>
7403
7404 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7405 <ul>
7406
7407   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
7408     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
7409     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
7410   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
7411   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7412     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
7413   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
7414   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
7415   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
7416     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
7417   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
7418     password submission problem
7419     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
7420
7421 </ul>
7422
7423 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7424
7425 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7426 <ul>
7427
7428   <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>
7429   <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>
7430   <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>
7431
7432 </ul>
7433
7434 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
7435
7436 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
7437
7438 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7439
7440 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7441
7442       </div>
7443       <div class="tags">
7444
7445
7446         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7447
7448
7449       </div>
7450     </div>
7451     <div class="padding"></div>
7452
7453     <div class="entry">
7454       <div class="title">
7455         <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>
7456       </div>
7457       <div class="date">
7458         11th May 2013
7459       </div>
7460       <div class="body">
7461         <P>In January,
7462 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
7463 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
7464 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
7465 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
7466 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
7467 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
7468 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
7469 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
7470 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
7471 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
7472 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
7473 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
7474
7475 <p><table>
7476 <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>
7477 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
7478 <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>
7479 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
7480 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
7481 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
7482 <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>
7483 <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>
7484 <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>
7485 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
7486 </table></p>
7487
7488 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
7489 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
7490 available in experimental.</p>
7491
7492 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
7493 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
7494 for LEGO designers.</p>
7495
7496       </div>
7497       <div class="tags">
7498
7499
7500         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7501
7502
7503       </div>
7504     </div>
7505     <div class="padding"></div>
7506
7507     <div class="entry">
7508       <div class="title">
7509         <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>
7510       </div>
7511       <div class="date">
7512          5th May 2013
7513       </div>
7514       <div class="body">
7515         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
7516 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
7517 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
7518 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
7519 soon.</p>
7520
7521 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
7522 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
7523 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
7524 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
7525 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
7526 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
7527 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
7528 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
7529 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
7530 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
7531 Edu.</a>
7532
7533 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
7534 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
7535 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
7536 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
7537 follow.<p>
7538
7539       </div>
7540       <div class="tags">
7541
7542
7543         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>.
7544
7545
7546       </div>
7547     </div>
7548     <div class="padding"></div>
7549
7550     <div class="entry">
7551       <div class="title">
7552         <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>
7553       </div>
7554       <div class="date">
7555         26th April 2013
7556       </div>
7557       <div class="body">
7558         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
7559 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
7560 announcement:</p>
7561
7562 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
7563 2013-04-26</strong></p>
7564
7565 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
7566 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7567
7568 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7569
7570 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7571 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7572 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7573 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
7574 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7575 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7576 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7577 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7578 installed via the network.</p>
7579
7580 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
7581 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
7582 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
7583
7584 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7585
7586 <ul>
7587 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
7588   <ul>
7589      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
7590      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
7591          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
7592          manual.)</li>
7593      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
7594      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
7595      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
7596      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
7597      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
7598      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
7599      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
7600      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
7601      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
7602      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
7603      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
7604      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
7605          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
7606          manual</a> for more details.</li>
7607      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
7608          installation.</li>
7609      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
7610          <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>
7611   </ul></li>
7612 </ul>
7613
7614 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
7615 <ul>
7616 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
7617     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
7618     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
7619 </ul>
7620
7621 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
7622 <ul>
7623 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
7624     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
7625     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
7626 </ul>
7627
7628 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7629 <ul>
7630 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
7631     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
7632     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
7633 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
7634     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
7635     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
7636 </ul>
7637
7638 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
7639 <ul>
7640 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
7641     yet.</li>
7642 </ul>
7643
7644 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
7645
7646 <ul>
7647 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
7648     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
7649     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
7650 </ul>
7651
7652 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7653
7654 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
7655 <ul>
7656 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
7657 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
7658 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
7659 </ul>
7660
7661 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
7662
7663 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
7664
7665 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7666
7667 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7668
7669       </div>
7670       <div class="tags">
7671
7672
7673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7674
7675
7676       </div>
7677     </div>
7678     <div class="padding"></div>
7679
7680     <div class="entry">
7681       <div class="title">
7682         <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>
7683       </div>
7684       <div class="date">
7685         16th April 2013
7686       </div>
7687       <div class="body">
7688         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
7689 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
7690 Details about the gathering can be found
7691 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
7692 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
7693 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
7694 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
7695 weekend.</p>
7696
7697 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
7698 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
7699 Edu release.</p>
7700
7701 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
7702
7703       </div>
7704       <div class="tags">
7705
7706
7707         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7708
7709
7710       </div>
7711     </div>
7712     <div class="padding"></div>
7713
7714     <div class="entry">
7715       <div class="title">
7716         <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>
7717       </div>
7718       <div class="date">
7719          3rd April 2013
7720       </div>
7721       <div class="body">
7722         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
7723 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
7724 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
7725 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
7726
7727 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
7728 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
7729 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
7730 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
7731 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
7732 BTS. :)</p>
7733
7734       </div>
7735       <div class="tags">
7736
7737
7738         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>.
7739
7740
7741       </div>
7742     </div>
7743     <div class="padding"></div>
7744
7745     <div class="entry">
7746       <div class="title">
7747         <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>
7748       </div>
7749       <div class="date">
7750         26th March 2013
7751       </div>
7752       <div class="body">
7753         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
7754 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
7755 font you use when printing.</p>
7756
7757 <p>Three years ago,
7758 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
7759 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
7760 changed their default front from
7761 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
7762 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
7763 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
7764 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
7765 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
7766 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
7767 prints.</p>
7768
7769 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
7770 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
7771 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
7772 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
7773 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
7774 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
7775 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
7776 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
7777 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
7778 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
7779 depend on the documents printed.</p>
7780
7781 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
7782 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
7783 and save some money in the process.</p>
7784
7785 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
7786 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
7787 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
7788 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
7789 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
7790 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
7791 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
7792 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
7793 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
7794
7795       </div>
7796       <div class="tags">
7797
7798
7799         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7800
7801
7802       </div>
7803     </div>
7804     <div class="padding"></div>
7805
7806     <div class="entry">
7807       <div class="title">
7808         <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>
7809       </div>
7810       <div class="date">
7811         24th March 2013
7812       </div>
7813       <div class="body">
7814         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
7815 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
7816 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
7817 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
7818 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
7819 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
7820 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
7821 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
7822 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
7823 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
7824 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
7825 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
7826
7827 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
7828 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
7829 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
7830 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
7831 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
7832 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
7833 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
7834 all I had to do was to use the
7835 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
7836 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
7837 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
7838 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
7839 xsltproc/fop (aka
7840 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
7841 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
7842 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
7843 technical detail.</p>
7844
7845 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
7846 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
7847 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
7848 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
7849 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
7850 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
7851
7852 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
7853 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
7854 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
7855 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
7856 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
7857 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
7858 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
7859 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
7860 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
7861
7862 <p><blockquote><pre>
7863 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7864 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7865   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
7866     &lt;hr/&gt;
7867   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7868 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7869 </pre></blockquote></p>
7870
7871 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
7872
7873 <p><blockquote><pre>
7874 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7875 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7876   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
7877     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
7878       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
7879     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
7880   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7881 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7882 </pre></blockquote></p>
7883
7884 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
7885 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
7886 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
7887 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
7888 enough.</p>
7889
7890 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
7891 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
7892 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
7893 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
7894 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
7895 look like this:</p>
7896
7897 <p><blockquote><pre>
7898 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7899 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7900   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
7901     &lt;br/&gt;
7902   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7903 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7904 </pre></blockquote></p>
7905
7906 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
7907
7908 <p><blockquote><pre>
7909 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7910 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
7911   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
7912   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
7913     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
7914   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7915 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7916 </pre></blockquote></p>
7917
7918 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
7919 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
7920 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
7921 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
7922 page.</p>
7923
7924 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
7925 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
7926 github</a>
7927 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
7928 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
7929 days.</p>
7930
7931       </div>
7932       <div class="tags">
7933
7934
7935         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>.
7936
7937
7938       </div>
7939     </div>
7940     <div class="padding"></div>
7941
7942     <div class="entry">
7943       <div class="title">
7944         <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>
7945       </div>
7946       <div class="date">
7947         17th March 2013
7948       </div>
7949       <div class="body">
7950         <p>Via
7951 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
7952 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
7953 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
7954 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
7955 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
7956 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
7957 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
7958
7959 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
7960 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
7961
7962 <blockquote>
7963 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
7964 </blockquote>
7965
7966 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
7967
7968 <blockquote>
7969 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
7970 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
7971 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
7972 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
7973 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
7974 </blockquote>
7975
7976 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
7977 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
7978 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
7979 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
7980
7981 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
7982 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
7983
7984 <blockquote>
7985 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
7986 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
7987 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
7988 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
7989 </blockquote>
7990
7991 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
7992 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
7993 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
7994 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
7995 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
7996
7997 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
7998 embedding:</p>
7999
8000 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
8001
8002       </div>
8003       <div class="tags">
8004
8005
8006         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8007
8008
8009       </div>
8010     </div>
8011     <div class="padding"></div>
8012
8013     <div class="entry">
8014       <div class="title">
8015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
8016       </div>
8017       <div class="date">
8018          8th March 2013
8019       </div>
8020       <div class="body">
8021         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
8022 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
8023 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
8024 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
8025 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
8026 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
8027 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
8028
8029 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
8030
8031 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
8032 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
8033
8034 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
8035 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
8036 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
8037 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
8038 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
8039 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
8040
8041 <p>Images are available for download at
8042 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
8043
8044 <p>md5sums:
8045 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8046 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8047 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8048
8049 <p>sha1sums:
8050 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8051 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8052 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8053
8054 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
8055
8056 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
8057 2013-03-03:</p>
8058
8059 <ul>
8060   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
8061   <ul>
8062         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
8063         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
8064   </ul></li>
8065   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
8066   <ul>
8067         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
8068         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
8069   </ul></li>
8070   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
8071      <ul>
8072         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
8073         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
8074         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
8075                 Closes: #664596</li>
8076         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
8077                 Closes: #664976</li>
8078         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
8079            <ul>
8080                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
8081                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
8082            </ul></li>
8083         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
8084            <ul>
8085                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
8086                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
8087                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
8088                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
8089                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
8090            </ul></li>
8091         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
8092     </ul>
8093   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
8094     <ul>
8095         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
8096     </ul></li>
8097 </ul>
8098
8099 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
8100 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
8101 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
8102 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
8103
8104 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
8105 mailinglist
8106 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
8107 </p></blockquote>
8108
8109 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
8110
8111       </div>
8112       <div class="tags">
8113
8114
8115         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8116
8117
8118       </div>
8119     </div>
8120     <div class="padding"></div>
8121
8122     <div class="entry">
8123       <div class="title">
8124         <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>
8125       </div>
8126       <div class="date">
8127          3rd March 2013
8128       </div>
8129       <div class="body">
8130         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
8131 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
8132 support using
8133 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
8134 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
8135 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
8136 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
8137 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
8138 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
8139 using the GNU LGPL, and
8140 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
8141
8142 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
8143 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
8144 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
8145 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
8146 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
8147 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
8148
8149 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
8150 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
8151 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
8152 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
8153 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
8154 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
8155 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
8156 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
8157 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
8158 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
8159 signal distribution is handled using
8160 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
8161 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
8162 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
8163 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
8164 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
8165 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
8166 them up a bit more first.</p>
8167
8168 <p>The development is coordinated on the
8169 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
8170 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
8171 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
8172 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
8173 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
8174 development.</p>
8175
8176       </div>
8177       <div class="tags">
8178
8179
8180         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>.
8181
8182
8183       </div>
8184     </div>
8185     <div class="padding"></div>
8186
8187     <div class="entry">
8188       <div class="title">
8189         <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>
8190       </div>
8191       <div class="date">
8192         27th February 2013
8193       </div>
8194       <div class="body">
8195         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
8196 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
8197 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
8198 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
8199 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
8200 (where I am the chair of the board) and
8201 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
8202 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
8203 GNU», with this description:
8204
8205 <p><blockquote>
8206 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
8207 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
8208 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
8209 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
8210 </blockquote></p>
8211
8212 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
8213 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
8214 am really curious how many will show up.  See
8215 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
8216 page</a> for the location details.</p>
8217
8218       </div>
8219       <div class="tags">
8220
8221
8222         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>.
8223
8224
8225       </div>
8226     </div>
8227     <div class="padding"></div>
8228
8229     <div class="entry">
8230       <div class="title">
8231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="date">
8234         15th February 2013
8235       </div>
8236       <div class="body">
8237         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
8238 now a great source of free maps available from
8239 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
8240 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
8241 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
8242 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
8243 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
8244 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
8245 page for descriptions).</p>
8246
8247 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
8248 map you can just edit the
8249 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
8250 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
8251
8252       </div>
8253       <div class="tags">
8254
8255
8256         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>.
8257
8258
8259       </div>
8260     </div>
8261     <div class="padding"></div>
8262
8263     <div class="entry">
8264       <div class="title">
8265         <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>
8266       </div>
8267       <div class="date">
8268         12th February 2013
8269       </div>
8270       <div class="body">
8271         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
8272 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
8273 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
8274 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
8275 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
8276 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
8277 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
8278 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
8279 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
8280 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
8281 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
8282 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
8283 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
8284 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
8285 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
8286 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
8287
8288 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
8289 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
8290 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
8291 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
8292 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
8293 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
8294 fields:</p>
8295
8296 <p><pre>
8297 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8298 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8299 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
8300 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8301 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8302 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8303 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8304 </pre></p>
8305
8306 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
8307 answer regarding
8308 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
8309 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
8310 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
8311 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
8312
8313 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
8314
8315 <p><pre>
8316 BEGIN:VCARD
8317 VERSION:2.1
8318 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
8319 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
8320 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
8321 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
8322 REV:20130212T095000Z
8323 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8324 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8325 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8326 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8327 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8328 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8329 END:VCARD
8330 </pre></p>
8331
8332 <p>The resulting QR code created using
8333 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
8334 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
8335 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
8336 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
8337 system.</p>
8338
8339 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
8340
8341 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
8342 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
8343 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
8344 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
8345
8346 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
8347 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
8348
8349       </div>
8350       <div class="tags">
8351
8352
8353         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>.
8354
8355
8356       </div>
8357     </div>
8358     <div class="padding"></div>
8359
8360     <div class="entry">
8361       <div class="title">
8362         <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>
8363       </div>
8364       <div class="date">
8365         10th February 2013
8366       </div>
8367       <div class="body">
8368         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
8369
8370 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
8371 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
8372 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
8373 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
8374 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
8375 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
8376 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
8377 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
8378 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
8379 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
8380 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
8381
8382 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
8383 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
8384 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
8385 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
8386 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
8387 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
8388 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
8389 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
8390 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
8391 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
8392 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
8393 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
8394 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
8395 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
8396 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
8397 ones own
8398 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
8399 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
8400 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
8401 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
8402 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
8403 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
8404 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
8405 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
8406 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
8407 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
8408 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
8409
8410 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
8411 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
8412 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
8413 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
8414 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
8415 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
8416
8417 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
8418 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
8419 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
8420
8421       </div>
8422       <div class="tags">
8423
8424
8425         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8426
8427
8428       </div>
8429     </div>
8430     <div class="padding"></div>
8431
8432     <div class="entry">
8433       <div class="title">
8434         <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>
8435       </div>
8436       <div class="date">
8437          2nd February 2013
8438       </div>
8439       <div class="body">
8440         <p>My
8441 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
8442 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
8443 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
8444 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
8445 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
8446 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
8447 version too.</p>
8448
8449 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
8450 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
8451 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
8452 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
8453 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
8454 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
8455 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
8456 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
8457
8458 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
8459 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
8460 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
8461 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
8462 it. :)</p>
8463
8464 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8465 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8466 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8467
8468       </div>
8469       <div class="tags">
8470
8471
8472         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>.
8473
8474
8475       </div>
8476     </div>
8477     <div class="padding"></div>
8478
8479     <div class="entry">
8480       <div class="title">
8481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
8482       </div>
8483       <div class="date">
8484         22nd January 2013
8485       </div>
8486       <div class="body">
8487         <p>Yesterday, I
8488 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
8489 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
8490 pluggable hardware devices, which I
8491 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
8492 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
8493 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
8494 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
8495 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
8496 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
8497 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
8498 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
8499 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
8500 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
8501
8502 <pre>
8503 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
8504 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
8505 </pre>
8506
8507 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
8508 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
8509 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
8510 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
8511
8512 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
8513 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
8514 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
8515 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
8516 word.</p>
8517
8518 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
8519 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
8520 process.</p>
8521
8522 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
8523 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
8524
8525       </div>
8526       <div class="tags">
8527
8528
8529         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>.
8530
8531
8532       </div>
8533     </div>
8534     <div class="padding"></div>
8535
8536     <div class="entry">
8537       <div class="title">
8538         <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>
8539       </div>
8540       <div class="date">
8541         21st January 2013
8542       </div>
8543       <div class="body">
8544         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
8545 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
8546 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
8547 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
8548 it, fetch the
8549 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
8550 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
8551 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
8552 autostart script.</p>
8553
8554 <p>The design is simple:</p>
8555
8556 <ul>
8557
8558 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
8559 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
8560
8561 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
8562 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
8563 initially did.</li>
8564
8565 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
8566 the APT database, a database
8567 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
8568 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
8569
8570 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
8571 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
8572 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
8573 package or packages.</li>
8574
8575 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
8576 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
8577
8578 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
8579 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
8580
8581 </ul>
8582
8583 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
8584 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
8585 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
8586 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
8587
8588 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
8589 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
8590 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
8591 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
8592 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
8593
8594 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
8595 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
8596 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
8597 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
8598 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
8599 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
8600 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
8601 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
8602
8603 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
8604 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
8605 '<tt>svn checkout
8606 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
8607 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
8608 devscripts package.</p>
8609
8610 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
8611 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
8612 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
8613 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
8614 instructions</a> for details.</p>
8615
8616       </div>
8617       <div class="tags">
8618
8619
8620         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>.
8621
8622
8623       </div>
8624     </div>
8625     <div class="padding"></div>
8626
8627     <div class="entry">
8628       <div class="title">
8629         <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>
8630       </div>
8631       <div class="date">
8632         19th January 2013
8633       </div>
8634       <div class="body">
8635         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
8636 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
8637 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
8638 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
8639 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
8640 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
8641 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
8642 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
8643 not a durable solution.
8644
8645 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
8646 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
8647
8648 <ul>
8649
8650 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
8651   than A4).</li>
8652 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
8653 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
8654 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
8655 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
8656 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
8657 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
8658 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
8659 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
8660 size).</li>
8661 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
8662   X.org packages.</li>
8663 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
8664   the time).
8665
8666 </ul>
8667
8668 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
8669 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
8670 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
8671 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
8672 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
8673 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
8674 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
8675 still be useful.</p>
8676
8677 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
8678 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
8679 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
8680 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
8681 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
8682 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
8683
8684       </div>
8685       <div class="tags">
8686
8687
8688         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>.
8689
8690
8691       </div>
8692     </div>
8693     <div class="padding"></div>
8694
8695     <div class="entry">
8696       <div class="title">
8697         <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>
8698       </div>
8699       <div class="date">
8700         18th January 2013
8701       </div>
8702       <div class="body">
8703         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
8704 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
8705 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
8706 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
8707 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
8708 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
8709 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
8710
8711 <pre>
8712 #!/usr/bin/python
8713 import sys
8714 import apt
8715 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8716     cache = apt.Cache()
8717     cache.open(None)
8718     thepkgs = []
8719     for pkg in cache:
8720         version = pkg.candidate
8721         if version is None:
8722             version = pkg.installed
8723         if version is None:
8724             continue
8725         record = version.record
8726         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
8727             continue
8728         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
8729         for t in mime_types:
8730             t = t.rstrip().strip()
8731             if t == mimetype:
8732                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
8733     return thepkgs
8734 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
8735 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
8736     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
8737 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
8738 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8739     print "  %s" %pkg
8740 </pre>
8741
8742 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
8743
8744 <pre>
8745 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
8746 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
8747   gecko-mediaplayer
8748 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
8749 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
8750   browser-plugin-gnash
8751 %
8752 </pre>
8753
8754 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
8755 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
8756 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
8757 anyone working on adding it?</p>
8758
8759 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
8760 request for icweasel support for this feature is
8761 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
8762 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
8763 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
8764 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
8765
8766       </div>
8767       <div class="tags">
8768
8769
8770         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>.
8771
8772
8773       </div>
8774     </div>
8775     <div class="padding"></div>
8776
8777     <div class="entry">
8778       <div class="title">
8779         <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>
8780       </div>
8781       <div class="date">
8782         16th January 2013
8783       </div>
8784       <div class="body">
8785         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
8786 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
8787 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
8788 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
8789 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
8790 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
8791 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
8792 downloaded by the browser.</p>
8793
8794 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
8795 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
8796 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
8797 can be found on the
8798 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
8799 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
8800 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
8801 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
8802 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
8803
8804 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
8805
8806 <pre>
8807   count MIME type
8808   ----- -----------------------
8809      32 text/plain
8810      30 audio/mpeg
8811      29 image/png
8812      28 image/jpeg
8813      27 application/ogg
8814      26 audio/x-mp3
8815      25 image/tiff
8816      25 image/gif
8817      22 image/bmp
8818      22 audio/x-wav
8819      20 audio/x-flac
8820      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8821      18 video/x-ms-asf
8822      18 audio/x-musepack
8823      18 audio/x-mpeg
8824      18 application/x-ogg
8825      17 video/mpeg
8826      17 audio/x-scpls
8827      17 audio/ogg
8828      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8829 </pre>
8830
8831 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
8832
8833 <pre>
8834   count MIME type
8835   ----- -----------------------
8836      33 text/plain
8837      32 image/png
8838      32 image/jpeg
8839      29 audio/mpeg
8840      27 image/gif
8841      26 image/tiff
8842      26 application/ogg
8843      25 audio/x-mp3
8844      22 image/bmp
8845      21 audio/x-wav
8846      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8847      19 audio/x-mpeg
8848      18 video/mpeg
8849      18 audio/x-scpls
8850      18 audio/x-flac
8851      18 application/x-ogg
8852      17 video/x-ms-asf
8853      17 text/html
8854      17 audio/x-musepack
8855      16 image/x-xbitmap
8856 </pre>
8857
8858 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
8859
8860 <pre>
8861   count MIME type
8862   ----- -----------------------
8863      31 text/plain
8864      31 image/png
8865      31 image/jpeg
8866      29 audio/mpeg
8867      28 application/ogg
8868      27 image/gif
8869      26 image/tiff
8870      26 audio/x-mp3
8871      23 audio/x-wav
8872      22 image/bmp
8873      21 audio/x-flac
8874      20 audio/x-mpegurl
8875      19 audio/x-mpeg
8876      18 video/x-ms-asf
8877      18 video/mpeg
8878      18 audio/x-scpls
8879      18 application/x-ogg
8880      17 audio/x-musepack
8881      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8882      16 video/x-msvideo
8883 </pre>
8884
8885 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
8886 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
8887 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
8888 issues.</p>
8889
8890 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
8891 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
8892
8893       </div>
8894       <div class="tags">
8895
8896
8897         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>.
8898
8899
8900       </div>
8901     </div>
8902     <div class="padding"></div>
8903
8904     <div class="entry">
8905       <div class="title">
8906         <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>
8907       </div>
8908       <div class="date">
8909         15th January 2013
8910       </div>
8911       <div class="body">
8912         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
8913 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
8914 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
8915 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
8916 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
8917 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
8918 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
8919 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
8920 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
8921 packages.</p>
8922
8923 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
8924 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
8925 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
8926 modalias.</p>
8927
8928 <p><blockquote>
8929 Package: package-name
8930 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
8931 </blockquote></p>
8932
8933 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
8934 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
8935
8936 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
8937 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
8938
8939 <p><blockquote>
8940 Package: cheese
8941 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
8942 </blockquote></p>
8943
8944 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
8945 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
8946
8947 <p><blockquote>
8948 Package: pcmciautils
8949 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
8950 </blockquote></p>
8951
8952 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
8953 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
8954
8955 <p><blockquote>
8956 Package: colorhug-client
8957 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
8958 </blockquote></p>
8959
8960 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8961 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8962 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
8963
8964 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8965 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8966 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8967 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8968 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
8969 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8970 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
8971 Raring.</p>
8972
8973 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8974 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8975 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
8976 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
8977 try the
8978 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
8979 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8980 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8981 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
8982
8983 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8984 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
8985
8986 <p><blockquote>
8987 % ./hw-support-lookup
8988 <br>yubikey-personalization
8989 <br>%
8990 </blockquote></p>
8991
8992 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8993 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
8994
8995 <p><blockquote>
8996 % ./hw-support-lookup
8997 <br>pcmciautils
8998 <br>%
8999 </blockquote></p>
9000
9001 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
9002 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
9003 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
9004
9005 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
9006 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
9007 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
9008 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
9009 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
9010 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
9011 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
9012 see if it work.</p>
9013
9014 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9015 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9016 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9017 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9018
9019       </div>
9020       <div class="tags">
9021
9022
9023         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>.
9024
9025
9026       </div>
9027     </div>
9028     <div class="padding"></div>
9029
9030     <div class="entry">
9031       <div class="title">
9032         <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>
9033       </div>
9034       <div class="date">
9035         14th January 2013
9036       </div>
9037       <div class="body">
9038         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
9039 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
9040 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
9041 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
9042 in
9043 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9044 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
9045
9046 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
9047
9048 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
9049 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
9050 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
9051 &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;,
9052 &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
9053 &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;.
9054
9055 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
9056 this shell script:</p>
9057
9058 <pre>
9059 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
9060 </pre>
9061
9062 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
9063 using modinfo:</p>
9064
9065 <pre>
9066 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
9067 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
9068 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
9069 %
9070 </pre>
9071
9072 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
9073
9074 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
9075 Bridge memory controller:</p>
9076
9077 <p><blockquote>
9078 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
9079 </blockquote></p>
9080
9081 <p>This represent these values:</p>
9082
9083 <pre>
9084  v   00008086  (vendor)
9085  d   00002770  (device)
9086  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
9087  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
9088  bc  06        (bus class)
9089  sc  00        (bus subclass)
9090  i   00        (interface)
9091 </pre>
9092
9093 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
9094 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
9095 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
9096 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
9097
9098 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
9099 means.</p>
9100
9101 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
9102
9103 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
9104 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
9105
9106 <p><blockquote>
9107 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
9108 </blockquote></p>
9109
9110 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
9111
9112 <pre>
9113  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
9114  p    0001  (device product)
9115  d    0206  (bcddevice)
9116  dc     09  (device class)
9117  dsc    00  (device subclass)
9118  dp     00  (device protocol)
9119  ic     09  (interface class)
9120  isc    00  (interface subclass)
9121  ip     00  (interface protocol)
9122 </pre>
9123
9124 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
9125 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
9126 these alias entries show up:</p>
9127
9128 <p><blockquote>
9129 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
9130 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
9131 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
9132 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
9133 </blockquote></p>
9134
9135 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
9136 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
9137 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
9138
9139 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
9140
9141 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
9142 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
9143
9144 <p><blockquote>
9145 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9146 </blockquote></p>
9147
9148 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
9149
9150 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
9151
9152 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
9153 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
9154 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
9155
9156 <p><blockquote>
9157 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
9158 </blockquote></p>
9159
9160 <p>The values present are</p>
9161
9162 <pre>
9163  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
9164  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
9165  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
9166  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
9167  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
9168  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
9169  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
9170  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
9171  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
9172  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
9173  ct   10             (chassis type)
9174  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
9175 </pre>
9176
9177 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
9178 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
9179
9180 <pre>
9181   3 Desktop
9182   4 Low Profile Desktop
9183   5 Pizza Box
9184   6 Mini Tower
9185   7 Tower
9186   8 Portable
9187   9 Laptop
9188  10 Notebook
9189  11 Hand Held
9190  12 Docking Station
9191  13 All In One
9192  14 Sub Notebook
9193  15 Space-saving
9194  16 Lunch Box
9195  17 Main Server Chassis
9196  18 Expansion Chassis
9197  19 Sub Chassis
9198  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
9199  21 Peripheral Chassis
9200  22 RAID Chassis
9201  23 Rack Mount Chassis
9202  24 Sealed-case PC
9203  25 Multi-system
9204  26 CompactPCI
9205  27 AdvancedTCA
9206  28 Blade
9207  29 Blade Enclosing
9208 </pre>
9209
9210 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
9211 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
9212 claim it is a desktop.</p>
9213
9214 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
9215
9216 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
9217 test machine:</p>
9218
9219 <p><blockquote>
9220 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
9221 </blockquote></p>
9222
9223 <p>The values present are</p>
9224
9225 <pre>
9226   ty  01  (type)
9227   pr  00  (prototype)
9228   id  00  (id)
9229   ex  00  (extra)
9230 </pre>
9231
9232 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
9233 the valid values are.</p>
9234
9235 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
9236
9237 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
9238 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
9239 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
9240 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
9241 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
9242 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
9243 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
9244
9245 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
9246
9247 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
9248 one can use the following shell script:</p>
9249
9250 <pre>
9251   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
9252     echo "$id" ; \
9253     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
9254   done
9255 </pre>
9256
9257 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
9258 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
9259
9260 <pre>
9261   acpi:ACPI0003:
9262     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
9263   acpi:device:
9264   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
9265   acpi:IBM0068:
9266     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
9267     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
9268     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
9269     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
9270   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9271     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
9272     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
9273     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
9274   [...]
9275 </pre>
9276
9277 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9278 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9279 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9280 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9281
9282 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
9283 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
9284 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
9285
9286       </div>
9287       <div class="tags">
9288
9289
9290         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>.
9291
9292
9293       </div>
9294     </div>
9295     <div class="padding"></div>
9296
9297     <div class="entry">
9298       <div class="title">
9299         <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>
9300       </div>
9301       <div class="date">
9302         10th January 2013
9303       </div>
9304       <div class="body">
9305         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
9306 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
9307 Launcher and updated the Debian package
9308 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
9309 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
9310 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
9311 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
9312 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
9313 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
9314 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
9315 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
9316 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
9317 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
9318 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
9319 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
9320 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
9321 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
9322 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
9323
9324       </div>
9325       <div class="tags">
9326
9327
9328         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>.
9329
9330
9331       </div>
9332     </div>
9333     <div class="padding"></div>
9334
9335     <div class="entry">
9336       <div class="title">
9337         <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>
9338       </div>
9339       <div class="date">
9340          9th January 2013
9341       </div>
9342       <div class="body">
9343         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
9344 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
9345 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
9346 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
9347 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
9348 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
9349 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
9350 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
9351 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
9352 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
9353 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
9354
9355 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
9356 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
9357 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
9358 simple:
9359
9360 <ul>
9361
9362 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
9363   starting when a user log in.</li>
9364
9365 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
9366   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
9367
9368 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
9369   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
9370   packages.</li>
9371
9372 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
9373   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
9374
9375 </ul>
9376
9377 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
9378 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
9379 discover database to find packages and
9380 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
9381 packages.</p>
9382
9383 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
9384 draft package is now checked into
9385 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9386 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
9387 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
9388 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
9389 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
9390 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
9391 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
9392 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
9393 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
9394 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
9395 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
9396 because of the freeze).</p>
9397
9398 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
9399 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
9400 inserted):</p>
9401
9402 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
9403
9404 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
9405 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
9406 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
9407
9408 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
9409 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
9410 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
9411 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
9412 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
9413 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
9414 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
9415
9416 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
9417 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
9418 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
9419 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
9420 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
9421 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
9422 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
9423 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
9424 not be installed?</p>
9425
9426 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
9427 please send me an email. :)</p>
9428
9429       </div>
9430       <div class="tags">
9431
9432
9433         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>.
9434
9435
9436       </div>
9437     </div>
9438     <div class="padding"></div>
9439
9440     <div class="entry">
9441       <div class="title">
9442         <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>
9443       </div>
9444       <div class="date">
9445          2nd January 2013
9446       </div>
9447       <div class="body">
9448         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
9449 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
9450 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
9451 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
9452 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
9453 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
9454 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
9455 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
9456 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
9457 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
9458
9459 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
9460 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
9461 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
9462
9463       </div>
9464       <div class="tags">
9465
9466
9467         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9468
9469
9470       </div>
9471     </div>
9472     <div class="padding"></div>
9473
9474     <div class="entry">
9475       <div class="title">
9476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9477       </div>
9478       <div class="date">
9479         28th December 2012
9480       </div>
9481       <div class="body">
9482         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
9483 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9484 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
9485 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
9486 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
9487 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
9488 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
9489 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
9490 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
9491 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
9492 followed by many others. :)</p>
9493
9494 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
9495 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
9496 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
9497 you want to donate to the project.</p>
9498
9499       </div>
9500       <div class="tags">
9501
9502
9503         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9504
9505
9506       </div>
9507     </div>
9508     <div class="padding"></div>
9509
9510     <div class="entry">
9511       <div class="title">
9512         <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>
9513       </div>
9514       <div class="date">
9515         25th December 2012
9516       </div>
9517       <div class="body">
9518         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
9519 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
9520
9521 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
9522 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
9523 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
9524 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
9525 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
9526 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
9527 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
9528 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
9529 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
9530 name.</p>
9531
9532 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
9533 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
9534 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
9535
9536 <blockquote><pre>
9537 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
9538 cd bitcoin
9539 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
9540 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
9541 </pre></blockquote>
9542
9543 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
9544 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
9545 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
9546 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
9547 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
9548 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
9549 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
9550 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
9551 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
9552
9553 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9554 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9555 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9556
9557       </div>
9558       <div class="tags">
9559
9560
9561         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>.
9562
9563
9564       </div>
9565     </div>
9566     <div class="padding"></div>
9567
9568     <div class="entry">
9569       <div class="title">
9570         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
9571       </div>
9572       <div class="date">
9573         21st December 2012
9574       </div>
9575       <div class="body">
9576         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
9577 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
9578 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
9579 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
9580 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
9581 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
9582 is now maintained by a
9583 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
9584 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
9585 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
9586 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
9587 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
9588 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
9589 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
9590 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
9591 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
9592 Corallo in a
9593 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
9594 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
9595 Debian package.</p>
9596
9597 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
9598 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
9599 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
9600 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
9601 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
9602 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
9603 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
9604 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
9605 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
9606 new version to unstable.
9607
9608 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
9609 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
9610 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
9611 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
9612 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
9613 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
9614 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
9615 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
9616 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
9617 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
9618 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
9619 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
9620 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
9621 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
9622 have not tested them.</p>
9623
9624 <p>My
9625 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
9626 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
9627 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
9628 years ago, as can be
9629 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
9630 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
9631 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
9632 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
9633 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
9634 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
9635 the same address as last time,
9636 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9637
9638       </div>
9639       <div class="tags">
9640
9641
9642         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>.
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/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
9652       </div>
9653       <div class="date">
9654         18th December 2012
9655       </div>
9656       <div class="body">
9657         <p>A few days ago I came across
9658 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
9659 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
9660 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
9661 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
9662 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
9663 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
9664 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
9665 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
9666 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
9667
9668 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
9669 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
9670 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
9671 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
9672
9673 <blockquote><pre>
9674 2004-05-27 Book Store
9675       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
9676       Liabilities:Visa
9677 </pre></blockquote>
9678
9679 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
9680 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
9681 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
9682 Spang</a>,
9683 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
9684 Keen</a>,
9685 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
9686 Cantino</a> and
9687 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
9688 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
9689 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
9690 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
9691 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
9692
9693 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
9694 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
9695 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
9696 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
9697 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
9698
9699 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
9700 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
9701 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
9702 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
9703 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
9704 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
9705 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
9706 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
9707 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
9708
9709       </div>
9710       <div class="tags">
9711
9712
9713         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9714
9715
9716       </div>
9717     </div>
9718     <div class="padding"></div>
9719
9720     <div class="entry">
9721       <div class="title">
9722         <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>
9723       </div>
9724       <div class="date">
9725          6th December 2012
9726       </div>
9727       <div class="body">
9728         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
9729 Oslo</a>, we use the
9730 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
9731 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
9732 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
9733 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
9734 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
9735 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
9736 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
9737 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
9738 Python.</p>
9739
9740 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
9741 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
9742 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
9743 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
9744 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
9745 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
9746
9747 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
9748 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
9749 user currently logged in:</p>
9750
9751 <blockquote><pre>
9752 #!/usr/bin/env python
9753 import getpass
9754 import xmlrpclib
9755 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
9756 username = getpass.getuser()
9757 password = getpass.getpass()
9758 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
9759 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
9760 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
9761 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
9762 result = server.logout(sessionid)
9763 print result
9764 </pre></blockquote>
9765
9766 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
9767 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
9768
9769       </div>
9770       <div class="tags">
9771
9772
9773         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>.
9774
9775
9776       </div>
9777     </div>
9778     <div class="padding"></div>
9779
9780     <div class="entry">
9781       <div class="title">
9782         <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>
9783       </div>
9784       <div class="date">
9785         17th November 2012
9786       </div>
9787       <div class="body">
9788         <p>While working on a
9789 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
9790 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
9791 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
9792 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
9793 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
9794 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
9795
9796 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
9797 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
9798 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
9799 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
9800 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
9801 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
9802 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
9803 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
9804 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
9805 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
9806 arguments.</p>
9807
9808 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
9809 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
9810 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
9811 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
9812 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
9813 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
9814 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
9815 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
9816
9817 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
9818 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
9819 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
9820 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
9821 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
9822 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
9823 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
9824 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
9825 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
9826 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
9827 correct right holder.</p>
9828
9829 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
9830 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
9831 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
9832 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
9833 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
9834 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
9835 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
9836 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
9837 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
9838 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
9839 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
9840 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
9841 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
9842 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
9843
9844 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
9845 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
9846 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
9847
9848 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
9849 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
9850
9851       </div>
9852       <div class="tags">
9853
9854
9855         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>.
9856
9857
9858       </div>
9859     </div>
9860     <div class="padding"></div>
9861
9862     <div class="entry">
9863       <div class="title">
9864         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
9865       </div>
9866       <div class="date">
9867         14th November 2012
9868       </div>
9869       <div class="body">
9870         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
9871 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9872 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
9873 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
9874 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
9875 the people behind the German
9876 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
9877 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
9878 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
9879
9880 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9881
9882 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
9883 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
9884 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
9885
9886 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
9887 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
9888 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
9889 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
9890 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
9891 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
9892
9893 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
9894 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
9895 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
9896 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
9897 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
9898 relationship management and the communication processes in the
9899 project.</p>
9900
9901 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
9902 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
9903 and a yoga teacher.</p>
9904
9905 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9906 project?</strong></p>
9907
9908 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
9909
9910 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
9911 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
9912 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
9913 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
9914 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
9915 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
9916 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
9917 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
9918 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
9919 parents.</p>
9920
9921 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
9922 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
9923 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
9924 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
9925 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
9926 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
9927 Germany.</p>
9928
9929 <p>For information about our school project you can read
9930 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
9931 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
9932
9933 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9934 Edu?</strong></p>
9935
9936 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
9937 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
9938
9939 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
9940 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
9941 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
9942 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
9943 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
9944 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
9945 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
9946 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
9947 teachers, parents...</p>
9948
9949 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9950 Edu?</strong></p>
9951
9952 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
9953 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9954
9955 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
9956 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
9957 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
9958 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
9959 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9960
9961 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
9962 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
9963 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
9964 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
9965 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
9966 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
9967 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9968
9969 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9970
9971 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
9972 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
9973 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
9974 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
9975
9976 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9977 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9978
9979 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
9980 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
9981 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
9982 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
9983 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
9984
9985 <ul>
9986
9987 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
9988 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
9989 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
9990
9991 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
9992 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
9993 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
9994 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
9995 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
9996 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
9997 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
9998
9999 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
10000 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
10001 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
10002 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
10003
10004 </ul>
10005
10006       </div>
10007       <div class="tags">
10008
10009
10010         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10011
10012
10013       </div>
10014     </div>
10015     <div class="padding"></div>
10016
10017     <div class="entry">
10018       <div class="title">
10019         <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>
10020       </div>
10021       <div class="date">
10022          4th November 2012
10023       </div>
10024       <div class="body">
10025         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
10026 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
10027 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
10028 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
10029 see how a member of the bitcoin community
10030 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
10031 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
10032 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
10033 competition.  My thoughts go to the
10034 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
10035 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
10036 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
10037 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
10038 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
10039
10040 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
10041 that the community already seem to have
10042 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
10043 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
10044 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
10045 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
10046 wealth is available.</p>
10047
10048       </div>
10049       <div class="tags">
10050
10051
10052         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>.
10053
10054
10055       </div>
10056     </div>
10057     <div class="padding"></div>
10058
10059     <div class="entry">
10060       <div class="title">
10061         <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>
10062       </div>
10063       <div class="date">
10064         26th October 2012
10065       </div>
10066       <div class="body">
10067         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
10068 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
10069 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
10070 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
10071 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
10072 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
10073 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
10074 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
10075 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
10076 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
10077 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
10078 it every time.</p>
10079
10080 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
10081 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
10082 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
10083 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
10084 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
10085 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
10086 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
10087 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
10088 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
10089 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
10090 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
10091 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
10092
10093 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
10094 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
10095 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
10096 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
10097 article: First the unplanned outage:
10098
10099 <blockquote><pre>
10100 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
10101 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
10102 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
10103 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
10104 Duration:    40 minutes
10105 Scope:       Exchange 2003
10106 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
10107              a cluster failover.
10108
10109 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
10110              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
10111 Technician:  [xxx]
10112 </pre></blockquote>
10113
10114 Next the planned outage:
10115
10116 <blockquote><pre>
10117 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
10118 Severity:    Major (Planned)
10119 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
10120 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
10121 Duration:    10 hours
10122 Scope:       H2 Transport
10123 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
10124              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
10125              4510s.
10126 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
10127              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
10128              connectivity.
10129 Technician:  [xxx]
10130 </pre></blockquote>
10131
10132 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
10133 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
10134 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
10135 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
10136 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
10137 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
10138 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
10139
10140 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
10141 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
10142 university too.  We do register
10143 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
10144 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
10145 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
10146 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
10147 for other sites to consider too?</p>
10148
10149       </div>
10150       <div class="tags">
10151
10152
10153         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>.
10154
10155
10156       </div>
10157     </div>
10158     <div class="padding"></div>
10159
10160     <div class="entry">
10161       <div class="title">
10162         <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>
10163       </div>
10164       <div class="date">
10165         22nd October 2012
10166       </div>
10167       <div class="body">
10168         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
10169 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
10170 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
10171 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
10172 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
10173 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
10174 background information is available in Norwegian from
10175 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
10176 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
10177 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
10178 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
10179 willing to
10180 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
10181 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
10182 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
10183 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
10184 sounded like
10185 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
10186 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
10187 later.</p>
10188
10189 <p>And thought this action is
10190 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
10191 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
10192 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
10193 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
10194 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
10195 rights.</p>
10196
10197 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
10198 unacceptable terms.  For example
10199 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
10200 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
10201 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
10202 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
10203 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
10204
10205 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
10206 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
10207 restored the account of the user, as reported by
10208 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
10209 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
10210 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
10211 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
10212 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
10213 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
10214 reading two opinions from
10215 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
10216 Phipps</a> and
10217 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
10218 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
10219 details about the original story.</p>
10220
10221       </div>
10222       <div class="tags">
10223
10224
10225         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>.
10226
10227
10228       </div>
10229     </div>
10230     <div class="padding"></div>
10231
10232     <div class="entry">
10233       <div class="title">
10234         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
10235       </div>
10236       <div class="date">
10237         18th October 2012
10238       </div>
10239       <div class="body">
10240         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
10241 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
10242 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
10243 across a marvellous drawing by
10244 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
10245 visualising some of what is going on.
10246
10247 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
10248 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
10249
10250 <blockquote>
10251 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
10252 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
10253 </blockquote>
10254
10255 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
10256 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
10257 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
10258 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
10259 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
10260 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
10261
10262       </div>
10263       <div class="tags">
10264
10265
10266         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>.
10267
10268
10269       </div>
10270     </div>
10271     <div class="padding"></div>
10272
10273     <div class="entry">
10274       <div class="title">
10275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
10276       </div>
10277       <div class="date">
10278         12th October 2012
10279       </div>
10280       <div class="body">
10281         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
10282 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
10283 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
10284 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
10285 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
10286 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
10287 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
10288 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
10289 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
10290 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
10291 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
10292 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
10293 matter".</p>
10294
10295 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
10296 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
10297 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
10298 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
10299 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
10300 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
10301 to argue its side.</p>
10302
10303 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
10304 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
10305 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
10306 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
10307
10308 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
10309 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
10310 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
10311
10312       </div>
10313       <div class="tags">
10314
10315
10316         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>.
10317
10318
10319       </div>
10320     </div>
10321     <div class="padding"></div>
10322
10323     <div class="entry">
10324       <div class="title">
10325         <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>
10326       </div>
10327       <div class="date">
10328          3rd October 2012
10329       </div>
10330       <div class="body">
10331         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
10332 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
10333 the computer science book collection available in his local
10334 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
10335 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
10336 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
10337 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
10338 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
10339 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
10340 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
10341 recently published books.</p>
10342
10343 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
10344 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
10345 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
10346 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
10347 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
10348 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
10349 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
10350 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
10351 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
10352 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
10353 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
10354 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
10355 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
10356 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
10357 for the library that evening.</p>
10358
10359 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
10360 going to know that for example
10361 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
10362 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
10363 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
10364 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
10365 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
10366 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
10367 book right away.</p>
10368
10369       </div>
10370       <div class="tags">
10371
10372
10373         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10374
10375
10376       </div>
10377     </div>
10378     <div class="padding"></div>
10379
10380     <div class="entry">
10381       <div class="title">
10382         <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>
10383       </div>
10384       <div class="date">
10385         23rd September 2012
10386       </div>
10387       <div class="body">
10388         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
10389 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
10390 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
10391 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
10392 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
10393 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
10394
10395 When I started, I
10396 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
10397 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
10398 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
10399 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
10400 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
10401 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
10402 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
10403
10404 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
10405
10406 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
10407 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
10408 the project files currently available from
10409 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10410
10411 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10412 the updated
10413 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10414 and
10415 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10416 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10417 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10418 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10419
10420       </div>
10421       <div class="tags">
10422
10423
10424         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>.
10425
10426
10427       </div>
10428     </div>
10429     <div class="padding"></div>
10430
10431     <div class="entry">
10432       <div class="title">
10433         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
10434       </div>
10435       <div class="date">
10436         17th September 2012
10437       </div>
10438       <div class="body">
10439         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
10440 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10441 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
10442 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
10443 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
10444 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
10445 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
10446
10447 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10448
10449 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
10450 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
10451 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
10452 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
10453 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
10454 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
10455 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
10456 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
10457 training is anyway very important</p>
10458
10459 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
10460 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
10461 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
10462 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
10463 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
10464
10465 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10466 project?</strong></p>
10467
10468 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
10469 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
10470 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
10471 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
10472 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
10473 hole.</p>
10474
10475 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10476 Edu?</strong></p>
10477
10478 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
10479 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
10480 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
10481 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
10482 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
10483 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
10484 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
10485 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
10486 hassle.</p>
10487
10488 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10489 Edu?</strong></p>
10490
10491 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
10492 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
10493 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
10494 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
10495 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
10496 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
10497 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
10498 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
10499
10500 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10501
10502 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
10503 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
10504 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
10505 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
10506 has the same...</p>
10507
10508 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
10509 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
10510 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
10511 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
10512
10513 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10514 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10515
10516 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
10517 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
10518 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
10519
10520 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
10521 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
10522 don't.</p>
10523
10524 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
10525 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
10526 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
10527 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
10528 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
10529 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
10530 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
10531
10532       </div>
10533       <div class="tags">
10534
10535
10536         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10537
10538
10539       </div>
10540     </div>
10541     <div class="padding"></div>
10542
10543     <div class="entry">
10544       <div class="title">
10545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
10546       </div>
10547       <div class="date">
10548         15th September 2012
10549       </div>
10550       <div class="body">
10551         <p>After the
10552 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
10553 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
10554 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
10555 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
10556 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
10557 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
10558 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
10559 was
10560 <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
10561 formal working group should be formed.</p>
10562
10563 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
10564 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
10565 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
10566 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
10567 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
10568 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
10569 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
10570 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
10571
10572 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
10573 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
10574 IETF.</p>
10575
10576       </div>
10577       <div class="tags">
10578
10579
10580         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>.
10581
10582
10583       </div>
10584     </div>
10585     <div class="padding"></div>
10586
10587     <div class="entry">
10588       <div class="title">
10589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
10590       </div>
10591       <div class="date">
10592         12th September 2012
10593       </div>
10594       <div class="body">
10595         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
10596 publication of of
10597 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
10598 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
10599 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
10600 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
10601 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
10602 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
10603 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
10604 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
10605 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
10606 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
10607
10608 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
10609 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
10610 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
10611 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
10612
10613 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
10614 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
10615
10616       </div>
10617       <div class="tags">
10618
10619
10620         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>.
10621
10622
10623       </div>
10624     </div>
10625     <div class="padding"></div>
10626
10627     <div class="entry">
10628       <div class="title">
10629         <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>
10630       </div>
10631       <div class="date">
10632          7th September 2012
10633       </div>
10634       <div class="body">
10635         <p>As I
10636 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
10637 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
10638 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
10639 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
10640 repository for the project</a>.</p>
10641
10642 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
10643 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
10644 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
10645 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
10646
10647 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
10648 PostScript formats at
10649 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
10650 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
10651
10652       </div>
10653       <div class="tags">
10654
10655
10656         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>.
10657
10658
10659       </div>
10660     </div>
10661     <div class="padding"></div>
10662
10663     <div class="entry">
10664       <div class="title">
10665         <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>
10666       </div>
10667       <div class="date">
10668         23rd August 2012
10669       </div>
10670       <div class="body">
10671         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
10672 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
10673 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
10674 revisit the great site
10675 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
10676 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
10677 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
10678
10679       </div>
10680       <div class="tags">
10681
10682
10683         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>.
10684
10685
10686       </div>
10687     </div>
10688     <div class="padding"></div>
10689
10690     <div class="entry">
10691       <div class="title">
10692         <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>
10693       </div>
10694       <div class="date">
10695         17th August 2012
10696       </div>
10697       <div class="body">
10698         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
10699 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
10700 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
10701 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
10702 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
10703 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
10704 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
10705 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
10706 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
10707 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
10708 summer I
10709 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
10710 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
10711 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
10712
10713 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
10714 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
10715 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
10716 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
10717 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
10718 progress:</p>
10719
10720 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
10721
10722 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
10723 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
10724 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
10725 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
10726 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
10727 english version of the docbook source.</p>
10728
10729 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
10730 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
10731 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
10732 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
10733 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
10734 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
10735 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
10736 project files currently available from <a
10737 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10738
10739 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10740 the updated
10741 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10742 and
10743 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10744 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10745 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10746 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10747
10748       </div>
10749       <div class="tags">
10750
10751
10752         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>.
10753
10754
10755       </div>
10756     </div>
10757     <div class="padding"></div>
10758
10759     <div class="entry">
10760       <div class="title">
10761         <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>
10762       </div>
10763       <div class="date">
10764         10th August 2012
10765       </div>
10766       <div class="body">
10767         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
10768 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
10769 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
10770 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
10771 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
10772 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
10773 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
10774 case for the language
10775 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
10776 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
10777
10778 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
10779 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
10780 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
10781 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
10782 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
10783
10784 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
10785 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
10786 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
10787 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
10788 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
10789 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
10790 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
10791 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
10792 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
10793 alias for 'nb'.</p>
10794
10795 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
10796 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
10797 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
10798 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
10799 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
10800 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
10801 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
10802 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
10803 at the same time. :(</p>
10804
10805 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
10806 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
10807 processors. :(</p>
10808
10809 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
10810
10811       </div>
10812       <div class="tags">
10813
10814
10815         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>.
10816
10817
10818       </div>
10819     </div>
10820     <div class="padding"></div>
10821
10822     <div class="entry">
10823       <div class="title">
10824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
10825       </div>
10826       <div class="date">
10827         31st July 2012
10828       </div>
10829       <div class="body">
10830         <p>I tried to send this text to the
10831 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
10832 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
10833 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
10834 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
10835 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
10836 out.</p>
10837
10838 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
10839 learning curve at the moment.</p>
10840
10841 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
10842 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
10843 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
10844 available from
10845 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
10846 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
10847 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
10848 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
10849 Squeeze.</p>
10850
10851 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
10852 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
10853 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
10854 problems.</p>
10855
10856 <ul>
10857
10858 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
10859    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
10860    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
10861    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
10862    index references spanning several pages (See
10863    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
10864    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
10865    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
10866
10867 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
10868    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
10869    #683163</a>).</li>
10870
10871 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
10872    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
10873    footnote and text body, see
10874    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
10875    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
10876    refs listed are not right).</li>
10877
10878 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
10879
10880 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
10881    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
10882
10883 </ul>
10884
10885 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
10886 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
10887 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
10888
10889 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
10890
10891       </div>
10892       <div class="tags">
10893
10894
10895         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>.
10896
10897
10898       </div>
10899     </div>
10900     <div class="padding"></div>
10901
10902     <div class="entry">
10903       <div class="title">
10904         <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>
10905       </div>
10906       <div class="date">
10907         21st July 2012
10908       </div>
10909       <div class="body">
10910         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
10911 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
10912 norwegian version</a> of the book
10913 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
10914 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
10915 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
10916 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
10917 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10918
10919 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
10920 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
10921 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
10922 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
10923 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
10924 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
10925 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
10926 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
10927 print. :)</p>
10928
10929 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
10930 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
10931 language.</p>
10932
10933       </div>
10934       <div class="tags">
10935
10936
10937         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>.
10938
10939
10940       </div>
10941     </div>
10942     <div class="padding"></div>
10943
10944     <div class="entry">
10945       <div class="title">
10946         <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>
10947       </div>
10948       <div class="date">
10949         16th July 2012
10950       </div>
10951       <div class="body">
10952         <p>I am currently working on a
10953 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
10954 to translate</a> the book
10955 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
10956 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
10957 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
10958 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
10959 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
10960 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
10961 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10962
10963 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
10964 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
10965 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
10966 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
10967 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
10968 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
10969 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
10970 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
10971 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
10972
10973       </div>
10974       <div class="tags">
10975
10976
10977         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>.
10978
10979
10980       </div>
10981     </div>
10982     <div class="padding"></div>
10983
10984     <div class="entry">
10985       <div class="title">
10986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
10987       </div>
10988       <div class="date">
10989          9th July 2012
10990       </div>
10991       <div class="body">
10992         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10993 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
10994 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
10995 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
10996 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
10997 to adjust and scale the just released
10998 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10999 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
11000 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
11001
11002 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11003
11004 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
11005 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
11006 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
11007 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
11008 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
11009 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
11010 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
11011 perspective when working with IT.</p>
11012
11013 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11014 project?</strong></p>
11015
11016 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
11017 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
11018 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
11019 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
11020 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
11021 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
11022
11023 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11024 Edu?</strong></p>
11025
11026 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
11027 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
11028 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
11029 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
11030 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
11031 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
11032 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
11033 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
11034 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
11035 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
11036 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
11037 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
11038 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
11039 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
11040 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
11041 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
11042 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
11043 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
11044 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
11045 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
11046 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
11047 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
11048 quicker to update.
11049
11050 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11051 Edu?</strong></p>
11052
11053 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
11054 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
11055 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
11056 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
11057 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
11058 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
11059
11060 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
11061 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
11062 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
11063 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
11064 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
11065 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
11066 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
11067 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
11068 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
11069 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
11070 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
11071 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
11072 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
11073 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
11074 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
11075
11076 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
11077 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
11078 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
11079 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
11080 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
11081 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
11082 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
11083 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
11084
11085 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
11086 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
11087 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
11088 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
11089 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
11090 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
11091 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
11092 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
11093 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
11094 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
11095 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
11096 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
11097 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
11098 sound file.</p>
11099
11100 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
11101 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
11102 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
11103 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
11104 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
11105 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
11106 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
11107 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
11108 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
11109
11110 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11111
11112 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
11113 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
11114 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
11115 )</p>
11116
11117 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11118 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11119
11120 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
11121 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
11122 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
11123 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
11124 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
11125 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
11126 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
11127 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
11128 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
11129 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
11130 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
11131 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
11132 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
11133 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
11134 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
11135
11136 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
11137 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
11138 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
11139 management with Airtime</a>,
11140 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
11141 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
11142 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
11143 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
11144 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
11145
11146       </div>
11147       <div class="tags">
11148
11149
11150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11151
11152
11153       </div>
11154     </div>
11155     <div class="padding"></div>
11156
11157     <div class="entry">
11158       <div class="title">
11159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
11160       </div>
11161       <div class="date">
11162          8th July 2012
11163       </div>
11164       <div class="body">
11165         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
11166 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
11167 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
11168 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
11169 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
11170 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
11171 Steinberg in his blog post
11172 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
11173 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
11174 spending of your tax money.</p>
11175
11176 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
11177 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
11178 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
11179 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
11180 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
11181 purchases.</p>
11182
11183       </div>
11184       <div class="tags">
11185
11186
11187         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11188
11189
11190       </div>
11191     </div>
11192     <div class="padding"></div>
11193
11194     <div class="entry">
11195       <div class="title">
11196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
11197       </div>
11198       <div class="date">
11199          7th July 2012
11200       </div>
11201       <div class="body">
11202         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11203 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
11204 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
11205 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
11206 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
11207 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
11208 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
11209 receive.  The software is
11210
11211 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
11212 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
11213 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
11214 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
11215 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
11216 Windows</a>.</p>
11217
11218 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
11219 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
11220
11221 <p><ul>
11222
11223   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
11224     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
11225
11226   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
11227     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
11228     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
11229     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
11230     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
11231     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
11232     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
11233     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
11234     </li>
11235
11236   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
11237     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
11238
11239   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
11240     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
11241
11242   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
11243     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
11244
11245   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
11246
11247   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
11248     formats </li>
11249
11250   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
11251     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
11252     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
11253     (as separate sets)</li>
11254
11255   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
11256     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
11257     percentage)</li>
11258
11259   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
11260     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
11261     memory):
11262     <ul>
11263       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
11264       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
11265       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
11266       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
11267       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
11268       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
11269       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
11270       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
11271       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
11272       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
11273           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
11274           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
11275           activity)</li>
11276       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
11277       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
11278     </ul></li>
11279
11280   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
11281     <ul>
11282       <li>Break periods</li>
11283       <li>For teacher(s):
11284         <ul>
11285           <li>Not available periods</li>
11286           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
11287           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11288           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11289           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11290           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11291
11292           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11293             days per week</li>
11294         </ul></li>
11295       <li>For students (sets):
11296         <ul>
11297           <li>Not available periods</li>
11298           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
11299           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11300           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11301           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11302           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11303
11304           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11305             days per week</li>
11306         </ul></li>
11307       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
11308         <ul>
11309           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
11310           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
11311           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
11312           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
11313           <li>End(s) students day</li>
11314           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
11315           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
11316             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
11317           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
11318           <li>Not overlapping</li>
11319           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
11320           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
11321         </ul></li>
11322     </ul></li>
11323
11324   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
11325     <ul>
11326       <li>Room not available periods</li>
11327       <li>For teacher(s):
11328         <ul>
11329           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11330           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11331           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11332         </ul>
11333       </li>
11334
11335       <li>For students (sets):
11336         <ul>
11337           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11338           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11339           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11340         </ul>
11341       </li>
11342       <li>Preferred room(s):
11343         <ul>
11344           <li>For a subject</li>
11345           <li>For an activity tag</li>
11346           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
11347           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
11348         </ul>
11349       </li>
11350
11351       <li>For a set of activities:
11352         <ul>
11353           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
11354         </ul>
11355       </li>
11356     </ul>
11357   </li>
11358 </ul></p>
11359
11360 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
11361 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
11362 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
11363 manually, check it out.
11364
11365 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
11366 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
11367 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
11368 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
11369 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
11370 section</a>.</p>
11371
11372       </div>
11373       <div class="tags">
11374
11375
11376         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11377
11378
11379       </div>
11380     </div>
11381     <div class="padding"></div>
11382
11383     <div class="entry">
11384       <div class="title">
11385         <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>
11386       </div>
11387       <div class="date">
11388          3rd July 2012
11389       </div>
11390       <div class="body">
11391         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
11392 project (Norwegian version of
11393 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
11394 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
11395 a problem with the municipalities using
11396 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
11397 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
11398 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
11399 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
11400 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
11401 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
11402 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
11403 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
11404 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
11405 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
11406 the From: header.</p>
11407
11408 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
11409 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
11410 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
11411 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
11412 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
11413 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
11414 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
11415 behaviour.</p>
11416
11417 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
11418 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
11419 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
11420 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
11421 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
11422 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
11423 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
11424
11425       </div>
11426       <div class="tags">
11427
11428
11429         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>.
11430
11431
11432       </div>
11433     </div>
11434     <div class="padding"></div>
11435
11436     <div class="entry">
11437       <div class="title">
11438         <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>
11439       </div>
11440       <div class="date">
11441         26th June 2012
11442       </div>
11443       <div class="body">
11444         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
11445 another interview with the people behind
11446 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
11447 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
11448 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
11449 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
11450 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
11451 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11452 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11453
11454 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11455
11456 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
11457 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
11458 ICT in schools</p>
11459
11460 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11461 project?</strong></p>
11462
11463 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
11464 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
11465 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
11466 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
11467
11468 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11469 Edu?</strong></p>
11470
11471 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
11472 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
11473 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
11474 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
11475
11476 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11477 Edu?</strong></p>
11478
11479 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
11480 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
11481 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
11482 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
11483 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
11484 technologies in school.</p>
11485
11486 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11487
11488 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
11489 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
11490 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
11491
11492 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11493 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11494
11495 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
11496 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
11497 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
11498 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
11499
11500 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
11501 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
11502 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
11503
11504 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
11505 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
11506 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
11507 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
11508 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
11509 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
11510 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
11511 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
11512 working there.</p>
11513
11514       </div>
11515       <div class="tags">
11516
11517
11518         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11519
11520
11521       </div>
11522     </div>
11523     <div class="padding"></div>
11524
11525     <div class="entry">
11526       <div class="title">
11527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
11528       </div>
11529       <div class="date">
11530         24th June 2012
11531       </div>
11532       <div class="body">
11533         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
11534 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
11535 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
11536 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
11537 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
11538 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
11539 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
11540 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
11541 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
11542 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
11543 missing in my book.</p>
11544
11545 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
11546 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
11547 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
11548 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
11549 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
11550 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
11551 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
11552
11553       </div>
11554       <div class="tags">
11555
11556
11557         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>.
11558
11559
11560       </div>
11561     </div>
11562     <div class="padding"></div>
11563
11564     <div class="entry">
11565       <div class="title">
11566         <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>
11567       </div>
11568       <div class="date">
11569         11th June 2012
11570       </div>
11571       <div class="body">
11572         <p>During my work on
11573 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
11574 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
11575 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
11576 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
11577 explanation.</p>
11578
11579 <p><ul>
11580
11581 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
11582 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
11583 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
11584 system depend on tasksel tasks in
11585 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
11586 installation.</li>
11587
11588 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
11589 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
11590 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
11591 at least try to enable it for these services:
11592 <ul>
11593
11594   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
11595     quotas.</li>
11596   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
11597   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
11598   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
11599   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
11600   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
11601
11602 </ul></li>
11603
11604 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
11605 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
11606 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
11607 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
11608
11609 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
11610 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
11611 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
11612
11613 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
11614 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
11615 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
11616 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
11617 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
11618 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
11619
11620 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
11621 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
11622 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
11623 in Wheezy.
11624
11625 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
11626 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
11627 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
11628
11629 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
11630 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
11631 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
11632 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
11633
11634 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
11635 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
11636 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
11637 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
11638
11639 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
11640 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
11641 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
11642
11643 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
11644 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
11645 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
11646
11647 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
11648 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
11649 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
11650 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
11651 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
11652
11653 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
11654 <ul>
11655
11656 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
11657 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
11658 <li>and probably more?</li>
11659 </ul></li>
11660
11661 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
11662 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
11663 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
11664 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
11665 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
11666 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
11667 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
11668 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
11669
11670
11671 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
11672 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
11673 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
11674 use.</li>
11675
11676 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
11677 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
11678 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
11679 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
11680 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
11681
11682 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
11683 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
11684 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
11685 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
11686 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
11687 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
11688
11689 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
11690 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
11691 There are at least three implementations,
11692 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
11693 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
11694 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
11695 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
11696 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
11697 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
11698 given room.</li>
11699
11700 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
11701 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
11702 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
11703 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
11704 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
11705 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
11706 investigated.</li>
11707
11708 </ul></p>
11709
11710 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
11711 version.</p>
11712
11713       </div>
11714       <div class="tags">
11715
11716
11717         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11718
11719
11720       </div>
11721     </div>
11722     <div class="padding"></div>
11723
11724     <div class="entry">
11725       <div class="title">
11726         <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>
11727       </div>
11728       <div class="date">
11729          9th June 2012
11730       </div>
11731       <div class="body">
11732         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
11733 <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
11734 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
11735 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
11736 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
11737 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
11738 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
11739 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
11740 be willing to pay for.</p>
11741
11742 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
11743 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
11744 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
11745 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
11746 Orwell</a>.</p>
11747
11748       </div>
11749       <div class="tags">
11750
11751
11752         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>.
11753
11754
11755       </div>
11756     </div>
11757     <div class="padding"></div>
11758
11759     <div class="entry">
11760       <div class="title">
11761         <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>
11762       </div>
11763       <div class="date">
11764          6th June 2012
11765       </div>
11766       <div class="body">
11767         <p>A few days ago
11768 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
11769 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
11770 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
11771 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
11772 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
11773 code for HP, Dell and IBM
11774 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
11775 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
11776 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
11777 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
11778 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
11779
11780 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
11781 output:
11782
11783 <blockquote><pre>
11784 % 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>
11785 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": ""})
11786 %
11787 </pre></blockquote>
11788
11789 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
11790 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
11791 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
11792
11793       </div>
11794       <div class="tags">
11795
11796
11797         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>.
11798
11799
11800       </div>
11801     </div>
11802     <div class="padding"></div>
11803
11804     <div class="entry">
11805       <div class="title">
11806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
11807       </div>
11808       <div class="date">
11809          2nd June 2012
11810       </div>
11811       <div class="body">
11812         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
11813 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11814 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
11815 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
11816 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11817 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11818
11819 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11820
11821 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
11822 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
11823 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
11824 by Angela).</p>
11825
11826 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
11827 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
11828 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
11829 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
11830 becoming an osteopath.</p>
11831
11832 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
11833 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
11834 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
11835 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
11836 skills with communication skills.</p>
11837
11838 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11839 project?</strong></p>
11840
11841 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
11842 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
11843 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
11844 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
11845 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
11846
11847 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
11848 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
11849 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
11850 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
11851 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
11852 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
11853 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
11854 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
11855 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
11856
11857 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
11858 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
11859 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
11860
11861 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
11862
11863 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
11864 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
11865 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
11866 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
11867 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
11868 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
11869 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
11870 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
11871 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
11872 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
11873 point.</p>
11874
11875 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
11876 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
11877 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
11878 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
11879 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
11880 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
11881
11882 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
11883 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
11884 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
11885 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
11886 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
11887 spare time.</p>
11888
11889 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
11890 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
11891 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
11892 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
11893 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
11894
11895 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
11896 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
11897 avoidance do exist.</p>
11898
11899 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
11900 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
11901 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
11902 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
11903 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
11904 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
11905 and probably a gain for all.</p>
11906
11907 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11908 Edu?</strong></p>
11909
11910 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
11911 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
11912 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
11913 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
11914 project communication, honest communication within the group of
11915 developers, etc.</p>
11916
11917 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11918 Edu?</strong></p>
11919
11920 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
11921
11922 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
11923 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
11924 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
11925 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
11926 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
11927 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
11928 contribute).</p>
11929
11930 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
11931 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
11932 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
11933 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
11934 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
11935 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
11936 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
11937 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
11938 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
11939 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
11940
11941 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11942
11943 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
11944
11945 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
11946 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
11947 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
11948
11949 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
11950 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
11951 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
11952 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
11953
11954 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
11955 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
11956 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
11957 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
11958 whiteboard.</p>
11959
11960 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
11961
11962 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11963 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11964
11965 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
11966 enrol people.</p>
11967
11968       </div>
11969       <div class="tags">
11970
11971
11972         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11973
11974
11975       </div>
11976     </div>
11977     <div class="padding"></div>
11978
11979     <div class="entry">
11980       <div class="title">
11981         <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>
11982       </div>
11983       <div class="date">
11984          1st June 2012
11985       </div>
11986       <div class="body">
11987         <p>A few years ago I wrote
11988 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
11989 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
11990 I have learned from colleges here at the
11991 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
11992 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
11993 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
11994 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
11995 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
11996
11997 <p><pre>
11998 use strict;
11999 use warnings;
12000 use SOAP::Lite;
12001 use Data::Dumper;
12002 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
12003 my $App = 'test';
12004 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
12005 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
12006 my $s = SOAP::Lite
12007     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
12008     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
12009     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
12010     ;
12011 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
12012     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
12013     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
12014     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
12015 );
12016 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
12017 </pre></p>
12018
12019 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
12020
12021 <p><pre>
12022 $VAR1 = {
12023           'Asset' => {
12024                      'Entitlements' => {
12025                                        'EntitlementData' => [
12026                                                             {
12027                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12028                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
12029                                                               'Provider' => '',
12030                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12031                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12032                                                             },
12033                                                             {
12034                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12035                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
12036                                                               'Provider' => '',
12037                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12038                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12039                                                             },
12040                                                             {
12041                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12042                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
12043                                                               'Provider' => '',
12044                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12045                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12046                                                             }
12047                                                           ]
12048                                      },
12049                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
12050                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
12051                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
12052                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
12053                                           'Buid' => '2323',
12054                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
12055                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
12056                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
12057                                         }
12058                    }
12059         };
12060 </pre></p>
12061
12062 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
12063 service outside the
12064 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
12065 documentation</a>, and according to
12066 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
12067 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
12068 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
12069
12070 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
12071 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
12072
12073       </div>
12074       <div class="tags">
12075
12076
12077         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>.
12078
12079
12080       </div>
12081     </div>
12082     <div class="padding"></div>
12083
12084     <div class="entry">
12085       <div class="title">
12086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
12087       </div>
12088       <div class="date">
12089         31st May 2012
12090       </div>
12091       <div class="body">
12092         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
12093 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
12094 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
12095 running Debian Squeeze, where
12096 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
12097 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
12098 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
12099 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
12100 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
12101 another day.</p>
12102
12103 <p>After calibration, I get a
12104 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
12105 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
12106 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
12107 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
12108 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
12109 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
12110 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
12111 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
12112 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
12113 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
12114 and a simple</p>
12115
12116 <p><pre>
12117 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
12118 </pre></p>
12119
12120 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
12121 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
12122 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
12123 enough for now.</p>
12124
12125       </div>
12126       <div class="tags">
12127
12128
12129         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12130
12131
12132       </div>
12133     </div>
12134     <div class="padding"></div>
12135
12136     <div class="entry">
12137       <div class="title">
12138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
12139       </div>
12140       <div class="date">
12141         27th May 2012
12142       </div>
12143       <div class="body">
12144         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
12145 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12146 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
12147 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
12148 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
12149 since then, helping to make sure the
12150 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12151 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
12152
12153 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12154
12155 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
12156 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
12157 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
12158 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
12159 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
12160 our computer network.</p>
12161
12162 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
12163 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
12164 (4 months).</p>
12165
12166 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12167 project?</strong></p>
12168
12169 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
12170 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
12171 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
12172 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
12173 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
12174 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
12175 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
12176 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
12177 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
12178 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
12179 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
12180 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
12181 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
12182 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
12183
12184 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12185 Edu?</strong></p>
12186
12187 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
12188 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
12189 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
12190 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
12191 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
12192 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
12193 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
12194 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
12195
12196 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12197 Edu?</strong></p>
12198
12199 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
12200 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
12201 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
12202 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
12203 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
12204 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
12205 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
12206 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
12207 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
12208 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
12209 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
12210 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
12211
12212 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12213
12214 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
12215 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
12216 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
12217
12218 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12219 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12220
12221 <p><ol>
12222
12223 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
12224 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
12225 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
12226 developing.</li>
12227
12228 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
12229 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
12230 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
12231 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
12232 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
12233
12234 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
12235 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
12236 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
12237
12238 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
12239 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
12240 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
12241 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
12242
12243 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
12244 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
12245 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
12246
12247 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
12248
12249 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
12250 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
12251 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
12252 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
12253
12254 </ol></p>
12255
12256       </div>
12257       <div class="tags">
12258
12259
12260         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12261
12262
12263       </div>
12264     </div>
12265     <div class="padding"></div>
12266
12267     <div class="entry">
12268       <div class="title">
12269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
12270       </div>
12271       <div class="date">
12272         26th May 2012
12273       </div>
12274       <div class="body">
12275         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
12276 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
12277 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
12278 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
12279 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
12280
12281 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
12282 <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>
12283 comment:</p>
12284
12285 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
12286 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
12287 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
12288 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
12289 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
12290 </blockquote></p>
12291
12292 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
12293 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
12294 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
12295 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
12296 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
12297 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
12298 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
12299 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
12300 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
12301 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
12302 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
12303 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
12304 of wasted effort.</p>
12305
12306 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
12307 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
12308 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
12309
12310 <p>See
12311 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
12312 and
12313 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
12314 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
12315 </blockquote></p>
12316
12317       </div>
12318       <div class="tags">
12319
12320
12321         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>.
12322
12323
12324       </div>
12325     </div>
12326     <div class="padding"></div>
12327
12328     <div class="entry">
12329       <div class="title">
12330         <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>
12331       </div>
12332       <div class="date">
12333         18th May 2012
12334       </div>
12335       <div class="body">
12336         <p>In january, I
12337 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
12338 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
12339 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
12340 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
12341 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
12342 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
12343 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
12344 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
12345 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
12346 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
12347
12348 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
12349 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
12350 drivers. :)</p>
12351
12352       </div>
12353       <div class="tags">
12354
12355
12356         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12357
12358
12359       </div>
12360     </div>
12361     <div class="padding"></div>
12362
12363     <div class="entry">
12364       <div class="title">
12365         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
12366       </div>
12367       <div class="date">
12368         13th May 2012
12369       </div>
12370       <div class="body">
12371         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
12372 publish another interview with the people behind
12373 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
12374 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
12375 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
12376 details get right before release.
12377
12378 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12379
12380 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
12381 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
12382 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
12383 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
12384 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
12385 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
12386 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
12387 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
12388
12389 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
12390 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
12391 home since 2006.</p>
12392
12393 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12394 project?</strong></p>
12395
12396 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
12397 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
12398 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
12399 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
12400 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
12401 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
12402
12403 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
12404 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
12405 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
12406 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
12407 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
12408 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
12409 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
12410 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
12411 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
12412 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
12413 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
12414 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
12415 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
12416 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
12417 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
12418 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
12419
12420 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12421 Edu?</strong></p>
12422
12423 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
12424 for me as today.</p>
12425
12426 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
12427
12428 <p><ul>
12429
12430 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
12431 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
12432
12433 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
12434 cost.</li>
12435
12436 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
12437 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
12438 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
12439 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
12440 server</li>
12441
12442 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
12443 school.</li>
12444
12445 </ul></p>
12446
12447 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
12448 came up in this way:</p>
12449
12450 <p><ul>
12451
12452 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
12453 now.</li>
12454
12455 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
12456 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
12457 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
12458
12459 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
12460 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
12461 interfaces used in the past.</li>
12462
12463 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
12464 different needs.</li>
12465
12466 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
12467
12468 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
12469 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
12470 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
12471
12472 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
12473 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
12474
12475 </ul></p>
12476
12477 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12478 Edu?</strong></p>
12479
12480 <p><ul>
12481
12482 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
12483 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
12484 whole municipality areas.</li>
12485
12486 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
12487 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
12488 politicians.</li>
12489
12490 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
12491
12492 </ul></p>
12493
12494 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12495
12496 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
12497 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
12498 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
12499 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
12500 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
12501 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
12502
12503 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
12504 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
12505 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
12506 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
12507 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
12508
12509 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12510 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12511
12512 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
12513 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
12514 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
12515
12516       </div>
12517       <div class="tags">
12518
12519
12520         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12521
12522
12523       </div>
12524     </div>
12525     <div class="padding"></div>
12526
12527     <div class="entry">
12528       <div class="title">
12529         <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>
12530       </div>
12531       <div class="date">
12532         30th April 2012
12533       </div>
12534       <div class="body">
12535         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
12536 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
12537
12538 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
12539 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
12540 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
12541 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
12542 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
12543 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
12544 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
12545 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
12546 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
12547 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
12548 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
12549 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
12550 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
12551 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
12552 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
12553 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
12554
12555 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
12556 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
12557 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
12558 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
12559 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
12560 finally found a Danish supplier
12561 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
12562 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
12563 days ago.</p>
12564
12565 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
12566 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
12567 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
12568 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
12569 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
12570 toys.</p>
12571
12572       </div>
12573       <div class="tags">
12574
12575
12576         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12577
12578
12579       </div>
12580     </div>
12581     <div class="padding"></div>
12582
12583     <div class="entry">
12584       <div class="title">
12585         <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>
12586       </div>
12587       <div class="date">
12588         26th April 2012
12589       </div>
12590       <div class="body">
12591         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
12592 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
12593 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
12594 that the video editor application included with
12595 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
12596 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
12597 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
12598
12599 <p><blockquote>
12600 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
12601 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
12602 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
12603 </blockquote></p>
12604
12605 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
12606
12607 <p><blockquote>
12608 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
12609 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
12610 </blockquote></p>
12611
12612 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
12613 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
12614 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
12615 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
12616 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
12617 video.  AMR is
12618 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
12619 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
12620 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
12621 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
12622 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
12623 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
12624 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
12625
12626 <p>I know why I prefer
12627 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
12628 standards</a> also for video.</p>
12629
12630       </div>
12631       <div class="tags">
12632
12633
12634         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12635
12636
12637       </div>
12638     </div>
12639     <div class="padding"></div>
12640
12641     <div class="entry">
12642       <div class="title">
12643         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
12644       </div>
12645       <div class="date">
12646         19th April 2012
12647       </div>
12648       <div class="body">
12649         <p>Here in Norway, the
12650 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
12651 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
12652 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
12653 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
12654 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
12655 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
12656 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
12657 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
12658 on the same level.</p>
12659
12660 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
12661 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
12662 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
12663 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
12664 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
12665 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
12666 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
12667 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
12668 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
12669 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
12670 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
12671 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
12672 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
12673 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
12674 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
12675 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
12676 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
12677 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
12678
12679 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
12680 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
12681 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
12682 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
12683 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
12684 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
12685 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
12686 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
12687
12688 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
12689 from Simon Phipps
12690 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
12691 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
12692
12693 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
12694 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
12695 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
12696 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
12697 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
12698 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
12699 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
12700 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
12701 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
12702
12703       </div>
12704       <div class="tags">
12705
12706
12707         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>.
12708
12709
12710       </div>
12711     </div>
12712     <div class="padding"></div>
12713
12714     <div class="entry">
12715       <div class="title">
12716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
12717       </div>
12718       <div class="date">
12719         15th April 2012
12720       </div>
12721       <div class="body">
12722         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
12723 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
12724 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
12725 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
12726 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
12727 up in the recently released
12728 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
12729 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12730
12731 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12732
12733 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
12734 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
12735 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
12736 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
12737 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
12738 information technology and science/technology.</p>
12739
12740 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12741 project?</strong></p>
12742
12743 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
12744 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
12745 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
12746 contributing.</p>
12747
12748 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12749 Edu?</strong></p>
12750
12751 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
12752 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
12753 Debian Project!</p>
12754
12755 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12756 Edu?</strong></p>
12757
12758 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
12759 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
12760 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
12761 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
12762 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
12763 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
12764 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
12765
12766 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
12767 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
12768
12769 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12770
12771 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
12772 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
12773 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
12774 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
12775
12776 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12777 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12778
12779 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
12780 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
12781 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
12782 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
12783 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
12784 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
12785 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
12786
12787 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
12788 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
12789 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
12790 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
12791 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
12792 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
12793 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
12794 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
12795
12796       </div>
12797       <div class="tags">
12798
12799
12800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12801
12802
12803       </div>
12804     </div>
12805     <div class="padding"></div>
12806
12807     <div class="entry">
12808       <div class="title">
12809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
12810       </div>
12811       <div class="date">
12812          8th April 2012
12813       </div>
12814       <div class="body">
12815         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
12816 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
12817 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
12818 contributor to the
12819 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
12820 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
12821
12822 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12823
12824 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
12825 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
12826
12827 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12828 project?</strong></p>
12829
12830 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
12831 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
12832 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
12833 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
12834 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
12835 "localisation".</p>
12836
12837 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12838 Edu?</strong></p>
12839
12840 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12841 Edu?</strong></p>
12842
12843 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
12844 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
12845 education system.</p>
12846
12847 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
12848 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
12849 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
12850 money on the latest hardware.</p>
12851
12852 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12853
12854 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
12855 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
12856 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
12857
12858 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12859 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12860
12861 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
12862 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
12863 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
12864
12865       </div>
12866       <div class="tags">
12867
12868
12869         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12870
12871
12872       </div>
12873     </div>
12874     <div class="padding"></div>
12875
12876     <div class="entry">
12877       <div class="title">
12878         <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>
12879       </div>
12880       <div class="date">
12881          6th April 2012
12882       </div>
12883       <div class="body">
12884         <p>Recently I have spent time with
12885 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
12886 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
12887 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
12888 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
12889 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
12890 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
12891 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
12892 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
12893
12894 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
12895 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
12896 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
12897 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
12898 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
12899 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
12900 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
12901 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
12902
12903 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
12904 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
12905 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
12906 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
12907 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
12908 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
12909 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
12910 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
12911
12912 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
12913 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
12914 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
12915 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
12916 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
12917 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
12918 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
12919 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
12920 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
12921 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
12922
12923 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
12924 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
12925 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
12926 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
12927
12928 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
12929 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
12930
12931       </div>
12932       <div class="tags">
12933
12934
12935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12936
12937
12938       </div>
12939     </div>
12940     <div class="padding"></div>
12941
12942     <div class="entry">
12943       <div class="title">
12944         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
12945       </div>
12946       <div class="date">
12947          5th April 2012
12948       </div>
12949       <div class="body">
12950         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
12951 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
12952 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
12953 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
12954 for schools.  Check out his article
12955 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
12956 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
12957
12958       </div>
12959       <div class="tags">
12960
12961
12962         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12963
12964
12965       </div>
12966     </div>
12967     <div class="padding"></div>
12968
12969     <div class="entry">
12970       <div class="title">
12971         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
12972       </div>
12973       <div class="date">
12974          1st April 2012
12975       </div>
12976       <div class="body">
12977         <p>Germany is a core area for the
12978 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12979 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
12980 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
12981
12982 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12983
12984 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
12985 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
12986 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
12987 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
12988 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
12989 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
12990 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
12991 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
12992
12993 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
12994 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
12995 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
12996 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
12997 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
12998 the end of April this year.</p>
12999
13000 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13001 project?</strong></p>
13002
13003 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
13004 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
13005 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
13006 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
13007 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
13008 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
13009 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
13010 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
13011 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
13012 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
13013 Skolelinux.</p>
13014
13015 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
13016 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
13017 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
13018 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
13019 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
13020 the admin teachers.</p>
13021
13022 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13023 Edu?</strong></p>
13024
13025 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
13026 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
13027 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
13028
13029 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
13030 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
13031 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
13032 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
13033 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
13034
13035 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13036 Edu?</strong></p>
13037
13038 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
13039
13040 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13041
13042 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
13043 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
13044 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
13045 LibreOffice.</p>
13046
13047 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13048 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13049
13050 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
13051 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
13052 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
13053
13054       </div>
13055       <div class="tags">
13056
13057
13058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13059
13060
13061       </div>
13062     </div>
13063     <div class="padding"></div>
13064
13065     <div class="entry">
13066       <div class="title">
13067         <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>
13068       </div>
13069       <div class="date">
13070         25th March 2012
13071       </div>
13072       <div class="body">
13073         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13074
13075 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
13076 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
13077 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
13078 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
13079 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
13080 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
13081 and download as a
13082 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
13083 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13084
13085 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13086   <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"' />
13087     <p>Download video as
13088       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13089 </video></p>
13090
13091       </div>
13092       <div class="tags">
13093
13094
13095         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13096
13097
13098       </div>
13099     </div>
13100     <div class="padding"></div>
13101
13102     <div class="entry">
13103       <div class="title">
13104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
13105       </div>
13106       <div class="date">
13107         19th March 2012
13108       </div>
13109       <div class="body">
13110         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13111 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
13112 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
13113 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
13114 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
13115
13116 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13117
13118 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
13119 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
13120 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
13121 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
13122 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
13123 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
13124 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
13125 installations.</p>
13126
13127 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13128 project?</strong></p>
13129
13130 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
13131 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
13132 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
13133 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
13134 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
13135 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
13136 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
13137 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
13138 these things we decided to try it.</p>
13139
13140 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13141 Edu?</strong></p>
13142
13143 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
13144 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
13145 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
13146 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
13147 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
13148 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
13149 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
13150 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
13151
13152 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13153 Edu?</strong></p>
13154
13155 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
13156 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
13157 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
13158 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
13159 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
13160
13161 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13162
13163 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
13164 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
13165 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
13166 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
13167 that counts...)</p>
13168
13169 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13170 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13171
13172 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
13173 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
13174 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
13175 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
13176 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
13177 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
13178 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
13179 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
13180 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
13181 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
13182 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
13183
13184 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
13185 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
13186 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
13187
13188       </div>
13189       <div class="tags">
13190
13191
13192         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13193
13194
13195       </div>
13196     </div>
13197     <div class="padding"></div>
13198
13199     <div class="entry">
13200       <div class="title">
13201         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
13202       </div>
13203       <div class="date">
13204         16th March 2012
13205       </div>
13206       <div class="body">
13207         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
13208 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
13209 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
13210 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
13211
13212 <ol>
13213
13214 <li>The documentation is written in a
13215 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
13216 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
13217 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
13218 docbook XML.</li>
13219
13220 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
13221 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
13222 with the translated text.</li>
13223
13224 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
13225 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
13226 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
13227 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
13228 images.</li>
13229
13230 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
13231 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
13232
13233 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
13234 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
13235
13236 </ol>
13237
13238 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
13239 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
13240 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
13241 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
13242 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
13243
13244 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
13245 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
13246 package</a>.</p>
13247
13248       </div>
13249       <div class="tags">
13250
13251
13252         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13253
13254
13255       </div>
13256     </div>
13257     <div class="padding"></div>
13258
13259     <div class="entry">
13260       <div class="title">
13261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
13262       </div>
13263       <div class="date">
13264         11th March 2012
13265       </div>
13266       <div class="body">
13267         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
13268 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
13269 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13270 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
13271 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
13272 you have not done so already.</p>
13273
13274 <p>I plan to present the new version at
13275 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
13276 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
13277 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
13278
13279       </div>
13280       <div class="tags">
13281
13282
13283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13284
13285
13286       </div>
13287     </div>
13288     <div class="padding"></div>
13289
13290     <div class="entry">
13291       <div class="title">
13292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
13293       </div>
13294       <div class="date">
13295          9th March 2012
13296       </div>
13297       <div class="body">
13298         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
13299 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
13300 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13301 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
13302 more international audience.</p>
13303
13304 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13305 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
13306 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
13307 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
13308 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
13309 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
13310 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
13311
13312
13313 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13314
13315 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
13316 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
13317 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
13318 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
13319 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
13320 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
13321 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
13322 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
13323 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
13324 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
13325 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
13326
13327 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13328 project?</strong></p>
13329
13330 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
13331 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
13332 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
13333 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
13334 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
13335 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
13336 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
13337 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
13338 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
13339 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
13340 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
13341 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
13342 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
13343
13344 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13345 Edu?</strong></p>
13346
13347 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
13348 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
13349 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
13350 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
13351 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
13352 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
13353 Japan.</p>
13354
13355 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13356 Edu?</strong></p>
13357
13358 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
13359 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
13360 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
13361 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
13362 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
13363 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
13364 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
13365 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
13366 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
13367 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
13368 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
13369 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
13370 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
13371 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
13372 help.</p>
13373
13374 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13375
13376 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
13377 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
13378 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
13379 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
13380 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
13381 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
13382 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
13383 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
13384 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
13385 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
13386 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
13387
13388 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13389 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13390
13391 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
13392 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
13393 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
13394 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
13395 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
13396 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
13397 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
13398 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
13399 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
13400 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
13401 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
13402 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
13403
13404       </div>
13405       <div class="tags">
13406
13407
13408         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13409
13410
13411       </div>
13412     </div>
13413     <div class="padding"></div>
13414
13415     <div class="entry">
13416       <div class="title">
13417         <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>
13418       </div>
13419       <div class="date">
13420          7th March 2012
13421       </div>
13422       <div class="body">
13423         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13424
13425 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
13426 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
13427 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
13428 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
13429 download as a
13430 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
13431 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13432
13433 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13434   <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"' />
13435     <p>Download video as
13436       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13437 </video></p>
13438
13439       </div>
13440       <div class="tags">
13441
13442
13443         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13444
13445
13446       </div>
13447     </div>
13448     <div class="padding"></div>
13449
13450     <div class="entry">
13451       <div class="title">
13452         <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>
13453       </div>
13454       <div class="date">
13455          4th March 2012
13456       </div>
13457       <div class="body">
13458         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
13459 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13460 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13461 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
13462 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
13463 need a software solution for your school.</p>
13464
13465       </div>
13466       <div class="tags">
13467
13468
13469         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13470
13471
13472       </div>
13473     </div>
13474     <div class="padding"></div>
13475
13476     <div class="entry">
13477       <div class="title">
13478         <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>
13479       </div>
13480       <div class="date">
13481          3rd March 2012
13482       </div>
13483       <div class="body">
13484         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
13485 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
13486 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
13487 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
13488 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
13489 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
13490 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
13491 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
13492 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
13493 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
13494 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
13495 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
13496 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
13497 year...</p>
13498
13499 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
13500 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
13501 name,
13502 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
13503 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
13504 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
13505 mean). I've been following
13506 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
13507 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
13508 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
13509 Check it out. :)</p>
13510
13511       </div>
13512       <div class="tags">
13513
13514
13515         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13516
13517
13518       </div>
13519     </div>
13520     <div class="padding"></div>
13521
13522     <div class="entry">
13523       <div class="title">
13524         <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>
13525       </div>
13526       <div class="date">
13527         27th February 2012
13528       </div>
13529       <div class="body">
13530         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
13531 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13532 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
13533 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
13534 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
13535 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
13536 need a software solution for your school.</p>
13537
13538       </div>
13539       <div class="tags">
13540
13541
13542         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13543
13544
13545       </div>
13546     </div>
13547     <div class="padding"></div>
13548
13549     <div class="entry">
13550       <div class="title">
13551         <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>
13552       </div>
13553       <div class="date">
13554         19th February 2012
13555       </div>
13556       <div class="body">
13557         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
13558 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
13559 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13560 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13561 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
13562 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
13563 solution for your school.</p>
13564
13565       </div>
13566       <div class="tags">
13567
13568
13569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13570
13571
13572       </div>
13573     </div>
13574     <div class="padding"></div>
13575
13576     <div class="entry">
13577       <div class="title">
13578         <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>
13579       </div>
13580       <div class="date">
13581         14th February 2012
13582       </div>
13583       <div class="body">
13584         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
13585 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
13586 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
13587 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
13588 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
13589 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
13590 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
13591 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
13592 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
13593
13594 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
13595 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
13596 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
13597 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
13598 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
13599
13600 <blockquote><pre>
13601 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
13602 do
13603     printf "Failed disk $d: "
13604     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
13605 done
13606 </blockquote></pre>
13607
13608 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
13609 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
13610
13611 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
13612
13613 <blockquote><pre>
13614 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
13615 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
13616 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
13617 </blockquote></pre>
13618
13619 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
13620 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
13621 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
13622 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
13623 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
13624 mounted inside my box.</p>
13625
13626 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
13627 Software RAID in the
13628 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
13629 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
13630 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
13631 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
13632 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
13633 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
13634
13635       </div>
13636       <div class="tags">
13637
13638
13639         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>.
13640
13641
13642       </div>
13643     </div>
13644     <div class="padding"></div>
13645
13646     <div class="entry">
13647       <div class="title">
13648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13649       </div>
13650       <div class="date">
13651         13th February 2012
13652       </div>
13653       <div class="body">
13654         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
13655 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
13656 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
13657 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
13658 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
13659 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
13660 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
13661 change the global proxy setting by editing
13662 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
13663 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
13664
13665 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
13666 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
13667 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
13668
13669 <blockquote><pre>
13670 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
13671 {
13672    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
13673        isPlainHostName(host) ||
13674        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
13675       return "DIRECT";
13676    else
13677       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
13678 }
13679 </pre></blockquote>
13680
13681 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
13682
13683 <blockquote><pre>
13684 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
13685 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
13686 </pre></blockquote>
13687
13688 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
13689 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
13690 would be used for
13691 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
13692 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
13693 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
13694 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
13695 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
13696 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
13697 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
13698 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
13699 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
13700 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
13701
13702 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
13703 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
13704 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
13705 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
13706 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
13707 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
13708
13709 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
13710 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
13711 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
13712 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
13713 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
13714 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
13715 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
13716 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
13717 the network setup changes.</p>
13718
13719 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
13720 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
13721 draft</a> and a
13722 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
13723 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
13724
13725       </div>
13726       <div class="tags">
13727
13728
13729         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13730
13731
13732       </div>
13733     </div>
13734     <div class="padding"></div>
13735
13736     <div class="entry">
13737       <div class="title">
13738         <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>
13739       </div>
13740       <div class="date">
13741          5th February 2012
13742       </div>
13743       <div class="body">
13744         <p>Since the Lenny version of
13745 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
13746 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
13747 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
13748 in the morning.  This is done using the
13749 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
13750
13751 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
13752 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
13753 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
13754 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
13755 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
13756 the
13757 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
13758 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
13759 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
13760 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
13761 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
13762
13763 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
13764 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
13765 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
13766 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
13767 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
13768 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
13769 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
13770
13771 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
13772 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
13773 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
13774 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
13775 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
13776
13777       </div>
13778       <div class="tags">
13779
13780
13781         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13782
13783
13784       </div>
13785     </div>
13786     <div class="padding"></div>
13787
13788     <div class="entry">
13789       <div class="title">
13790         <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>
13791       </div>
13792       <div class="date">
13793          4th February 2012
13794       </div>
13795       <div class="body">
13796         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
13797 publish the third beta version of
13798 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13799 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
13800 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
13801 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
13802 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
13803 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
13804 on the project announcement list.</p>
13805
13806 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
13807 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
13808
13809 <ul>
13810
13811 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
13812   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
13813   the installation.</li>
13814
13815 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
13816   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
13817
13818 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
13819   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
13820   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
13821
13822 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
13823   for the local system administrator is created during installation
13824   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
13825   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
13826   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
13827   up to date on the system.</li>
13828
13829 </ul>
13830
13831 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
13832 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
13833 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
13834 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
13835
13836 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
13837 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
13838 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
13839 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
13840 will see you there?</p>
13841
13842       </div>
13843       <div class="tags">
13844
13845
13846         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13847
13848
13849       </div>
13850     </div>
13851     <div class="padding"></div>
13852
13853     <div class="entry">
13854       <div class="title">
13855         <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>
13856       </div>
13857       <div class="date">
13858         27th January 2012
13859       </div>
13860       <div class="body">
13861         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
13862 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
13863 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13864 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
13865 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
13866 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
13867 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
13868
13869 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
13870 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
13871 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
13872 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
13873 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
13874 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
13875 not taken care of by this.</p>
13876
13877 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
13878 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
13879 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
13880 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
13881 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
13882 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
13883 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
13884 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
13885 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
13886 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
13887 firmware packages.</p>
13888
13889 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
13890 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
13891 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
13892 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
13893 initrd with extra firmware, the
13894 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
13895 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
13896 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
13897
13898 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
13899 network cards working.  For this,
13900 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
13901 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
13902 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
13903
13904 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
13905 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
13906 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
13907
13908 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
13909 try.</p>
13910
13911       </div>
13912       <div class="tags">
13913
13914
13915         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13916
13917
13918       </div>
13919     </div>
13920     <div class="padding"></div>
13921
13922     <div class="entry">
13923       <div class="title">
13924         <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>
13925       </div>
13926       <div class="date">
13927         25th January 2012
13928       </div>
13929       <div class="body">
13930         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
13931 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
13932 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
13933 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
13934 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
13935
13936 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
13937 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
13938 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
13939 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
13940 this is done, log on to the central server and run
13941 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
13942 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
13943 will look similar to this:</p>
13944
13945 <p><blockquote><pre>
13946 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
13947 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
13948 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.
13949
13950 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
13951
13952 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13953 enter password: *******
13954 %
13955 </pre></blockquote></p>
13956
13957 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
13958 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
13959 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
13960 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
13961 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
13962 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
13963 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
13964 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
13965 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
13966 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
13967 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
13968 automatically.</p>
13969
13970 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
13971 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
13972
13973 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
13974 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
13975 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
13976
13977       </div>
13978       <div class="tags">
13979
13980
13981         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13982
13983
13984       </div>
13985     </div>
13986     <div class="padding"></div>
13987
13988     <div class="entry">
13989       <div class="title">
13990         <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>
13991       </div>
13992       <div class="date">
13993         10th January 2012
13994       </div>
13995       <div class="body">
13996         <p>In the Squeeze version of
13997 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
13998 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
13999 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
14000 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
14001 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
14002 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
14003 first time.</p>
14004
14005 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
14006 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
14007 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
14008 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
14009
14010 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
14011 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
14012 new setting.</p>
14013
14014 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
14015 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
14016 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
14017
14018       </div>
14019       <div class="tags">
14020
14021
14022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
14023
14024
14025       </div>
14026     </div>
14027     <div class="padding"></div>
14028
14029     <div class="entry">
14030       <div class="title">
14031         <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>
14032       </div>
14033       <div class="date">
14034          7th January 2012
14035       </div>
14036       <div class="body">
14037         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
14038 the second beta version of
14039 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
14040 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
14041 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
14042 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
14043 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
14044 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
14045 on the project announcement list.</p>
14046
14047       </div>
14048       <div class="tags">
14049
14050
14051         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14052
14053
14054       </div>
14055     </div>
14056     <div class="padding"></div>
14057
14058     <div class="entry">
14059       <div class="title">
14060         <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>
14061       </div>
14062       <div class="date">
14063          3rd January 2012
14064       </div>
14065       <div class="body">
14066         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
14067 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
14068 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
14069 interesting.</p>
14070
14071 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
14072 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
14073 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
14074 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
14075 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
14076 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
14077 wrap up its tasks.</p>
14078
14079 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
14080 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
14081 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
14082 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
14083 because I was typing.</P>
14084
14085 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
14086 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
14087 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
14088 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
14089 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
14090 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
14091 generate entropy.</p>
14092
14093 <p>The fix is in
14094 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
14095 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
14096 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
14097 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
14098
14099       </div>
14100       <div class="tags">
14101
14102
14103         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14104
14105
14106       </div>
14107     </div>
14108     <div class="padding"></div>
14109
14110     <div class="entry">
14111       <div class="title">
14112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
14113       </div>
14114       <div class="date">
14115         21st November 2011
14116       </div>
14117       <div class="body">
14118         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
14119 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
14120 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
14121 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
14122 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
14123 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
14124 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
14125 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
14126 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
14127 the tools to do so.</p>
14128
14129 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
14130 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
14131 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
14132 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
14133
14134 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
14135 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
14136 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
14137 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
14138 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
14139 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
14140 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
14141 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
14142
14143 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
14144 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
14145 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
14146
14147 <p><pre>
14148 #!/usr/bin/perl
14149 use strict;
14150 use warnings;
14151 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
14152 BEGIN {
14153     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
14154     my %rhelmodules = (
14155         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
14156         );
14157     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
14158         eval "use $module;";
14159         if ($@) {
14160             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
14161             system("yum install -y $pkg");
14162             eval "use $module;";
14163         }
14164     }
14165 }
14166 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
14167
14168 upgrade_dell();
14169
14170 exit 0;
14171
14172 sub run_firmware_script {
14173     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
14174     unless ($script) {
14175         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
14176         exit 1
14177     }
14178     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
14179
14180     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
14181         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
14182     } else {
14183         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
14184     }
14185 }
14186
14187 sub run_firmware_scripts {
14188     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
14189     # Run firmware packages
14190     for my $dir (@dirs) {
14191         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
14192         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
14193         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
14194             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
14195             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
14196         }
14197         closedir $dh;
14198     }
14199 }
14200
14201 sub download {
14202     my $url = shift;
14203     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
14204     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
14205 }
14206
14207 sub upgrade_dell {
14208     my @dirs;
14209     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
14210     chomp $product;
14211
14212     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
14213
14214         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
14215         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
14216
14217         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
14218             CLEANUP => 1
14219             );
14220         chdir($tmpdir);
14221         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
14222         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
14223         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
14224         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
14225         my $fwopts = "-q";
14226         if (@paths) {
14227             for my $url (@paths) {
14228                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
14229             }
14230             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
14231         } else {
14232             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
14233             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
14234         }
14235         chdir('/');
14236     } else {
14237         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
14238         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
14239     }
14240 }
14241
14242 sub fetch_dell_fw {
14243     my $path = shift;
14244     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
14245     download($url);
14246 }
14247
14248 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
14249 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
14250 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
14251 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
14252     my $filename = shift;
14253
14254     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
14255     chomp $product;
14256     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
14257
14258     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
14259
14260     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
14261     my @paths;
14262     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
14263         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
14264         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
14265         my $oscode;
14266         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
14267             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
14268         } else {
14269             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
14270         }
14271         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
14272         {
14273             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
14274         }
14275     }
14276     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
14277         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
14278
14279         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
14280         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
14281
14282         my $cpath = $component->{path};
14283         for my $path (@paths) {
14284             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
14285                 push(@paths, $cpath);
14286             }
14287         }
14288     }
14289     return @paths;
14290 }
14291 </pre>
14292
14293 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
14294 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
14295 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
14296 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
14297 outdated.</p>
14298
14299       </div>
14300       <div class="tags">
14301
14302
14303         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>.
14304
14305
14306       </div>
14307     </div>
14308     <div class="padding"></div>
14309
14310     <div class="entry">
14311       <div class="title">
14312         <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>
14313       </div>
14314       <div class="date">
14315          7th October 2011
14316       </div>
14317       <div class="body">
14318         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
14319 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
14320 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
14321 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
14322 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
14323 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
14324 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
14325 models.</p>
14326
14327 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
14328 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
14329 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
14330 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
14331
14332 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
14333 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
14334 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
14335 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
14336 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
14337 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
14338 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
14339 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
14340 distributed.</p>
14341
14342 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
14343
14344 <ul>
14345
14346 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
14347   other relevant equipment.</li>
14348
14349 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
14350
14351 </ul>
14352
14353 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
14354 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
14355 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
14356 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
14357 books available.</p>
14358
14359 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
14360 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
14361 libraries. :)</p>
14362
14363       </div>
14364       <div class="tags">
14365
14366
14367         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>.
14368
14369
14370       </div>
14371     </div>
14372     <div class="padding"></div>
14373
14374     <div class="entry">
14375       <div class="title">
14376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
14377       </div>
14378       <div class="date">
14379         17th September 2011
14380       </div>
14381       <div class="body">
14382         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
14383 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
14384 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
14385 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
14386 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
14387 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
14388 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
14389 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
14390
14391 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
14392
14393 <blockquote><pre>
14394 #!/bin/sh
14395 # apt-get install lsdvd
14396 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
14397 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
14398 </pre></blockquote>
14399
14400 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
14401 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
14402 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
14403 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
14404
14405 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
14406 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
14407 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
14408 back as an ISO.
14409
14410 <blockquote><pre>
14411 #!/bin/sh
14412 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
14413 set -e
14414 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
14415 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
14416 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
14417 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
14418 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
14419 </pre></blockquote>
14420
14421 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
14422
14423 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
14424 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
14425 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
14426 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
14427 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
14428
14429 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
14430 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
14431 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
14432 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
14433 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
14434 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
14435
14436       </div>
14437       <div class="tags">
14438
14439
14440         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14441
14442
14443       </div>
14444     </div>
14445     <div class="padding"></div>
14446
14447     <div class="entry">
14448       <div class="title">
14449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
14450       </div>
14451       <div class="date">
14452          4th August 2011
14453       </div>
14454       <div class="body">
14455         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
14456 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
14457 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
14458 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
14459 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
14460 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
14461 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
14462 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
14463 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
14464
14465 <p><blockquote>
14466 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
14467 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
14468 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
14469 </blockquote></p>
14470
14471 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
14472 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
14473 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
14474 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
14475 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
14476 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
14477 hard to explain.</p>
14478
14479 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
14480 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
14481 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
14482 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
14483 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
14484 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
14485 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
14486 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
14487 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
14488 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
14489 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
14490 mode).</p>
14491
14492 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
14493 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
14494 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
14495 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
14496 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
14497 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
14498 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
14499 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
14500 after visiting single user mode.</p>
14501
14502 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
14503 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
14504 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
14505 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
14506 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
14507 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
14508 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
14509 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
14510
14511 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
14512 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
14513 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
14514
14515       </div>
14516       <div class="tags">
14517
14518
14519         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>.
14520
14521
14522       </div>
14523     </div>
14524     <div class="padding"></div>
14525
14526     <div class="entry">
14527       <div class="title">
14528         <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>
14529       </div>
14530       <div class="date">
14531         30th July 2011
14532       </div>
14533       <div class="body">
14534         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
14535 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
14536 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
14537 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
14538 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
14539 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
14540 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
14541 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
14542 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
14543 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
14544 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
14545 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
14546 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
14547
14548 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
14549 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
14550 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
14551 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
14552 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
14553 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
14554 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
14555 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
14556 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
14557
14558 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
14559 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
14560 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
14561 is presented.</p>
14562
14563 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
14564 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
14565 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
14566 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
14567 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
14568 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
14569 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
14570 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
14571 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
14572 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
14573 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
14574 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
14575 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
14576 find time to push this forward.</p>
14577
14578       </div>
14579       <div class="tags">
14580
14581
14582         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>.
14583
14584
14585       </div>
14586     </div>
14587     <div class="padding"></div>
14588
14589     <div class="entry">
14590       <div class="title">
14591         <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>
14592       </div>
14593       <div class="date">
14594         29th July 2011
14595       </div>
14596       <div class="body">
14597         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
14598 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
14599 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
14600 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
14601 issues.</p>
14602
14603 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
14604 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
14605 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
14606
14607 <ol>
14608
14609 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
14610 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
14611 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
14612 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
14613 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
14614 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
14615 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
14616 Debian.</li>
14617
14618 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
14619 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
14620 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
14621 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
14622 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
14623 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
14624 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
14625 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
14626 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
14627 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
14628 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
14629 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
14630 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
14631
14632 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
14633 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
14634 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
14635 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
14636 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
14637 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
14638 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
14639 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
14640 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
14641 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
14642
14643 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
14644 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
14645 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
14646 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
14647 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
14648 latter behaviour.</li>
14649
14650 </ol>
14651
14652 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
14653 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
14654 it do not matter much.</p>
14655
14656 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
14657 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
14658 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
14659
14660       </div>
14661       <div class="tags">
14662
14663
14664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14665
14666
14667       </div>
14668     </div>
14669     <div class="padding"></div>
14670
14671     <div class="entry">
14672       <div class="title">
14673         <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>
14674       </div>
14675       <div class="date">
14676         26th July 2011
14677       </div>
14678       <div class="body">
14679         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
14680 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
14681 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
14682 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
14683 security support for a few years.</p>
14684
14685 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
14686 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
14687 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
14688 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
14689 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
14690 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
14691 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
14692 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
14693 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
14694 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
14695 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
14696 easier in the future.</p>
14697
14698 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
14699 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
14700 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
14701 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
14702 do not have time for.</p>
14703
14704       </div>
14705       <div class="tags">
14706
14707
14708         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>.
14709
14710
14711       </div>
14712     </div>
14713     <div class="padding"></div>
14714
14715     <div class="entry">
14716       <div class="title">
14717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
14718       </div>
14719       <div class="date">
14720         20th June 2011
14721       </div>
14722       <div class="body">
14723         <p>Reading
14724 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
14725 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
14726 parts of the
14727 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
14728 and
14729 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
14730 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
14731 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
14732 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
14733
14734       </div>
14735       <div class="tags">
14736
14737
14738         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>.
14739
14740
14741       </div>
14742     </div>
14743     <div class="padding"></div>
14744
14745     <div class="entry">
14746       <div class="title">
14747         <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>
14748       </div>
14749       <div class="date">
14750         30th April 2011
14751       </div>
14752       <div class="body">
14753         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
14754 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
14755 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
14756 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
14757 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
14758 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
14759 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
14760 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
14761 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
14762 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
14763
14764 <p>Where is it?  Visit
14765 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
14766 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
14767 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
14768 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
14769
14770       </div>
14771       <div class="tags">
14772
14773
14774         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>.
14775
14776
14777       </div>
14778     </div>
14779     <div class="padding"></div>
14780
14781     <div class="entry">
14782       <div class="title">
14783         <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>
14784       </div>
14785       <div class="date">
14786         29th April 2011
14787       </div>
14788       <div class="body">
14789         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
14790 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
14791 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
14792 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
14793 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
14794 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
14795 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
14796 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
14797 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
14798 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
14799 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
14800 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
14801 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
14802
14803 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
14804 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
14805 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
14806 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
14807 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
14808 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
14809 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
14810 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
14811 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
14812 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
14813 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
14814 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
14815 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
14816
14817 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
14818 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
14819 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
14820 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
14821 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
14822 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
14823 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
14824 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
14825 it.</p>
14826
14827 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
14828 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
14829 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
14830 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
14831 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
14832 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
14833 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
14834
14835 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
14836 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
14837 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
14838 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
14839 and range= options.</p>
14840
14841 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
14842 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
14843 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
14844 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
14845 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
14846 to best handle this.  I've noticed
14847 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
14848 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
14849 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
14850 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
14851
14852 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
14853 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
14854 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
14855 discussions instead of only
14856 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
14857 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
14858 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
14859 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
14860 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
14861 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
14862
14863       </div>
14864       <div class="tags">
14865
14866
14867         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>.
14868
14869
14870       </div>
14871     </div>
14872     <div class="padding"></div>
14873
14874     <div class="entry">
14875       <div class="title">
14876         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
14877       </div>
14878       <div class="date">
14879          6th April 2011
14880       </div>
14881       <div class="body">
14882         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
14883 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
14884 A few days ago the project
14885 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
14886 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
14887 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
14888 into Gnash.</p>
14889
14890       </div>
14891       <div class="tags">
14892
14893
14894         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>.
14895
14896
14897       </div>
14898     </div>
14899     <div class="padding"></div>
14900
14901     <div class="entry">
14902       <div class="title">
14903         <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>
14904       </div>
14905       <div class="date">
14906          3rd April 2011
14907       </div>
14908       <div class="body">
14909         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
14910 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
14911 update in English.</p>
14912
14913 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
14914 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
14915 of the British service
14916 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
14917 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
14918 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
14919 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
14920 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
14921 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
14922 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
14923 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
14924 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
14925 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
14926 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
14927 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
14928 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
14929
14930 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
14931 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
14932 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
14933 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
14934 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
14935 public infrastructure.</p>
14936
14937 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
14938 such service?</p>
14939
14940       </div>
14941       <div class="tags">
14942
14943
14944         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>.
14945
14946
14947       </div>
14948     </div>
14949     <div class="padding"></div>
14950
14951     <div class="entry">
14952       <div class="title">
14953         <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>
14954       </div>
14955       <div class="date">
14956         28th January 2011
14957       </div>
14958       <div class="body">
14959         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
14960 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
14961 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
14962 available on the Internet, and check our locally
14963 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
14964 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
14965 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
14966 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
14967 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
14968 out which security holes were present in our free software
14969 collection.</p>
14970
14971 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
14972 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
14973 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
14974 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
14975 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
14976 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
14977 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
14978 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
14979 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
14980 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
14981 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
14982 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
14983 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
14984 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
14985 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
14986 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
14987
14988 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
14989 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
14990 check out, one could look up
14991 <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
14992 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
14993 The most recent one is
14994 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
14995 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
14996 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
14997
14998 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
14999 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
15000 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
15001 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
15002 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
15003 security issues out.</p>
15004
15005 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
15006 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
15007 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
15008 RHEL is providing
15009 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
15010 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
15011 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
15012
15013 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
15014 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
15015 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
15016 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
15017 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
15018 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
15019 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
15020 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
15021 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
15022 established soon.</p>
15023
15024 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
15025 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
15026 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
15027 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
15028 for their packages.</p>
15029
15030       </div>
15031       <div class="tags">
15032
15033
15034         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>.
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/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
15044       </div>
15045       <div class="date">
15046         23rd January 2011
15047       </div>
15048       <div class="body">
15049         <p>In the
15050 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
15051 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
15052 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
15053 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
15054 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
15055 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
15056 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
15057 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
15058 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
15059 one of my machines like this:</p>
15060
15061 <pre>
15062 loaded modules:
15063 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
15064 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
15065 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
15066 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
15067 10de:03ec pata_amd
15068 10de:03f6 sata_nv
15069 1022:1103 k8temp
15070 109e:036e bttv
15071 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
15072 11ab:4364 sky2
15073 </pre>
15074
15075 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
15076 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
15077
15078 <pre>
15079 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
15080     echo loaded pci modules:
15081     (
15082         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
15083         for address in * ; do
15084             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15085                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15086                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15087                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15088                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
15089                     echo "$id $module"
15090                 fi
15091             fi
15092         done
15093     )
15094     echo
15095 fi
15096 </pre>
15097
15098 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
15099 mappings:</p>
15100
15101 <pre>
15102 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
15103     echo loaded usb modules:
15104     (
15105         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
15106         for address in * ; do
15107             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15108                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15109                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15110                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15111                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
15112                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
15113                         echo "$id $module"
15114                     fi
15115                 fi
15116             fi
15117         done
15118     )
15119     echo
15120 fi
15121 </pre>
15122
15123 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
15124 well.</p>
15125
15126       </div>
15127       <div class="tags">
15128
15129
15130         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>.
15131
15132
15133       </div>
15134     </div>
15135     <div class="padding"></div>
15136
15137     <div class="entry">
15138       <div class="title">
15139         <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>
15140       </div>
15141       <div class="date">
15142         16th January 2011
15143       </div>
15144       <div class="body">
15145         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
15146 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
15147 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
15148 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
15149 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
15150 the Wikipedia article on
15151 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
15152 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
15153 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
15154 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
15155 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
15156 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
15157 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
15158 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
15159 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
15160 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
15161 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
15162 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
15163
15164 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
15165 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
15166 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
15167 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
15168 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
15169 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
15170 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
15171 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
15172 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
15173 from last week</a>.</p>
15174
15175 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
15176 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
15177 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
15178 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
15179 was without royalties and license terms, check out
15180 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
15181 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
15182
15183 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
15184 available from
15185 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
15186 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
15187 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
15188
15189 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
15190 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
15191 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
15192 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
15193
15194       </div>
15195       <div class="tags">
15196
15197
15198         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15199
15200
15201       </div>
15202     </div>
15203     <div class="padding"></div>
15204
15205     <div class="entry">
15206       <div class="title">
15207         <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>
15208       </div>
15209       <div class="date">
15210         12th January 2011
15211       </div>
15212       <div class="body">
15213         <p>Today I discovered
15214 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
15215 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
15216 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
15217 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
15218 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
15219 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
15220 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
15221 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
15222 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
15223 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
15224 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
15225 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
15226 on the Google announcement is available from
15227 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
15228 A good read. :)</p>
15229
15230 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
15231 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
15232 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
15233 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
15234 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
15235 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
15236 browsers support H.264, and others support
15237 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
15238 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
15239 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
15240 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
15241 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
15242 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
15243 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
15244 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
15245
15246 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
15247 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
15248 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
15249 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
15250 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
15251 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
15252 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
15253
15254 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
15255 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
15256 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
15257 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
15258 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
15259 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
15260 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
15261
15262 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
15263 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
15264 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
15265 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
15266 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
15267 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
15268 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
15269
15270 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
15271 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
15272 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
15273 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
15274 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
15275 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
15276 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
15277 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
15278 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
15279 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
15280 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
15281 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
15282 I guess time will tell.</p>
15283
15284 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
15285 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
15286 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
15287
15288       </div>
15289       <div class="tags">
15290
15291
15292         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15293
15294
15295       </div>
15296     </div>
15297     <div class="padding"></div>
15298
15299     <div class="entry">
15300       <div class="title">
15301         <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>
15302       </div>
15303       <div class="date">
15304         30th December 2010
15305       </div>
15306       <div class="body">
15307         <p>After trying to
15308 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
15309 Ogg Theora</a> to
15310 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
15311 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
15312 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
15313 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
15314 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
15315 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
15316 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
15317
15318 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
15319 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
15320 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
15321 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
15322 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
15323 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
15324 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
15325
15326 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
15327 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
15328
15329       </div>
15330       <div class="tags">
15331
15332
15333         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>.
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/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
15343       </div>
15344       <div class="date">
15345         27th December 2010
15346       </div>
15347       <div class="body">
15348         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
15349 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
15350 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
15351 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
15352 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
15353 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
15354 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
15355 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
15356
15357 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
15358 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
15359 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
15360 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
15361 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
15362 page</a>.</p>
15363
15364 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
15365 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
15366 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
15367 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
15368 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
15369 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
15370 specification on equal terms.</p>
15371
15372 <blockquote>
15373
15374 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
15375 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
15376 open standard:</p>
15377
15378 <ul>
15379
15380 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
15381 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
15382 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
15383 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
15384
15385 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
15386 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
15387 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
15388 nominal fee.</li>
15389
15390 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
15391 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
15392 free basis.</li>
15393
15394 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
15395
15396 </ul>
15397 </blockquote>
15398
15399 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
15400 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
15401 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
15402 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
15403 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
15404 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
15405 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
15406
15407 <blockquote>
15408
15409 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
15410
15411 <ol>
15412
15413 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
15414 tilgængelig.</li>
15415
15416 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
15417 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
15418
15419 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
15420 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
15421
15422 </ol>
15423
15424 </blockquote>
15425
15426 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
15427 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
15428
15429 <blockquote>
15430
15431 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
15432
15433 <ol>
15434
15435 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
15436 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
15437
15438 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
15439 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
15440 Standard themselves;</li>
15441
15442 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
15443 any party or in any business model;</li>
15444
15445 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
15446 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
15447 parties;</li>
15448
15449 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
15450 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
15451 parties.</li>
15452
15453 </ol>
15454
15455 </blockquote>
15456
15457 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
15458 its
15459 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
15460 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
15461
15462 <blockquote>
15463 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
15464
15465 <ul>
15466
15467 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
15468   democratic:
15469
15470          <ul>
15471
15472          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
15473             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
15474             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
15475             and managed.</li>
15476
15477          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
15478             method, can be changed through input from all
15479             participants.</li>
15480
15481          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
15482             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
15483
15484          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
15485             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
15486
15487          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
15488             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
15489             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
15490
15491          </ul>
15492
15493 </li>
15494
15495 </ul>
15496
15497 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
15498 <ul>
15499
15500 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
15501   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
15502   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
15503   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
15504   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
15505
15506 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
15507   a technical or economic barriers</li>
15508
15509 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
15510   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
15511   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
15512   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
15513   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
15514   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
15515   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
15516   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
15517   intended to function.</li>
15518
15519 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
15520   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
15521   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
15522
15523 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
15524   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
15525   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
15526   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
15527   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
15528   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
15529   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
15530   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
15531
15532       <ul>
15533
15534       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
15535         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
15536         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
15537
15538       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
15539         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
15540         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
15541         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
15542
15543       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
15544         licensor</li>
15545
15546       </ul>
15547 </li>
15548
15549 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
15550   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
15551   or restricted licensing terms</li>
15552
15553 </ul>
15554
15555 </blockquote>
15556
15557 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
15558 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
15559 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
15560 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
15561 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
15562 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
15563 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
15564 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
15565 Standards.</p>
15566
15567       </div>
15568       <div class="tags">
15569
15570
15571         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>.
15572
15573
15574       </div>
15575     </div>
15576     <div class="padding"></div>
15577
15578     <div class="entry">
15579       <div class="title">
15580         <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>
15581       </div>
15582       <div class="date">
15583         25th December 2010
15584       </div>
15585       <div class="body">
15586         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
15587 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
15588
15589 <blockquote>
15590
15591 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
15592 as follows:</p>
15593
15594 <ol>
15595
15596 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
15597 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
15598 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
15599
15600 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
15601 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
15602 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
15603 parties.</li>
15604
15605 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
15606 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
15607 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
15608
15609 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
15610 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
15611
15612 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
15613
15614 </ol>
15615
15616 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
15617 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
15618 products based on the standard.</p>
15619 </blockquote>
15620
15621 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
15622 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
15623 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
15624 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
15625 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
15626 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
15627 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
15628 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
15629
15630 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
15631
15632 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
15633 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
15634 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
15635 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
15636 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
15637 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
15638 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
15639 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
15640 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
15641 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
15642 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
15643 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
15644 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
15645 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
15646
15647 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
15648
15649 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
15650 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
15651 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
15652 documentation indicating this.</p>
15653
15654 <p>According to
15655 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
15656 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
15657 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
15658 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
15659 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
15660 report is correct.</p>
15661
15662 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
15663
15664 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
15665 container format</a> and both the
15666 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
15667 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
15668 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
15669
15670 <blockquote>
15671
15672 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
15673 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
15674 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
15675 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
15676 specification compliance.
15677
15678 </blockquote>
15679
15680 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
15681 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
15682 this is the term:<p>
15683
15684 <blockquote>
15685
15686 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
15687 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
15688 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
15689 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
15690 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
15691 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
15692 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
15693 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
15694 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
15695 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
15696 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
15697 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
15698
15699 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
15700 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
15701 </blockquote>
15702
15703 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
15704 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
15705 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
15706 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
15707 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
15708
15709 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
15710
15711 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
15712 Theora format.
15713 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
15714 and
15715 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
15716 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
15717 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
15718 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
15719 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
15720 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
15721 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
15722 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
15723
15724 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
15725
15726 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
15727
15728 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
15729
15730 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
15731 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
15732 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
15733 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
15734 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
15735 this.</p>
15736
15737 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
15738 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
15739
15740       </div>
15741       <div class="tags">
15742
15743
15744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15745
15746
15747       </div>
15748     </div>
15749     <div class="padding"></div>
15750
15751     <div class="entry">
15752       <div class="title">
15753         <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>
15754       </div>
15755       <div class="date">
15756         25th December 2010
15757       </div>
15758       <div class="body">
15759         <p>A few days ago
15760 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
15761 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
15762 2.0 of
15763 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
15764 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
15765 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
15766 Nothing very surprising there, given
15767 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
15768 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
15769 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
15770 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
15771 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
15772 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
15773 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
15774 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
15775 standard definition from its content.</p>
15776
15777 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
15778 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
15779 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
15780 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
15781 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
15782 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
15783 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
15784 background information about that story is available in
15785 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
15786 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
15787
15788 <blockquote>
15789 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
15790 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
15791 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
15792
15793 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
15794
15795 <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>
15796
15797 <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>
15798
15799 <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>
15800
15801 <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>
15802
15803 <p>
15804 <ul>
15805 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
15806 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
15807 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
15808 </ul>
15809 </p>
15810
15811 <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>
15812
15813 <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>
15814
15815 <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>
15816
15817 <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>
15818
15819 <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>
15820
15821
15822 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
15823 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
15824 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
15825 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
15826 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
15827 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
15828
15829 </p>
15830
15831 <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>
15832
15833 <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>
15834
15835 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
15836
15837 <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>
15838
15839 <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>
15840
15841 <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>
15842
15843 <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>
15844
15845 <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>
15846
15847 <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>
15848
15849 <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>
15850
15851 <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>
15852
15853 <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>
15854
15855 <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>
15856
15857 <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>
15858
15859 <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>
15860
15861 <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>
15862
15863 <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>
15864
15865 <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>
15866
15867 <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>
15868
15869 <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>
15870
15871 <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>
15872
15873 <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>
15874
15875 <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>
15876
15877 <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>
15878
15879 <p>On security:</p>
15880
15881 <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>
15882
15883 <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>
15884
15885 <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>
15886
15887 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
15888
15889 <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>
15890
15891 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
15892
15893 <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>
15894
15895 <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>
15896
15897 <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>
15898
15899 <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>
15900
15901 <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>
15902
15903 <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>
15904
15905 <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>
15906
15907 <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>
15908
15909 <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>
15910
15911 <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>
15912
15913 <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>
15914
15915 <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>
15916
15917 <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>
15918
15919 <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>
15920
15921 <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>
15922
15923 <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>
15924
15925 <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>
15926
15927 <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>
15928
15929 <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>
15930
15931 <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>
15932
15933 <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>
15934
15935 <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>
15936
15937 <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>
15938
15939 <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>
15940
15941 <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>
15942
15943 <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>
15944
15945 <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>
15946
15947 <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>
15948
15949 <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>
15950
15951 <p>Cordially,<br>
15952 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
15953 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
15954 </blockquote>
15955
15956       </div>
15957       <div class="tags">
15958
15959
15960         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>.
15961
15962
15963       </div>
15964     </div>
15965     <div class="padding"></div>
15966
15967     <div class="entry">
15968       <div class="title">
15969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
15970       </div>
15971       <div class="date">
15972         25th December 2010
15973       </div>
15974       <div class="body">
15975         <p>Half a year ago I
15976 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
15977 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
15978 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
15979 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
15980
15981 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
15982 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
15983 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
15984 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
15985 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
15986 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
15987 got such a great test tool available.</p>
15988
15989       </div>
15990       <div class="tags">
15991
15992
15993         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>.
15994
15995
15996       </div>
15997     </div>
15998     <div class="padding"></div>
15999
16000     <div class="entry">
16001       <div class="title">
16002         <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>
16003       </div>
16004       <div class="date">
16005         22nd December 2010
16006       </div>
16007       <div class="body">
16008         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
16009 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
16010 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
16011 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
16012 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
16013 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
16014 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
16015 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
16016 university.</p>
16017
16018 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
16019 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
16020 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
16021 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
16022 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
16023 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
16024 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
16025 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
16026
16027 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
16028 I perform on a new model.</p>
16029
16030 <ul>
16031
16032 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
16033 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
16034 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
16035
16036 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
16037 installation, X.org is working.</li>
16038
16039 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
16040 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
16041 reported by the program.</li>
16042
16043 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
16044 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
16045 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
16046 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
16047 normally test this by playing
16048 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
16049 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
16050
16051 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
16052 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16053
16054 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
16055 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16056
16057 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
16058 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
16059
16060 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
16061 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
16062 few.</li>
16063
16064 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
16065 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
16066 notice this.</li>
16067
16068 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
16069 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
16070 resume.</li>
16071
16072 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
16073 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
16074 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
16075 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
16076 not.</li>
16077
16078 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
16079 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
16080 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
16081 existence.</li>
16082
16083 </ul>
16084
16085 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
16086 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
16087 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
16088 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
16089 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
16090 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
16091 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
16092 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
16093
16094       </div>
16095       <div class="tags">
16096
16097
16098         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>.
16099
16100
16101       </div>
16102     </div>
16103     <div class="padding"></div>
16104
16105     <div class="entry">
16106       <div class="title">
16107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
16108       </div>
16109       <div class="date">
16110         11th December 2010
16111       </div>
16112       <div class="body">
16113         <p>As I continue to explore
16114 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
16115 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
16116 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
16117
16118 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
16119 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
16120 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
16121 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
16122 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
16123 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
16124 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
16125 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
16126 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
16127 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
16128 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
16129 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
16130 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
16131 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
16132 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
16133 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
16134 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
16135 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
16136 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
16137 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
16138
16139 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
16140 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
16141 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
16142 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
16143 If the Skolelinux foundation
16144 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
16145 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
16146 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
16147 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
16148 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
16149 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
16150 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
16151 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
16152
16153 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
16154 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
16155 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
16156 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
16157 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
16158 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
16159 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
16160 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
16161 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
16162 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
16163 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
16164 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
16165 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
16166 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
16167 currencies.</p>
16168
16169 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
16170 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
16171 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
16172 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
16173 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
16174 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
16175 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
16176 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
16177 BitCoins.  Check out
16178 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
16179 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
16180 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
16181 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
16182 yet.</p>
16183
16184 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
16185 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
16186 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
16187 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
16188 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
16189
16190       </div>
16191       <div class="tags">
16192
16193
16194         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>.
16195
16196
16197       </div>
16198     </div>
16199     <div class="padding"></div>
16200
16201     <div class="entry">
16202       <div class="title">
16203         <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>
16204       </div>
16205       <div class="date">
16206         10th December 2010
16207       </div>
16208       <div class="body">
16209         <p>With this weeks lawless
16210 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
16211 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
16212 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
16213 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
16214 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
16215 A blog post from
16216 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
16217 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
16218 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
16219 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
16220 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
16221 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
16222 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
16223
16224 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
16225 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
16226 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
16227 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
16228 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
16229 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
16230 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
16231 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
16232 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
16233 Debian</a> soon.</p>
16234
16235 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
16236 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
16237 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
16238 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
16239 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
16240 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
16241 you can even get
16242 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
16243 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
16244 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
16245 on the current exchange rates.</p>
16246
16247 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
16248 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
16249 donations to the address
16250 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
16251
16252       </div>
16253       <div class="tags">
16254
16255
16256         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>.
16257
16258
16259       </div>
16260     </div>
16261     <div class="padding"></div>
16262
16263     <div class="entry">
16264       <div class="title">
16265         <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>
16266       </div>
16267       <div class="date">
16268          9th December 2010
16269       </div>
16270       <div class="body">
16271         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
16272 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
16273 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
16274 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
16275 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
16276 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
16277 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
16278 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
16279 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
16280 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
16281 operational.</p>
16282
16283 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
16284 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
16285 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
16286 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
16287 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
16288 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
16289 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
16290
16291       </div>
16292       <div class="tags">
16293
16294
16295         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>.
16296
16297
16298       </div>
16299     </div>
16300     <div class="padding"></div>
16301
16302     <div class="entry">
16303       <div class="title">
16304         <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>
16305       </div>
16306       <div class="date">
16307         29th November 2010
16308       </div>
16309       <div class="body">
16310         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
16311 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
16312 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
16313 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
16314 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
16315 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
16316
16317 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
16318 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
16319 will hold its
16320 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
16321 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
16322 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
16323 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
16324 vote this year.</p>
16325
16326       </div>
16327       <div class="tags">
16328
16329
16330         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16331
16332
16333       </div>
16334     </div>
16335     <div class="padding"></div>
16336
16337     <div class="entry">
16338       <div class="title">
16339         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
16340       </div>
16341       <div class="date">
16342         27th November 2010
16343       </div>
16344       <div class="body">
16345         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
16346 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
16347 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
16348 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
16349 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
16350 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
16351 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
16352 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
16353
16354 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
16355 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
16356 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
16357 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
16358 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
16359 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
16360 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
16361 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
16362 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
16363 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
16364 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
16365
16366 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
16367 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
16368 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
16369 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
16370 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
16371 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
16372 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
16373 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
16374 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
16375 what is going on.</p>
16376
16377       </div>
16378       <div class="tags">
16379
16380
16381         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>.
16382
16383
16384       </div>
16385     </div>
16386     <div class="padding"></div>
16387
16388     <div class="entry">
16389       <div class="title">
16390         <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>
16391       </div>
16392       <div class="date">
16393         22nd November 2010
16394       </div>
16395       <div class="body">
16396         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
16397 upgrade testing of the
16398 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
16399 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
16400 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
16401 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
16402
16403 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
16404
16405 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16406
16407 <blockquote><p>
16408   apache2.2-bin
16409   aptdaemon
16410   baobab
16411   binfmt-support
16412   browser-plugin-gnash
16413   cheese-common
16414   cli-common
16415   cups-pk-helper
16416   dmz-cursor-theme
16417   empathy
16418   empathy-common
16419   freedesktop-sound-theme
16420   freeglut3
16421   gconf-defaults-service
16422   gdm-themes
16423   gedit-plugins
16424   geoclue
16425   geoclue-hostip
16426   geoclue-localnet
16427   geoclue-manual
16428   geoclue-yahoo
16429   gnash
16430   gnash-common
16431   gnome
16432   gnome-backgrounds
16433   gnome-cards-data
16434   gnome-codec-install
16435   gnome-core
16436   gnome-desktop-environment
16437   gnome-disk-utility
16438   gnome-screenshot
16439   gnome-search-tool
16440   gnome-session-canberra
16441   gnome-system-log
16442   gnome-themes-extras
16443   gnome-themes-more
16444   gnome-user-share
16445   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16446   gstreamer0.10-tools
16447   gtk2-engines
16448   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16449   gtk2-engines-smooth
16450   hamster-applet
16451   libapache2-mod-dnssd
16452   libapr1
16453   libaprutil1
16454   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
16455   libaprutil1-ldap
16456   libart2.0-cil
16457   libboost-date-time1.42.0
16458   libboost-python1.42.0
16459   libboost-thread1.42.0
16460   libchamplain-0.4-0
16461   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
16462   libcheese-gtk18
16463   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
16464   libcryptui0
16465   libdiscid0
16466   libelf1
16467   libepc-1.0-2
16468   libepc-common
16469   libepc-ui-1.0-2
16470   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16471   libfreerdp0
16472   libgconf2.0-cil
16473   libgdata-common
16474   libgdata7
16475   libgdu-gtk0
16476   libgee2
16477   libgeoclue0
16478   libgexiv2-0
16479   libgif4
16480   libglade2.0-cil
16481   libglib2.0-cil
16482   libgmime2.4-cil
16483   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16484   libgnome2.24-cil
16485   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
16486   libgpod-common
16487   libgpod4
16488   libgtk2.0-cil
16489   libgtkglext1
16490   libgtksourceview2.0-common
16491   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
16492   libmono-addins0.2-cil
16493   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
16494   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
16495   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
16496   libmono-posix2.0-cil
16497   libmono-security2.0-cil
16498   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
16499   libmono-system2.0-cil
16500   libmtp8
16501   libmusicbrainz3-6
16502   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
16503   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
16504   libopal3.6.8
16505   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
16506   libpt2.6.7
16507   libpython2.6
16508   librpm1
16509   librpmio1
16510   libsdl1.2debian
16511   libsrtp0
16512   libssh-4
16513   libtelepathy-farsight0
16514   libtelepathy-glib0
16515   libtidy-0.99-0
16516   media-player-info
16517   mesa-utils
16518   mono-2.0-gac
16519   mono-gac
16520   mono-runtime
16521   nautilus-sendto
16522   nautilus-sendto-empathy
16523   p7zip-full
16524   pkg-config
16525   python-aptdaemon
16526   python-aptdaemon-gtk
16527   python-axiom
16528   python-beautifulsoup
16529   python-bugbuddy
16530   python-clientform
16531   python-coherence
16532   python-configobj
16533   python-crypto
16534   python-cupshelpers
16535   python-elementtree
16536   python-epsilon
16537   python-evolution
16538   python-feedparser
16539   python-gdata
16540   python-gdbm
16541   python-gst0.10
16542   python-gtkglext1
16543   python-gtksourceview2
16544   python-httplib2
16545   python-louie
16546   python-mako
16547   python-markupsafe
16548   python-mechanize
16549   python-nevow
16550   python-notify
16551   python-opengl
16552   python-openssl
16553   python-pam
16554   python-pkg-resources
16555   python-pyasn1
16556   python-pysqlite2
16557   python-rdflib
16558   python-serial
16559   python-tagpy
16560   python-twisted-bin
16561   python-twisted-conch
16562   python-twisted-core
16563   python-twisted-web
16564   python-utidylib
16565   python-webkit
16566   python-xdg
16567   python-zope.interface
16568   remmina
16569   remmina-plugin-data
16570   remmina-plugin-rdp
16571   remmina-plugin-vnc
16572   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
16573   rhythmbox-plugins
16574   rpm-common
16575   rpm2cpio
16576   seahorse-plugins
16577   shotwell
16578   software-center
16579   system-config-printer-udev
16580   telepathy-gabble
16581   telepathy-mission-control-5
16582   telepathy-salut
16583   tomboy
16584   totem
16585   totem-coherence
16586   totem-mozilla
16587   totem-plugins
16588   transmission-common
16589   xdg-user-dirs
16590   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
16591   xserver-xephyr
16592 </p></blockquote>
16593
16594 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16595
16596 <blockquote><p>
16597   cheese
16598   ekiga
16599   eog
16600   epiphany-extensions
16601   evolution-exchange
16602   fast-user-switch-applet
16603   file-roller
16604   gcalctool
16605   gconf-editor
16606   gdm
16607   gedit
16608   gedit-common
16609   gnome-games
16610   gnome-games-data
16611   gnome-nettool
16612   gnome-system-tools
16613   gnome-themes
16614   gnuchess
16615   gucharmap
16616   guile-1.8-libs
16617   libavahi-ui0
16618   libdmx1
16619   libgalago3
16620   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
16621   libgtksourceview2.0-0
16622   liblircclient0
16623   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
16624   libspeexdsp1
16625   libsvga1
16626   rhythmbox
16627   seahorse
16628   sound-juicer
16629   system-config-printer
16630   totem-common
16631   transmission-gtk
16632   vinagre
16633   vino
16634 </p></blockquote>
16635
16636 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16637
16638 <blockquote><p>
16639   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16640 </p></blockquote>
16641
16642 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16643
16644 <blockquote><p>
16645 [nothing]
16646 </p></blockquote>
16647
16648 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
16649
16650 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16651
16652 <blockquote><p>
16653   ksmserver
16654 </p></blockquote>
16655
16656 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16657
16658 <blockquote><p>
16659   kwin
16660   network-manager-kde
16661 </p></blockquote>
16662
16663 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16664
16665 <blockquote><p>
16666   arts
16667   dolphin
16668   freespacenotifier
16669   google-gadgets-gst
16670   google-gadgets-xul
16671   kappfinder
16672   kcalc
16673   kcharselect
16674   kde-core
16675   kde-plasma-desktop
16676   kde-standard
16677   kde-window-manager
16678   kdeartwork
16679   kdeartwork-emoticons
16680   kdeartwork-style
16681   kdeartwork-theme-icon
16682   kdebase
16683   kdebase-apps
16684   kdebase-workspace
16685   kdebase-workspace-bin
16686   kdebase-workspace-data
16687   kdeeject
16688   kdelibs
16689   kdeplasma-addons
16690   kdeutils
16691   kdewallpapers
16692   kdf
16693   kfloppy
16694   kgpg
16695   khelpcenter4
16696   kinfocenter
16697   konq-plugins-l10n
16698   konqueror-nsplugins
16699   kscreensaver
16700   kscreensaver-xsavers
16701   ktimer
16702   kwrite
16703   libgle3
16704   libkde4-ruby1.8
16705   libkonq5
16706   libkonq5-templates
16707   libnetpbm10
16708   libplasma-ruby
16709   libplasma-ruby1.8
16710   libqt4-ruby1.8
16711   marble-data
16712   marble-plugins
16713   netpbm
16714   nuvola-icon-theme
16715   plasma-dataengines-workspace
16716   plasma-desktop
16717   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
16718   plasma-runners-addons
16719   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
16720   plasma-scriptengine-python
16721   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
16722   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
16723   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
16724   plasma-scriptengines
16725   plasma-wallpapers-addons
16726   plasma-widget-folderview
16727   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
16728   ruby
16729   sweeper
16730   update-notifier-kde
16731   xscreensaver-data-extra
16732   xscreensaver-gl
16733   xscreensaver-gl-extra
16734   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
16735 </p></blockquote>
16736
16737 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16738
16739 <blockquote><p>
16740   ark
16741   google-gadgets-common
16742   google-gadgets-qt
16743   htdig
16744   kate
16745   kdebase-bin
16746   kdebase-data
16747   kdepasswd
16748   kfind
16749   klipper
16750   konq-plugins
16751   konqueror
16752   ksysguard
16753   ksysguardd
16754   libarchive1
16755   libcln6
16756   libeet1
16757   libeina-svn-06
16758   libggadget-1.0-0b
16759   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
16760   libgps19
16761   libkdecorations4
16762   libkephal4
16763   libkonq4
16764   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
16765   libkscreensaver5
16766   libksgrd4
16767   libksignalplotter4
16768   libkunitconversion4
16769   libkwineffects1a
16770   libmarblewidget4
16771   libntrack-qt4-1
16772   libntrack0
16773   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
16774   libplasmaclock4a
16775   libplasmagenericshell4
16776   libprocesscore4a
16777   libprocessui4a
16778   libqalculate5
16779   libqedje0a
16780   libqtruby4shared2
16781   libqzion0a
16782   libruby1.8
16783   libscim8c2a
16784   libsmokekdecore4-3
16785   libsmokekdeui4-3
16786   libsmokekfile3
16787   libsmokekhtml3
16788   libsmokekio3
16789   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
16790   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
16791   libsmokekparts3
16792   libsmokektexteditor3
16793   libsmokekutils3
16794   libsmokenepomuk3
16795   libsmokephonon3
16796   libsmokeplasma3
16797   libsmokeqtcore4-3
16798   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
16799   libsmokeqtgui4-3
16800   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
16801   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
16802   libsmokeqtscript4-3
16803   libsmokeqtsql4-3
16804   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
16805   libsmokeqttest4-3
16806   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
16807   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
16808   libsmokeqtxml4-3
16809   libsmokesolid3
16810   libsmokesoprano3
16811   libtaskmanager4a
16812   libtidy-0.99-0
16813   libweather-ion4a
16814   libxklavier16
16815   libxxf86misc1
16816   okteta
16817   oxygencursors
16818   plasma-dataengines-addons
16819   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
16820   plasma-widget-lancelot
16821   plasma-widgets-addons
16822   plasma-widgets-workspace
16823   polkit-kde-1
16824   ruby1.8
16825   systemsettings
16826   update-notifier-common
16827 </p></blockquote>
16828
16829 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
16830 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
16831 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
16832 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
16833
16834       </div>
16835       <div class="tags">
16836
16837
16838         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>.
16839
16840
16841       </div>
16842     </div>
16843     <div class="padding"></div>
16844
16845     <div class="entry">
16846       <div class="title">
16847         <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>
16848       </div>
16849       <div class="date">
16850         22nd November 2010
16851       </div>
16852       <div class="body">
16853         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
16854 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
16855 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
16856 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
16857 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
16858 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
16859 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
16860 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
16861 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
16862
16863 <p>I found
16864 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
16865 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
16866 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
16867 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
16868 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
16869 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
16870
16871 <pre>
16872 #!/bin/sh
16873
16874 # Based on
16875 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
16876
16877 set -e
16878 set -x
16879
16880 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
16881     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
16882     exit 1
16883 else
16884     host="$1"
16885 fi
16886
16887 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
16888     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
16889     exit 1
16890 fi
16891
16892 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
16893 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
16894 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
16895 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
16896
16897 img=$host.img
16898 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
16899 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
16900
16901 parted $img mklabel msdos
16902 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
16903 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
16904 parted $img set 1 boot on
16905
16906 modprobe dm-mod
16907 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
16908 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
16909
16910 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
16911 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
16912 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
16913
16914 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
16915 losetup -d /dev/loop0
16916 </pre>
16917
16918 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
16919 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
16920
16921 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
16922 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
16923 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
16924 seem to work just fine.</p>
16925
16926       </div>
16927       <div class="tags">
16928
16929
16930         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>.
16931
16932
16933       </div>
16934     </div>
16935     <div class="padding"></div>
16936
16937     <div class="entry">
16938       <div class="title">
16939         <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>
16940       </div>
16941       <div class="date">
16942         20th November 2010
16943       </div>
16944       <div class="body">
16945         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
16946 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
16947 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
16948 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
16949
16950 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
16951 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
16952 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
16953
16954 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
16955
16956 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16957
16958 <blockquote><p>
16959   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
16960   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
16961   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
16962   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
16963   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
16964   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
16965   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
16966   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
16967   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
16968   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
16969   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16970   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16971   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
16972   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
16973   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
16974   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
16975   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
16976   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
16977   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16978   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
16979   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
16980   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16981   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
16982   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
16983   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
16984   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
16985   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
16986   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
16987   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
16988   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
16989   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
16990   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16991   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
16992   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
16993   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
16994   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
16995   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
16996   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
16997   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
16998   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
16999   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
17000   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
17001   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
17002   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
17003   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
17004   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
17005   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
17006   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
17007   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
17008   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
17009   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
17010   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
17011   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
17012   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
17013   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
17014   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
17015   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
17016   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
17017   zip
17018 </p></blockquote>
17019
17020 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
17021
17022 <blockquote><p>
17023   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
17024   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
17025   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
17026   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
17027   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
17028   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
17029   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
17030   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
17031   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
17032   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
17033   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
17034   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
17035   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
17036   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17037   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
17038   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
17039   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17040   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
17041   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
17042   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
17043   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
17044   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
17045   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
17046   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
17047   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
17048   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
17049   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
17050   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
17051   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
17052 </p></blockquote>
17053
17054 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17055
17056 <blockquote><p>
17057   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17058 </p></blockquote>
17059
17060 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17061
17062 <blockquote><p>
17063 [nothing]
17064 </p></blockquote>
17065
17066 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
17067
17068 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17069
17070 <blockquote><p>
17071   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
17072   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
17073   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
17074   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
17075   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
17076   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
17077   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
17078   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
17079   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
17080   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
17081   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
17082   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
17083   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
17084   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
17085   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
17086   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
17087   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
17088   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
17089   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
17090   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
17091   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
17092   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
17093   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
17094   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
17095   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
17096   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
17097   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
17098   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
17099   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
17100   ttf-sazanami-gothic
17101 </p></blockquote>
17102
17103 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17104
17105 <blockquote><p>
17106   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
17107   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
17108   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
17109   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
17110   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
17111   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
17112   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
17113   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
17114   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
17115   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
17116   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
17117   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
17118   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
17119   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
17120   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
17121   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
17122   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
17123   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
17124   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
17125   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
17126   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17127   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
17128   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
17129   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
17130   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
17131   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
17132   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
17133   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
17134   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
17135   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
17136   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
17137   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
17138   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
17139 </p></blockquote>
17140
17141 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17142
17143 <blockquote><p>
17144   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
17145   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
17146   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
17147   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
17148   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
17149   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
17150   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
17151 </p></blockquote>
17152
17153 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17154
17155 <blockquote><p>
17156   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
17157 </p></blockquote>
17158
17159       </div>
17160       <div class="tags">
17161
17162
17163         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>.
17164
17165
17166       </div>
17167     </div>
17168     <div class="padding"></div>
17169
17170     <div class="entry">
17171       <div class="title">
17172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
17173       </div>
17174       <div class="date">
17175         20th November 2010
17176       </div>
17177       <div class="body">
17178         <p>Answering
17179 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
17180 call from the Gnash project</a> for
17181 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
17182 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
17183 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
17184 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
17185 releases out more often.</p>
17186
17187 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
17188 I have considered setting up a <a
17189 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
17190 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
17191 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
17192 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
17193 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
17194 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
17195 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
17196 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
17197 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
17198 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
17199 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
17200 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
17201
17202       </div>
17203       <div class="tags">
17204
17205
17206         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>.
17207
17208
17209       </div>
17210     </div>
17211     <div class="padding"></div>
17212
17213     <div class="entry">
17214       <div class="title">
17215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
17216       </div>
17217       <div class="date">
17218          9th November 2010
17219       </div>
17220       <div class="body">
17221         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
17222
17223 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
17224 3D linked in from
17225 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
17226 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
17227
17228       </div>
17229       <div class="tags">
17230
17231
17232         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>.
17233
17234
17235       </div>
17236     </div>
17237     <div class="padding"></div>
17238
17239     <div class="entry">
17240       <div class="title">
17241         <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>
17242       </div>
17243       <div class="date">
17244          7th November 2010
17245       </div>
17246       <div class="body">
17247         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
17248 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
17249 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
17250 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
17251 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
17252 working using this DVD.</p>
17253
17254 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
17255 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
17256 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
17257 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
17258 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
17259 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
17260 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
17261
17262 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
17263 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
17264 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
17265 Debian archive.</p>
17266
17267 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
17268 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
17269 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
17270 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
17271 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
17272 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
17273 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
17274 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
17275 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
17276 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
17277 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
17278 free X driver should work.</p>
17279
17280 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
17281 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
17282 DVD more useful again.</p>
17283
17284       </div>
17285       <div class="tags">
17286
17287
17288         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17289
17290
17291       </div>
17292     </div>
17293     <div class="padding"></div>
17294
17295     <div class="entry">
17296       <div class="title">
17297         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
17298       </div>
17299       <div class="date">
17300         24th October 2010
17301       </div>
17302       <div class="body">
17303         <p>Some updates.</p>
17304
17305 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
17306 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
17307 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
17308 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
17309 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
17310 :)</p>
17311
17312 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
17313 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
17314 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
17315 It is called
17316 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
17317 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
17318 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
17319 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
17320 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
17321 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
17322
17323 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
17324 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
17325 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
17326 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
17327 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
17328 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
17329 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
17330 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
17331 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
17332 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
17333
17334       </div>
17335       <div class="tags">
17336
17337
17338         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>.
17339
17340
17341       </div>
17342     </div>
17343     <div class="padding"></div>
17344
17345     <div class="entry">
17346       <div class="title">
17347         <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>
17348       </div>
17349       <div class="date">
17350         19th October 2010
17351       </div>
17352       <div class="body">
17353         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
17354 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
17355 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
17356 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
17357 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
17358 AVM2 flash files.</p>
17359
17360 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
17361 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
17362 following text:</P>
17363
17364 <p><blockquote>
17365
17366   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
17367   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
17368
17369   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
17370
17371   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
17372
17373   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
17374   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
17375   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
17376   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
17377   days. The project web page is available from
17378   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
17379   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
17380   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
17381
17382   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
17383   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
17384   to get this to happen.</p>
17385
17386   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
17387   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
17388
17389 </blockquote></p>
17390
17391 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
17392 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
17393 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
17394 :)</p>
17395
17396       </div>
17397       <div class="tags">
17398
17399
17400         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>.
17401
17402
17403       </div>
17404     </div>
17405     <div class="padding"></div>
17406
17407     <div class="entry">
17408       <div class="title">
17409         <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>
17410       </div>
17411       <div class="date">
17412          9th October 2010
17413       </div>
17414       <div class="body">
17415         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
17416 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
17417 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
17418 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
17419 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
17420 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
17421 robots.</p>
17422
17423 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
17424 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
17425 a few less important features too.</p>
17426
17427 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
17428 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
17429 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
17430 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
17431
17432 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
17433 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
17434 source or binary package:</p>
17435
17436 <p><ul>
17437 <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>
17438 <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>
17439 <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>
17440 </ul></p>
17441
17442 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
17443 please let me know.</p>
17444
17445       </div>
17446       <div class="tags">
17447
17448
17449         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>.
17450
17451
17452       </div>
17453     </div>
17454     <div class="padding"></div>
17455
17456     <div class="entry">
17457       <div class="title">
17458         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
17459       </div>
17460       <div class="date">
17461          3rd October 2010
17462       </div>
17463       <div class="body">
17464         <p><ul>
17465
17466 <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
17467 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
17468
17469 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
17470 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
17471 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
17472
17473 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
17474 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
17475 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
17476 simple setup.
17477
17478 </ul></p>
17479
17480       </div>
17481       <div class="tags">
17482
17483
17484         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>.
17485
17486
17487       </div>
17488     </div>
17489     <div class="padding"></div>
17490
17491     <div class="entry">
17492       <div class="title">
17493         <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>
17494       </div>
17495       <div class="date">
17496          9th September 2010
17497       </div>
17498       <div class="body">
17499         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
17500 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
17501 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
17502 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
17503 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
17504 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
17505 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
17506 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
17507 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
17508
17509 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
17510 written:</p>
17511
17512 <blockquote>
17513 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
17514 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
17515 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
17516 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
17517 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
17518
17519 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
17520 standard.</p>
17521 </blockquote>
17522
17523 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
17524 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
17525 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
17526 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
17527
17528 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
17529 read
17530 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
17531 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
17532 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
17533 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
17534 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
17535 the issue.  The solution is to support the
17536 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
17537 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
17538 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
17539
17540       </div>
17541       <div class="tags">
17542
17543
17544         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17545
17546
17547       </div>
17548     </div>
17549     <div class="padding"></div>
17550
17551     <div class="entry">
17552       <div class="title">
17553         <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>
17554       </div>
17555       <div class="date">
17556          4th September 2010
17557       </div>
17558       <div class="body">
17559         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
17560 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
17561 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
17562 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
17563 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
17564 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
17565 installed.</p>
17566
17567 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
17568 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
17569 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
17570 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
17571 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
17572 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
17573 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
17574 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
17575 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
17576
17577 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
17578 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
17579 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
17580 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
17581 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
17582 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
17583 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
17584 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
17585 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
17586 pages they want to visit.</p>
17587
17588 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
17589 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
17590 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
17591 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
17592 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
17593 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
17594 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
17595 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
17596 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
17597 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
17598 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
17599
17600       </div>
17601       <div class="tags">
17602
17603
17604         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>.
17605
17606
17607       </div>
17608     </div>
17609     <div class="padding"></div>
17610
17611     <div class="entry">
17612       <div class="title">
17613         <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>
17614       </div>
17615       <div class="date">
17616          1st September 2010
17617       </div>
17618       <div class="body">
17619         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
17620 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
17621 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
17622 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
17623 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
17624 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
17625 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
17626 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
17627 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
17628 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
17629 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
17630 drive around.</p>
17631
17632 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
17633 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
17634
17635 <p><pre>
17636 use Spykee;
17637 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
17638 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
17639 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
17640 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
17641 $spykee->left();
17642 sleep 2;
17643 $spykee->right();
17644 sleep 2;
17645 $spykee->forward();
17646 sleep 2;
17647 $spykee->back();
17648 sleep 2;
17649 $spykee->stop();
17650 </pre></p>
17651
17652 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
17653 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
17654 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
17655 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
17656 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
17657 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
17658 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
17659 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
17660 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
17661 going. :).</p>
17662
17663 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
17664 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
17665 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
17666 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
17667
17668       </div>
17669       <div class="tags">
17670
17671
17672         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>.
17673
17674
17675       </div>
17676     </div>
17677     <div class="padding"></div>
17678
17679     <div class="entry">
17680       <div class="title">
17681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
17682       </div>
17683       <div class="date">
17684         30th August 2010
17685       </div>
17686       <div class="body">
17687         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
17688 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
17689 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
17690 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
17691 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
17692 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
17693 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
17694
17695 <pre>
17696 % ln foo bar
17697 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
17698 %
17699 </pre>
17700
17701 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
17702 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
17703 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
17704 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
17705 nevertheless. :)</p>
17706
17707 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
17708 git from
17709 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
17710
17711       </div>
17712       <div class="tags">
17713
17714
17715         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17716
17717
17718       </div>
17719     </div>
17720     <div class="padding"></div>
17721
17722     <div class="entry">
17723       <div class="title">
17724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
17725       </div>
17726       <div class="date">
17727         26th August 2010
17728       </div>
17729       <div class="body">
17730         <p>My file system sematics program
17731 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
17732 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
17733 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
17734 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
17735 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
17736 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
17737 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
17738 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
17739 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
17740 script:</p>
17741
17742 <pre>
17743 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
17744   mode_t retval = 0;
17745   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
17746   if (-1 != fd) {
17747     unlink(name);
17748     struct stat statbuf;
17749     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
17750       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
17751     }
17752     close(fd);
17753   }
17754   return retval;
17755 }
17756
17757 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
17758 int test_umask(void) {
17759   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
17760
17761   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
17762   mode_t newmode;
17763   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
17764     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
17765            newmode);
17766   }
17767   umask(007);
17768   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
17769     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
17770            newmode);
17771   }
17772
17773   umask (orig_umask);
17774   return 0;
17775 }
17776
17777 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
17778   [...]
17779   test_umask();
17780   return 0;
17781 }
17782 </pre>
17783
17784 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
17785
17786 <pre>
17787 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17788 info: testing symlink creation
17789 info: testing subdirectory creation
17790 info: testing fcntl locking
17791   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17792   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17793   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
17794   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17795   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17796   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
17797 info: testing umask effect on file creation
17798 </pre>
17799
17800 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
17801 result:</p>
17802
17803 <pre>
17804 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17805 info: testing symlink creation
17806 info: testing subdirectory creation
17807 info: testing fcntl locking
17808   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17809   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17810   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
17811   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17812   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17813   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
17814 info: testing umask effect on file creation
17815   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
17816   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
17817 </pre>
17818
17819 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
17820 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
17821 directory.</p>
17822
17823 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
17824 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
17825
17826 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
17827 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
17828 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
17829
17830       </div>
17831       <div class="tags">
17832
17833
17834         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17835
17836
17837       </div>
17838     </div>
17839     <div class="padding"></div>
17840
17841     <div class="entry">
17842       <div class="title">
17843         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
17844       </div>
17845       <div class="date">
17846         15th August 2010
17847       </div>
17848       <div class="body">
17849         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
17850 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
17851 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
17852 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
17853 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
17854 long time.</p>
17855
17856       </div>
17857       <div class="tags">
17858
17859
17860         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>.
17861
17862
17863       </div>
17864     </div>
17865     <div class="padding"></div>
17866
17867     <div class="entry">
17868       <div class="title">
17869         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
17870       </div>
17871       <div class="date">
17872          9th August 2010
17873       </div>
17874       <div class="body">
17875         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
17876 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
17877 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
17878 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
17879 generated configuration.</p>
17880
17881 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
17882 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
17883 without any manual configuration.</p>
17884
17885 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
17886 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
17887 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
17888 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
17889 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
17890 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
17891 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
17892 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
17893 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
17894 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
17895 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
17896 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
17897 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
17898 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
17899 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
17900 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
17901 use.</p>
17902
17903 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
17904 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
17905 working properly out of the box:</p>
17906
17907 <ul>
17908 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
17909 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
17910 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
17911 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
17912 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
17913 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
17914 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
17915 </ul>
17916
17917 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
17918
17919 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
17920 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
17921 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
17922 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
17923 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
17924
17925 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
17926 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
17927 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
17928 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
17929 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
17930 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
17931 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
17932 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
17933
17934 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
17935 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
17936 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
17937 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
17938 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
17939 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
17940 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
17941 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
17942 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
17943 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
17944 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
17945 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
17946 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
17947 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
17948 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
17949 current DNS domain is used.</p>
17950
17951 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
17952 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
17953 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
17954 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
17955 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
17956 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
17957 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
17958 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
17959 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
17960 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
17961 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
17962 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
17963 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
17964
17965 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
17966 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
17967 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
17968 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
17969 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
17970 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
17971 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
17972 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
17973 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
17974 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
17975 do for now. :)</p>
17976
17977 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
17978 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
17979 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
17980 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
17981 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
17982 yet.</p>
17983
17984 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
17985 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17986
17987 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
17988 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
17989 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
17990 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
17991
17992       </div>
17993       <div class="tags">
17994
17995
17996         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17997
17998
17999       </div>
18000     </div>
18001     <div class="padding"></div>
18002
18003     <div class="entry">
18004       <div class="title">
18005         <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>
18006       </div>
18007       <div class="date">
18008          8th August 2010
18009       </div>
18010       <div class="body">
18011         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
18012 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
18013 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
18014 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
18015 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
18016 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
18017 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
18018
18019 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
18020 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
18021 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
18022 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
18023 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
18024 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
18025 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
18026
18027 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
18028 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
18029 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
18030 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
18031 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
18032
18033 <pre>
18034 /*
18035  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
18036  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
18037  * directory.
18038  * License: GPL v2 or later
18039  *
18040  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
18041  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
18042 */
18043
18044 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
18045 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
18046 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
18047
18048 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
18049
18050 #include &lt;errno.h>
18051 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
18052 #include &lt;stdio.h>
18053 #include &lt;string.h>
18054 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
18055 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
18056 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
18057 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
18058 #include &lt;unistd.h>
18059
18060 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18061 /*
18062  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
18063  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
18064  * below.
18065  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
18066  */
18067 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
18068 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
18069   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
18070 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
18071   char *zErrMsg;
18072   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18073   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
18074   unlink(name);
18075   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
18076   if( rc ){
18077     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
18078     sqlite3_close(db);
18079     return -1;
18080   }
18081
18082   /* create tables */
18083   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
18084   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
18085     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
18086     sqlite3_close(db);
18087     return -1;
18088   }
18089   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
18090   sqlite3_close(db);
18091   return 0;
18092 }
18093 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18094
18095 /*
18096  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
18097  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
18098  * done in the sqlite3 library.
18099  * See also
18100  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
18101  * POSIX specification
18102  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
18103  */
18104 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
18105   struct flock fl;
18106   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18107   unlink(name);
18108   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
18109   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
18110
18111   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
18112   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
18113   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18114   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18115   fl.l_len    = 1;
18116   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18117   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18118
18119   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18120   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18121   fl.l_len    = 510;
18122   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18123   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18124
18125   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18126   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18127   fl.l_len    = 1;
18128   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18129   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18130
18131   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18132   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18133   fl.l_len    = 1;
18134   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
18135   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18136
18137   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18138   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18139   fl.l_len    = 510;
18140   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18141
18142   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
18143   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18144   fl.l_len    = 2;
18145   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18146   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18147
18148   close(fd);
18149   return 0;
18150 }
18151
18152 /*
18153  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
18154  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
18155  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
18156  * slowing down file operations.
18157  */
18158 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
18159 #define LEVELS 5
18160   char *path = strdup("test");
18161   char *dirs[LEVELS];
18162   int level;
18163   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
18164   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
18165     char *newpath = NULL;
18166     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
18167       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
18168              path, strerror(errno));
18169       break;
18170     }
18171     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
18172     free(path);
18173     path = newpath;
18174   }
18175   return 0;
18176 }
18177
18178 /*
18179  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
18180  * KDE.
18181  */
18182 int test_symlinks(void) {
18183   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
18184   unlink("symlink");
18185   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
18186     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
18187   return 0;
18188 }
18189
18190 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
18191   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
18192   test_symlinks();
18193   test_subdirectory_creation();
18194 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18195   test_sqlite_open();
18196 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18197   test_gcompris_locking();
18198   return 0;
18199 }
18200 </pre>
18201
18202 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
18203 this:</p>
18204
18205 <pre>
18206 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18207 info: testing symlink creation
18208 info: testing subdirectory creation
18209 info: sqlite worked
18210 info: testing fcntl locking
18211   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18212   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18213   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18214   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18215   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18216   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18217 </pre>
18218
18219 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
18220 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
18221 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
18222 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
18223 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
18224 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
18225 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
18226 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
18227
18228 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
18229 it. :)</p>
18230
18231 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
18232 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
18233 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
18234
18235       </div>
18236       <div class="tags">
18237
18238
18239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18240
18241
18242       </div>
18243     </div>
18244     <div class="padding"></div>
18245
18246     <div class="entry">
18247       <div class="title">
18248         <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>
18249       </div>
18250       <div class="date">
18251          7th August 2010
18252       </div>
18253       <div class="body">
18254         <p>A few days ago, I
18255 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
18256 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
18257 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
18258 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
18259 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
18260 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
18261 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
18262 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
18263 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
18264
18265 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
18266 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
18267 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
18268 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
18269 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
18270 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
18271 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
18272 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
18273 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
18274 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
18275 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
18276 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
18277 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
18278 gave it a IP address.</p>
18279
18280 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
18281 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
18282 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
18283 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
18284 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
18285 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
18286 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
18287 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
18288
18289 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
18290 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
18291 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
18292 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
18293 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
18294 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
18295
18296 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
18297 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
18298 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
18299 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
18300 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
18301 with UID and GID values.</p>
18302
18303 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
18304 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18305
18306       </div>
18307       <div class="tags">
18308
18309
18310         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18311
18312
18313       </div>
18314     </div>
18315     <div class="padding"></div>
18316
18317     <div class="entry">
18318       <div class="title">
18319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
18320       </div>
18321       <div class="date">
18322          3rd August 2010
18323       </div>
18324       <div class="body">
18325         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
18326 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
18327 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
18328 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
18329 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
18330 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
18331 servers.</p>
18332
18333 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
18334 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
18335 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
18336 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
18337 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
18338 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
18339 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
18340 .uio.no.</p>
18341
18342 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
18343 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
18344 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
18345 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
18346 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
18347 university servers.</p>
18348
18349 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
18350 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
18351 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
18352 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
18353 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
18354 uses.</p>
18355
18356       </div>
18357       <div class="tags">
18358
18359
18360         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18361
18362
18363       </div>
18364     </div>
18365     <div class="padding"></div>
18366
18367     <div class="entry">
18368       <div class="title">
18369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
18370       </div>
18371       <div class="date">
18372         27th July 2010
18373       </div>
18374       <div class="body">
18375         <p>I discovered this while doing
18376 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
18377 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
18378 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
18379 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
18380 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
18381
18382 <p>An example is from todays
18383 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
18384 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
18385 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
18386 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
18387 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
18388 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
18389 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
18390
18391 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
18392
18393 <blockquote><pre>
18394 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
18395  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
18396   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
18397 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
18398  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
18399 </pre></blockquote>
18400
18401 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
18402 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
18403 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
18404 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
18405 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
18406 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
18407 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
18408 of dependency loops.</p>
18409
18410 <p>Thanks to
18411 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
18412 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
18413 dependencies
18414 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
18415 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
18416
18417 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
18418 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
18419 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
18420 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
18421 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
18422 it.</p>
18423
18424       </div>
18425       <div class="tags">
18426
18427
18428         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>.
18429
18430
18431       </div>
18432     </div>
18433     <div class="padding"></div>
18434
18435     <div class="entry">
18436       <div class="title">
18437         <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>
18438       </div>
18439       <div class="date">
18440         27th July 2010
18441       </div>
18442       <div class="body">
18443         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
18444 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
18445 completed.</p>
18446
18447 <blockquote>
18448 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
18449 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
18450 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
18451 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
18452 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
18453 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
18454 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
18455 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
18456
18457 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
18458 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
18459 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
18460
18461 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
18462 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
18463 much.</p>
18464
18465 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
18466
18467 <ul>
18468 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
18469 <ul>
18470   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
18471          combination with some new artwork
18472   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
18473   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
18474   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
18475   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
18476   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
18477   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
18478   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
18479   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
18480   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
18481 </ul></li>
18482 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
18483     Enabled for:
18484 <ul>
18485   <li>PAM
18486   <li>LDAP
18487   <li>IMAP
18488   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
18489 </ul>
18490 </li>
18491 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
18492 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
18493     fetched from LDAP.</li>
18494 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
18495 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
18496 </ul>
18497 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
18498
18499 <ul>
18500 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
18501     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
18502     for testing.</li>
18503 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
18504     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
18505     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
18506 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
18507 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
18508 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
18509 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
18510     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
18511 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
18512     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
18513     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
18514 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
18515     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
18516     and help out with translations.</li>
18517 </ul>
18518
18519 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
18520
18521 <ul>
18522 <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>
18523 <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>
18524 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18525 </ul>
18526 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
18527
18528 <ul>
18529 <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>
18530 <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>
18531 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18532 </ul>
18533
18534 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
18535 get closer to the final release.</p>
18536
18537 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
18538
18539 <ul>
18540 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18541 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18542 </ul>
18543
18544 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
18545 <ul>
18546 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18547 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18548 </ul>
18549 <p>How to report bugs:
18550 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
18551
18552 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
18553 </blockquote>
18554
18555       </div>
18556       <div class="tags">
18557
18558
18559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18560
18561
18562       </div>
18563     </div>
18564     <div class="padding"></div>
18565
18566     <div class="entry">
18567       <div class="title">
18568         <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>
18569       </div>
18570       <div class="date">
18571         25th July 2010
18572       </div>
18573       <div class="body">
18574         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
18575 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
18576 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
18577 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
18578 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
18579
18580 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
18581 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
18582 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
18583 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
18584 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
18585 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
18586 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
18587
18588 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
18589 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
18590 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
18591 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
18592 up. :)</p>
18593
18594 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
18595 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
18596 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
18597
18598 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
18599 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
18600 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
18601 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
18602 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
18603 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
18604 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
18605 release another day.</p>
18606
18607 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
18608 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18609
18610       </div>
18611       <div class="tags">
18612
18613
18614         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18615
18616
18617       </div>
18618     </div>
18619     <div class="padding"></div>
18620
18621     <div class="entry">
18622       <div class="title">
18623         <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>
18624       </div>
18625       <div class="date">
18626         18th July 2010
18627       </div>
18628       <div class="body">
18629         <p>Thanks to
18630 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
18631 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
18632 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
18633 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
18634 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
18635 only available from the development server, until more experience is
18636 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
18637
18638 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
18639 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
18640 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
18641 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
18642 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
18643 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
18644 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
18645
18646       </div>
18647       <div class="tags">
18648
18649
18650         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>.
18651
18652
18653       </div>
18654     </div>
18655     <div class="padding"></div>
18656
18657     <div class="entry">
18658       <div class="title">
18659         <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>
18660       </div>
18661       <div class="date">
18662         17th July 2010
18663       </div>
18664       <div class="body">
18665         <p>This is a
18666 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
18667 on my
18668 <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
18669 work</a> on
18670 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
18671 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
18672
18673 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
18674 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
18675 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
18676 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
18677
18678 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
18679 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
18680 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
18681
18682 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
18683
18684 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
18685 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
18686 the web.
18687
18688 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
18689 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
18690 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
18691 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
18692 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
18693 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
18694
18695 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
18696 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
18697 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
18698 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
18699 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
18700 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
18701 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
18702 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
18703 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
18704 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
18705 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
18706 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
18707 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
18708 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
18709 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
18710 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
18711
18712 <blockquote><pre>
18713 ldapsearch -h ldap \
18714   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
18715   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
18716   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
18717   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
18718   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
18719   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
18720
18721 ldapsearch -h ldap \
18722   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
18723   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
18724   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
18725   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
18726   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
18727 </pre></blockquote>
18728
18729 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
18730 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
18731 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
18732 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18733 also exist.</p>
18734
18735 <blockquote><pre>
18736 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18737 objectclass: top
18738 objectclass: dnsdomain
18739 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18740 dc: tjener
18741 arecord: 10.0.2.2
18742 associateddomain: tjener.intern
18743
18744 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18745 objectclass: top
18746 objectclass: dnsdomain2
18747 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18748 dc: 2
18749 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
18750 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
18751 </pre></blockquote>
18752
18753 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
18754 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
18755 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
18756 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
18757 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
18758 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
18759 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
18760 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
18761 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
18762 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
18763 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
18764 instead.</p>
18765
18766 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
18767 like this:</p>
18768
18769 <blockquote><pre>
18770 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
18771   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
18772   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
18773   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
18774   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
18775   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
18776
18777 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
18778   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
18779 </pre></blockquote>
18780
18781 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
18782 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
18783 reverse lookups.</p>
18784
18785 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
18786 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
18787 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
18788 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
18789
18790 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
18791 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
18792 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
18793
18794 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
18795 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
18796 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
18797 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
18798 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
18799
18800 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
18801 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
18802 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
18803 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
18804 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
18805
18806 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
18807 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
18808 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
18809 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
18810 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
18811 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
18812
18813 <blockquote><pre>
18814 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
18815     SUP top
18816     AUXILIARY
18817     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
18818           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
18819           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
18820           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
18821           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
18822     ))
18823 </pre></blockquote>
18824
18825 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
18826 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
18827 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
18828 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
18829 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
18830 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
18831
18832 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
18833
18834 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
18835 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
18836 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
18837 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
18838 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
18839
18840 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
18841 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
18842 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
18843 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
18844
18845 <blockquote><pre>
18846 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
18847 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
18848 </pre></blockquote>
18849
18850 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
18851 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
18852 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
18853 search result is this entry:</p>
18854
18855 <blockquote><pre>
18856 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18857 cn: dhcp
18858 objectClass: top
18859 objectClass: dhcpServer
18860 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18861 </pre></blockquote>
18862
18863 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
18864 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
18865 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
18866 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
18867 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
18868 The search result is this entry:</p>
18869
18870 <blockquote><pre>
18871 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18872 cn: DHCP Config
18873 objectClass: top
18874 objectClass: dhcpService
18875 objectClass: dhcpOptions
18876 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18877 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
18878 dhcpStatements: authoritative
18879 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
18880 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
18881 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
18882 </pre></blockquote>
18883
18884 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
18885 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
18886 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
18887 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
18888 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
18889 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
18890 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
18891 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
18892 related computer objects.</p>
18893
18894 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
18895 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
18896 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
18897 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
18898 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
18899 like:</p>
18900
18901 <blockquote><pre>
18902 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18903 cn: hostname
18904 objectClass: top
18905 objectClass: dhcpHost
18906 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18907 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
18908 </pre></blockquote>
18909
18910 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
18911 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
18912 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
18913 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
18914 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
18915 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
18916 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
18917 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
18918 structural object class.
18919
18920 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
18921
18922 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
18923 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
18924 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
18925 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
18926 in the configuration.</p>
18927
18928 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
18929 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
18930 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
18931 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
18932 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
18933 structure.</p>
18934
18935 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
18936 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
18937
18938 <blockquote><pre>
18939 ou=services
18940   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
18941     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
18942     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
18943       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
18944         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
18945     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
18946       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
18947         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
18948     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
18949       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
18950 </pre></blockquote>
18951
18952 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
18953 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
18954 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
18955 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
18956
18957 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
18958 like this:</p>
18959
18960 <blockquote><pre>
18961 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18962 dc: hostname
18963 objectClass: top
18964 objectClass: dhcpHost
18965 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18966 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
18967 associateddomain: hostname.intern
18968 arecord: 10.11.12.13
18969 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18970 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
18971 </pre></blockquote>
18972
18973 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
18974 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
18975 auxiliary object class.</p>
18976
18977       </div>
18978       <div class="tags">
18979
18980
18981         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>.
18982
18983
18984       </div>
18985     </div>
18986     <div class="padding"></div>
18987
18988     <div class="entry">
18989       <div class="title">
18990         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
18991       </div>
18992       <div class="date">
18993         14th July 2010
18994       </div>
18995       <div class="body">
18996         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
18997 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
18998 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
18999 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
19000 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
19001
19002 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
19003 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
19004
19005 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
19006 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
19007 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
19008 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
19009 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
19010 to a slave DNS server.</p>
19011
19012 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
19013 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
19014 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
19015 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
19016 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
19017 seem to work.</p>
19018
19019 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
19020 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
19021 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
19022 this:</p>
19023
19024 <blockquote><pre>
19025   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19026   cn: hostname
19027   objectClass: dhcphost
19028   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19029   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
19030   associateddomain: hostname.intern
19031   arecord: 10.11.12.13
19032   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19033   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
19034   ldapconfigsound: Y
19035 </pre></blockquote>
19036
19037 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
19038 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
19039 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
19040 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
19041
19042 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
19043 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
19044 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
19045 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
19046 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
19047 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
19048 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
19049 might be a good place to put it.</p>
19050
19051 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19052 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19053
19054       </div>
19055       <div class="tags">
19056
19057
19058         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>.
19059
19060
19061       </div>
19062     </div>
19063     <div class="padding"></div>
19064
19065     <div class="entry">
19066       <div class="title">
19067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
19068       </div>
19069       <div class="date">
19070         11th July 2010
19071       </div>
19072       <div class="body">
19073         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
19074 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
19075 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
19076 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
19077
19078 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
19079 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
19080 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
19081 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
19082 LTSP clients.</p>
19083
19084 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
19085 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
19086 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
19087
19088 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
19089 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
19090 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
19091
19092 <blockquote><pre>
19093 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
19094 #
19095 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
19096 #
19097 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
19098 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
19099 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
19100 #
19101 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
19102 # existence of attribute names.
19103 #
19104 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
19105 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
19106 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
19107 #
19108 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
19109 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
19110 #
19111 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
19112 #     SUP top
19113 #     AUXILIARY
19114 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
19115
19116 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
19117 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
19118     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
19119     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
19120         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
19121         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
19122             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
19123             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
19124             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
19125             # bass value on to clients
19126             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
19127         done
19128     done
19129 fi
19130 </pre></blockquote>
19131
19132 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
19133 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
19134 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
19135 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
19136 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
19137
19138 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19139 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19140
19141 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
19142 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
19143 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
19144 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
19145 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
19146 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
19147
19148       </div>
19149       <div class="tags">
19150
19151
19152         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>.
19153
19154
19155       </div>
19156     </div>
19157     <div class="padding"></div>
19158
19159     <div class="entry">
19160       <div class="title">
19161         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
19162       </div>
19163       <div class="date">
19164          9th July 2010
19165       </div>
19166       <div class="body">
19167         <p>Since
19168 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
19169 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
19170 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
19171 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
19172 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
19173 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
19174 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
19175 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
19176 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
19177 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
19178 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
19179 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
19180 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
19181
19182       </div>
19183       <div class="tags">
19184
19185
19186         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>.
19187
19188
19189       </div>
19190     </div>
19191     <div class="padding"></div>
19192
19193     <div class="entry">
19194       <div class="title">
19195         <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>
19196       </div>
19197       <div class="date">
19198          3rd July 2010
19199       </div>
19200       <div class="body">
19201         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
19202 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
19203 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
19204 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
19205 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
19206 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
19207 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
19208 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
19209
19210 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
19211 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
19212 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
19213 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
19214 publish the difference.</p>
19215
19216 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19217
19218 <blockquote><p>
19219   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
19220   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
19221   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
19222   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
19223   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
19224   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
19225   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
19226   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
19227 </p></blockquote>
19228
19229 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
19230
19231 <blockquote><p>
19232   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
19233   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
19234   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
19235   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
19236   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
19237   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
19238   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
19239   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
19240   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19241   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
19242   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
19243   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
19244   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
19245   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
19246   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
19247   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
19248   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
19249   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
19250   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
19251   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
19252 </p></blockquote>
19253
19254 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19255
19256 <blockquote><p>
19257   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
19258   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
19259   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19260   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19261   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
19262   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
19263   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
19264   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19265   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19266   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19267   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19268   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
19269   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
19270   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
19271   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
19272   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
19273   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
19274   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
19275   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
19276   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
19277   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
19278 </p></blockquote>
19279
19280 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19281
19282 <blockquote><p>
19283   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
19284   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
19285   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
19286 </p></blockquote>
19287
19288 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
19289 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
19290 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
19291 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
19292 the difference somewhat.
19293
19294       </div>
19295       <div class="tags">
19296
19297
19298         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>.
19299
19300
19301       </div>
19302     </div>
19303     <div class="padding"></div>
19304
19305     <div class="entry">
19306       <div class="title">
19307         <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>
19308       </div>
19309       <div class="date">
19310          1st July 2010
19311       </div>
19312       <div class="body">
19313         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
19314 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
19315 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
19316 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
19317 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
19318 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
19319 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
19320 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
19321 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
19322
19323 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19324
19325 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
19326 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
19327 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
19328 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
19329 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
19330 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
19331 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
19332 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
19333 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
19334 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
19335 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
19336 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
19337 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
19338 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
19339 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
19340
19341 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
19342
19343 <blockquote><pre>
19344 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
19345 </pre></blockquote>
19346
19347 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
19348 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
19349 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
19350 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
19351 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
19352 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
19353 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
19354 on how to get this working.</p>
19355
19356 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
19357 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
19358 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
19359 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
19360 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
19361 instructions I found in the
19362 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
19363 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
19364
19365 <blockquote><pre>
19366         debug-level             0
19367         reload-count            unlimited
19368         paranoia                no
19369
19370         enable-cache            passwd          yes
19371         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
19372         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
19373         suggested-size          passwd          211
19374         check-files             passwd          yes
19375         persistent              passwd          yes
19376         shared                  passwd          yes
19377         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
19378         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
19379
19380         enable-cache            group           yes
19381         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
19382         negative-time-to-live   group           20
19383         suggested-size          group           211
19384         check-files             group           yes
19385         persistent              group           yes
19386         shared                  group           yes
19387         max-db-size             group           33554432
19388         auto-propagate          group           yes
19389
19390         enable-cache            hosts           no
19391         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
19392         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
19393         suggested-size          hosts           211
19394         check-files             hosts           yes
19395         persistent              hosts           yes
19396         shared                  hosts           yes
19397         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
19398
19399         enable-cache            services        yes
19400         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
19401         negative-time-to-live   services        20
19402         suggested-size          services        211
19403         check-files             services        yes
19404         persistent              services        yes
19405         shared                  services        yes
19406         max-db-size             services        33554432
19407 </pre></blockquote>
19408
19409 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
19410 automatically like the one provided in
19411 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
19412 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
19413 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
19414 look like this:</p>
19415
19416 <blockquote><pre>
19417 passwd:         files ldap
19418 group:          files ldap
19419 shadow:         files ldap
19420 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
19421 networks:       files
19422 protocols:      files
19423 services:       files
19424 ethers:         files
19425 rpc:            files
19426 netgroup:       files ldap
19427 </pre></blockquote>
19428
19429 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
19430 shadow and netgroup.</p>
19431
19432 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
19433 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
19434 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
19435 attributes cached.
19436
19437 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
19438   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19439
19440 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
19441 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
19442 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
19443 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
19444 discovered sssd.</p>
19445
19446 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
19447
19448 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
19449 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
19450 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
19451 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
19452 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
19453 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
19454 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
19455 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
19456 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
19457 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
19458 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
19459 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
19460 version 1.2 is now in testing.
19461
19462 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
19463 roaming setup I want</p>
19464
19465 <blockquote><pre>
19466 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
19467 </pre></blockquote>
19468
19469 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
19470 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
19471
19472 <blockquote><pre>
19473 [sssd]
19474 config_file_version = 2
19475 reconnection_retries = 3
19476 sbus_timeout = 30
19477 services = nss, pam
19478 domains = INTERN
19479
19480 [nss]
19481 filter_groups = root
19482 filter_users = root
19483 reconnection_retries = 3
19484
19485 [pam]
19486 reconnection_retries = 3
19487
19488 [domain/INTERN]
19489 enumerate = false
19490 cache_credentials = true
19491
19492 id_provider = ldap
19493 auth_provider = ldap
19494 chpass_provider = ldap
19495
19496 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
19497 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19498 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
19499 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
19500 </pre></blockquote>
19501
19502 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
19503 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
19504
19505 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
19506 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
19507 modify it manually.</p>
19508
19509 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19510 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19511
19512       </div>
19513       <div class="tags">
19514
19515
19516         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
19517
19518
19519       </div>
19520     </div>
19521     <div class="padding"></div>
19522
19523     <div class="entry">
19524       <div class="title">
19525         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
19526       </div>
19527       <div class="date">
19528         28th June 2010
19529       </div>
19530       <div class="body">
19531         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
19532 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
19533 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
19534 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
19535 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
19536 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
19537 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
19538 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
19539 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
19540 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
19541
19542 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
19543 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
19544 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
19545 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
19546 released.</p>
19547
19548 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
19549 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
19550 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
19551 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
19552
19553 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
19554 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19555
19556 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
19557 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
19558 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
19559 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
19560 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
19561
19562       </div>
19563       <div class="tags">
19564
19565
19566         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>.
19567
19568
19569       </div>
19570     </div>
19571     <div class="padding"></div>
19572
19573     <div class="entry">
19574       <div class="title">
19575         <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>
19576       </div>
19577       <div class="date">
19578         24th June 2010
19579       </div>
19580       <div class="body">
19581         <p>A while back, I
19582 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
19583 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
19584 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
19585 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
19586
19587 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
19588 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
19589 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
19590 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
19591
19592 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
19593 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
19594 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
19595 Debian Edu.</p>
19596
19597 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
19598 the
19599 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
19600 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
19601 available today from IETF.</p>
19602
19603 <pre>
19604 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
19605 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
19606 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
19607  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
19608         NAME 'dhcpHost'
19609         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
19610 -       SUP top
19611 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
19612         MUST cn
19613         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
19614         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
19615 </pre>
19616
19617 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
19618 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
19619 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
19620
19621 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19622 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19623
19624       </div>
19625       <div class="tags">
19626
19627
19628         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>.
19629
19630
19631       </div>
19632     </div>
19633     <div class="padding"></div>
19634
19635     <div class="entry">
19636       <div class="title">
19637         <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>
19638       </div>
19639       <div class="date">
19640         16th June 2010
19641       </div>
19642       <div class="body">
19643         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
19644 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
19645 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
19646 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
19647 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
19648 this:
19649
19650 <blockquote><pre>
19651 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19652 tasksel --new-install
19653 </pre></blockquote>
19654
19655 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
19656 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
19657 any output what so ever.
19658
19659 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
19660 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
19661 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
19662 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
19663 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
19664 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
19665 code like this:
19666
19667 <blockquote><pre>
19668 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19669 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
19670 $cmd
19671 </pre></blockquote>
19672
19673 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
19674 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
19675 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
19676 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
19677 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
19678 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
19679 installation.</p>
19680
19681 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
19682 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
19683 like this.</p>
19684
19685       </div>
19686       <div class="tags">
19687
19688
19689         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>.
19690
19691
19692       </div>
19693     </div>
19694     <div class="padding"></div>
19695
19696     <div class="entry">
19697       <div class="title">
19698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
19699       </div>
19700       <div class="date">
19701         13th June 2010
19702       </div>
19703       <div class="body">
19704         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
19705 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
19706 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
19707 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
19708 pages.</p>
19709
19710 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
19711 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
19712 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
19713 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
19714 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
19715 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
19716 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
19717 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
19718 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
19719 see how the project is doing.</p>
19720
19721 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
19722 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
19723 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
19724 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
19725 Windows.  This is great.</p>
19726
19727       </div>
19728       <div class="tags">
19729
19730
19731         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>.
19732
19733
19734       </div>
19735     </div>
19736     <div class="padding"></div>
19737
19738     <div class="entry">
19739       <div class="title">
19740         <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>
19741       </div>
19742       <div class="date">
19743         13th June 2010
19744       </div>
19745       <div class="body">
19746         <p>My
19747 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
19748 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
19749 finally made the upgrade logs available from
19750 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
19751 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
19752 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
19753 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
19754
19755 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
19756 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
19757 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
19758 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
19759 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
19760 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
19761 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
19762 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
19763
19764 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
19765 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
19766 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
19767 too surprising.</p>
19768
19769 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
19770 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
19771 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
19772 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
19773 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
19774 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
19775 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
19776 continue.</p>
19777
19778 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
19779 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
19780   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
19781   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
19782   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
19783   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
19784   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
19785   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19786   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19787   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
19788   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
19789   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
19790   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
19791   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19792   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19793   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19794   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19795   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19796   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
19797   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
19798   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
19799   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
19800   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
19801   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
19802   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
19803   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
19804   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
19805   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
19806   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
19807   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
19808
19809 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
19810
19811 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
19812   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
19813   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
19814   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
19815   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
19816   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
19817   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
19818   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
19819   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
19820   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
19821   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19822   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
19823   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
19824   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
19825   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
19826   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
19827   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
19828   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
19829   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
19830   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
19831   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
19832   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
19833   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
19834   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
19835   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
19836   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
19837   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
19838   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
19839   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
19840   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19841   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
19842   zip</p>
19843
19844 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
19845
19846 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
19847   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
19848   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
19849   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
19850   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
19851   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
19852   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19853   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19854   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
19855   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
19856   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
19857   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
19858   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19859   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19860   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19861   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19862   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19863   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
19864   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
19865   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
19866   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
19867   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
19868   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
19869   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
19870   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
19871   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
19872   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
19873   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
19874
19875 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
19876 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
19877   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
19878   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
19879   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
19880   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
19881   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
19882   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
19883   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
19884   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
19885   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
19886   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
19887   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
19888   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
19889   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
19890   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
19891   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
19892   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
19893   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
19894   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
19895   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
19896   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
19897   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
19898   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
19899   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
19900   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
19901   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
19902   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
19903   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
19904   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
19905   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
19906   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
19907   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
19908   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
19909   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
19910   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19911   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
19912   xulrunner-1.9</p>
19913
19914
19915       </div>
19916       <div class="tags">
19917
19918
19919         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>.
19920
19921
19922       </div>
19923     </div>
19924     <div class="padding"></div>
19925
19926     <div class="entry">
19927       <div class="title">
19928         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
19929       </div>
19930       <div class="date">
19931         11th June 2010
19932       </div>
19933       <div class="body">
19934         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
19935 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
19936 have been discovered and reported in the process
19937 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
19938 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
19939 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
19940 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
19941 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
19942
19943 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
19944 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
19945 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
19946 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
19947 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
19948 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
19949
19950 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
19951 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
19952 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
19953 is created.  The bug report
19954 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
19955 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
19956 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
19957 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
19958 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
19959 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
19960 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
19961 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
19962 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
19963 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
19964 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
19965 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
19966 Debian Squeeze.</p>
19967
19968 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
19969 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
19970 trick:</p>
19971
19972 <blockquote><pre>
19973 #!/bin/sh
19974 set -ex
19975
19976 if [ "$1" ] ; then
19977     desktop=$1
19978 else
19979     desktop=gnome
19980 fi
19981
19982 from=lenny
19983 to=squeeze
19984
19985 exec &lt; /dev/null
19986 unset LANG
19987 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
19988 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
19989 fuser -mv .
19990 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
19991 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19992 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
19993 #!/bin/sh
19994 exit 101
19995 EOF
19996 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
19997 exit_cleanup() {
19998     umount $tmpdir/proc
19999 }
20000 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
20001 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
20002 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
20003
20004 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
20005
20006 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
20007 # to return the correct answers.
20008 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
20009     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
20010
20011 # Include the desktop and laptop task
20012 for test in desktop laptop ; do
20013     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
20014 #!/bin/sh
20015 exit 2
20016 EOF
20017     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
20018 done
20019
20020 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20021 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
20022 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
20023 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
20024
20025 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
20026 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
20027 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
20028 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
20029 fuser -mv
20030 </pre></blockquote>
20031
20032 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
20033 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
20034 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
20035 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
20036 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
20037 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
20038
20039 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
20040 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
20041 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
20042 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
20043 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
20044 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
20045 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
20046
20047 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
20048 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
20049 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
20050 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
20051 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
20052 packages.</p>
20053
20054       </div>
20055       <div class="tags">
20056
20057
20058         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>.
20059
20060
20061       </div>
20062     </div>
20063     <div class="padding"></div>
20064
20065     <div class="entry">
20066       <div class="title">
20067         <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>
20068       </div>
20069       <div class="date">
20070          6th June 2010
20071       </div>
20072       <div class="body">
20073         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
20074 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
20075 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
20076 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
20077 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
20078 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
20079 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
20080
20081 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
20082 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
20083 COLUMNS):</p>
20084
20085 <blockquote><pre>
20086 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
20087 previous=N
20088 PREVLEVEL=
20089 RUNLEVEL=
20090 runlevel=S
20091 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
20092 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
20093 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
20094 </pre></blockquote>
20095
20096 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
20097 script.</p>
20098
20099 <blockquote><pre>
20100 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
20101 previous=N
20102 PREVLEVEL=N
20103 RUNLEVEL=S
20104 runlevel=S
20105 </pre></blockquote>
20106
20107 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
20108 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
20109 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
20110
20111 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
20112 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
20113 choice.</p>
20114
20115       </div>
20116       <div class="tags">
20117
20118
20119         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>.
20120
20121
20122       </div>
20123     </div>
20124     <div class="padding"></div>
20125
20126     <div class="entry">
20127       <div class="title">
20128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
20129       </div>
20130       <div class="date">
20131          6th June 2010
20132       </div>
20133       <div class="body">
20134         <p>Via the
20135 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
20136 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
20137 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
20138 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
20139 following the standards wars of today.</p>
20140
20141       </div>
20142       <div class="tags">
20143
20144
20145         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>.
20146
20147
20148       </div>
20149     </div>
20150     <div class="padding"></div>
20151
20152     <div class="entry">
20153       <div class="title">
20154         <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>
20155       </div>
20156       <div class="date">
20157          3rd June 2010
20158       </div>
20159       <div class="body">
20160         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
20161 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
20162 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
20163 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
20164 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
20165
20166 <blockquote><pre>
20167 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
20168   vendor                    count
20169   Dell Computer Corporation     1
20170     PowerEdge 1750              1
20171   IBM                           1
20172     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
20173   Intel                         2
20174   [no-dmi-info]                 3
20175 maintainer:~#
20176 </pre></blockquote>
20177
20178 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
20179 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
20180 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
20181 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
20182 option to list the individual machines.</p>
20183
20184 <p>A larger list is
20185 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
20186 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
20187 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
20188 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
20189 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
20190 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
20191 collector.</p>
20192
20193       </div>
20194       <div class="tags">
20195
20196
20197         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>.
20198
20199
20200       </div>
20201     </div>
20202     <div class="padding"></div>
20203
20204     <div class="entry">
20205       <div class="title">
20206         <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>
20207       </div>
20208       <div class="date">
20209          1st June 2010
20210       </div>
20211       <div class="body">
20212         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
20213 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
20214 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
20215 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
20216 wait.</p>
20217
20218 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
20219 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
20220 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
20221 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
20222 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
20223 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
20224
20225 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
20226 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
20227 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
20228 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
20229 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
20230 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
20231 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
20232 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
20233
20234 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
20235
20236       </div>
20237       <div class="tags">
20238
20239
20240         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>.
20241
20242
20243       </div>
20244     </div>
20245     <div class="padding"></div>
20246
20247     <div class="entry">
20248       <div class="title">
20249         <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>
20250       </div>
20251       <div class="date">
20252         27th May 2010
20253       </div>
20254       <div class="body">
20255         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
20256 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
20257 issues are known and should be solved:
20258
20259 <p><ul>
20260
20261 <li>The wicd package seen to
20262 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
20263 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
20264 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
20265 seem to be on the case.</li>
20266
20267 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
20268 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
20269 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
20270 maintainer is on the case.</li>
20271
20272 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
20273 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
20274 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
20275 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
20276 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
20277 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
20278 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
20279 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
20280
20281 </ul></p>
20282
20283 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
20284 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
20285 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
20286 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
20287
20288 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20289 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20290 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20291 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20292
20293 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
20294
20295       </div>
20296       <div class="tags">
20297
20298
20299         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>.
20300
20301
20302       </div>
20303     </div>
20304     <div class="padding"></div>
20305
20306     <div class="entry">
20307       <div class="title">
20308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
20309       </div>
20310       <div class="date">
20311         22nd May 2010
20312       </div>
20313       <div class="body">
20314         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
20315 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
20316 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
20317 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
20318
20319 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
20320 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
20321 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
20322 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
20323 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
20324 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
20325 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
20326 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
20327 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
20328 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
20329 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
20330 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
20331 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
20332 going to work.</p>
20333
20334 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
20335 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
20336 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
20337 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
20338 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
20339 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
20340 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
20341 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
20342 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
20343 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
20344 Edu.</p>
20345
20346 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
20347 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
20348 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
20349 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
20350 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
20351 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
20352
20353 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
20354 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
20355
20356       </div>
20357       <div class="tags">
20358
20359
20360         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>.
20361
20362
20363       </div>
20364     </div>
20365     <div class="padding"></div>
20366
20367     <div class="entry">
20368       <div class="title">
20369         <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>
20370       </div>
20371       <div class="date">
20372         19th May 2010
20373       </div>
20374       <div class="body">
20375         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
20376 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
20377 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
20378 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
20379 into unstable.  The
20380 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
20381 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
20382 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
20383 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
20384 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
20385 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
20386 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
20387
20388 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
20389 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
20390 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
20391 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
20392 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
20393 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
20394 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
20395 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
20396
20397 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
20398 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
20399 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
20400 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
20401 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
20402 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
20403 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
20404
20405 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
20406 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
20407 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
20408 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
20409 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
20410 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
20411 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
20412 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
20413 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
20414 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
20415 on the home directory servers.</p>
20416
20417 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
20418 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
20419 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
20420 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
20421 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
20422 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
20423
20424 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20425 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20426
20427       </div>
20428       <div class="tags">
20429
20430
20431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
20432
20433
20434       </div>
20435     </div>
20436     <div class="padding"></div>
20437
20438     <div class="entry">
20439       <div class="title">
20440         <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>
20441       </div>
20442       <div class="date">
20443         14th May 2010
20444       </div>
20445       <div class="body">
20446         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
20447 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
20448 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
20449 expected, if I am to believe the
20450 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
20451 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
20452 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
20453 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
20454 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
20455 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
20456 version.</p>
20457
20458 More information about
20459 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20460 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
20461 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
20462 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
20463
20464 <blockquote><pre>
20465 CONCURRENCY=none
20466 </pre></blockquote>
20467
20468 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20469 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20470 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20471 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20472
20473       </div>
20474       <div class="tags">
20475
20476
20477         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>.
20478
20479
20480       </div>
20481     </div>
20482     <div class="padding"></div>
20483
20484     <div class="entry">
20485       <div class="title">
20486         <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>
20487       </div>
20488       <div class="date">
20489         14th May 2010
20490       </div>
20491       <div class="body">
20492         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
20493 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
20494 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
20495 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
20496 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
20497 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
20498 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
20499 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
20500
20501 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
20502 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
20503 this on the collector host:</p>
20504
20505 <blockquote><pre>
20506 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
20507 </pre></blockquote>
20508
20509 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
20510 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
20511
20512 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
20513 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
20514 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
20515 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
20516 written yet.</p>
20517
20518       </div>
20519       <div class="tags">
20520
20521
20522         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>.
20523
20524
20525       </div>
20526     </div>
20527     <div class="padding"></div>
20528
20529     <div class="entry">
20530       <div class="title">
20531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
20532       </div>
20533       <div class="date">
20534         13th May 2010
20535       </div>
20536       <div class="body">
20537         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
20538 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
20539 has been
20540 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
20541
20542 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
20543 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
20544 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
20545 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
20546 based boot system.  Tollef is
20547 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
20548 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
20549 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
20550 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
20551 at the moment do not.</p>
20552
20553 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
20554 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
20555 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
20556 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
20557 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
20558 way forward.</p>
20559
20560 <p>In the mean time, based on the
20561 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
20562 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
20563 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
20564 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
20565 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
20566 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
20567 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
20568 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
20569
20570       </div>
20571       <div class="tags">
20572
20573
20574         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>.
20575
20576
20577       </div>
20578     </div>
20579     <div class="padding"></div>
20580
20581     <div class="entry">
20582       <div class="title">
20583         <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>
20584       </div>
20585       <div class="date">
20586          6th May 2010
20587       </div>
20588       <div class="body">
20589         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
20590 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
20591 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
20592 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
20593 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20594 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
20595 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
20596
20597 <blockquote><pre>
20598 CONCURRENCY=makefile
20599 </pre></blockquote>
20600
20601 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
20602 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
20603 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
20604 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
20605 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
20606 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
20607 make this happen.</p>
20608
20609 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
20610 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
20611 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
20612 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
20613 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
20614
20615 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
20616 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
20617 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
20618 fix the remaining issues.</p>
20619
20620 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20621 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20622 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20623 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20624
20625       </div>
20626       <div class="tags">
20627
20628
20629         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>.
20630
20631
20632       </div>
20633     </div>
20634     <div class="padding"></div>
20635
20636     <div class="entry">
20637       <div class="title">
20638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
20639       </div>
20640       <div class="date">
20641          2nd May 2010
20642       </div>
20643       <div class="body">
20644         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
20645 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
20646 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
20647
20648 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
20649 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
20650 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
20651 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
20652 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
20653
20654 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
20655 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
20656
20657 <blockquote><pre>
20658 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
20659 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
20660 Password expires                                        : never
20661 Password inactive                                       : never
20662 Account expires                                         : never
20663 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
20664 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
20665 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
20666 root@tjener:~#
20667 </pre></blockquote>
20668
20669 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
20670 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
20671 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
20672 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
20673 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
20674 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
20675
20676 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
20677 intended:</p>
20678
20679 <blockquote><pre>
20680 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
20681 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
20682 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
20683 Password expires                                        : never
20684 Password inactive                                       : never
20685 Account expires                                         : never
20686 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
20687 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
20688 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
20689 root@tjener:~#
20690 </pre></blockquote>
20691
20692 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
20693 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
20694 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
20695
20696 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
20697 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
20698
20699 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
20700 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20701
20702 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
20703 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
20704 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
20705 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
20706 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
20707 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
20708 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
20709
20710 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
20711 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
20712 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
20713 change.</p>
20714
20715       </div>
20716       <div class="tags">
20717
20718
20719         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
20720
20721
20722       </div>
20723     </div>
20724     <div class="padding"></div>
20725
20726     <div class="entry">
20727       <div class="title">
20728         <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>
20729       </div>
20730       <div class="date">
20731         28th April 2010
20732       </div>
20733       <div class="body">
20734         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
20735 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
20736 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
20737 and go.</p>
20738
20739 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
20740 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
20741 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
20742 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
20743
20744 <ul>
20745
20746  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
20747    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
20748    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
20749    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
20750    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
20751    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
20752    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
20753    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
20754    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
20755    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
20756    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
20757    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
20758
20759  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
20760    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
20761    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
20762    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
20763    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
20764    or the Fedora developed
20765    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
20766    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
20767
20768  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
20769    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
20770    directory, using unison.</li>
20771
20772  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
20773    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
20774    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
20775    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
20776    implemented.</li>
20777
20778  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
20779    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
20780
20781  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
20782    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
20783    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
20784
20785 </ul>
20786
20787 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
20788 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
20789 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
20790 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
20791 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
20792 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
20793 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
20794 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
20795 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
20796
20797 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20798 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20799
20800       </div>
20801       <div class="tags">
20802
20803
20804         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
20805
20806
20807       </div>
20808     </div>
20809     <div class="padding"></div>
20810
20811     <div class="entry">
20812       <div class="title">
20813         <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>
20814       </div>
20815       <div class="date">
20816         19th April 2010
20817       </div>
20818       <div class="body">
20819         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
20820 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
20821 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
20822 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
20823 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
20824 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
20825 restrictions on the web, for example from
20826 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
20827 epub-version from
20828 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
20829 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
20830 strongly recommend this book.</p>
20831
20832       </div>
20833       <div class="tags">
20834
20835
20836         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>.
20837
20838
20839       </div>
20840     </div>
20841     <div class="padding"></div>
20842
20843     <div class="entry">
20844       <div class="title">
20845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
20846       </div>
20847       <div class="date">
20848         14th April 2010
20849       </div>
20850       <div class="body">
20851         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
20852 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
20853 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
20854 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
20855 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
20856 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
20857 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
20858 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
20859 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
20860
20861 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
20862 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
20863 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
20864 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
20865 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
20866
20867 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
20868 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
20869
20870 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
20871 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
20872 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
20873 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
20874 to work properly.</p>
20875
20876 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
20877 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
20878 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
20879 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
20880 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
20881 time.</p>
20882
20883 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
20884 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
20885 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
20886 up in a few days.</p>
20887
20888       </div>
20889       <div class="tags">
20890
20891
20892         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
20893
20894
20895       </div>
20896     </div>
20897     <div class="padding"></div>
20898
20899     <div class="entry">
20900       <div class="title">
20901         <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>
20902       </div>
20903       <div class="date">
20904          6th March 2010
20905       </div>
20906       <div class="body">
20907         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
20908 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
20909 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
20910 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
20911 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
20912 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
20913
20914 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
20915 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
20916 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
20917 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
20918
20919 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
20920 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
20921 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
20922 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
20923 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
20924 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
20925
20926       </div>
20927       <div class="tags">
20928
20929
20930         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
20931
20932
20933       </div>
20934     </div>
20935     <div class="padding"></div>
20936
20937     <div class="entry">
20938       <div class="title">
20939         <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>
20940       </div>
20941       <div class="date">
20942         11th February 2010
20943       </div>
20944       <div class="body">
20945         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
20946 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
20947 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
20948 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
20949 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
20950 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
20951 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
20952
20953 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
20954
20955 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
20956 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
20957 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
20958 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
20959
20960       </div>
20961       <div class="tags">
20962
20963
20964         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
20965
20966
20967       </div>
20968     </div>
20969     <div class="padding"></div>
20970
20971     <div class="entry">
20972       <div class="title">
20973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
20974       </div>
20975       <div class="date">
20976         27th January 2010
20977       </div>
20978       <div class="body">
20979         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
20980 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
20981 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
20982 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
20983 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
20984 further.</p>
20985
20986 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
20987 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
20988 configured to be a server for the
20989 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
20990 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
20991 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
20992 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
20993 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
20994 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
20995 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
20996 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
20997 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
20998 and Nagios configuration.</p>
20999
21000 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
21001 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
21002 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
21003 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
21004
21005 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
21006 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
21007 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
21008 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
21009 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
21010 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
21011 the machine.</p>
21012
21013 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
21014 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
21015 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
21016 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
21017
21018 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
21019 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
21020 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
21021 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
21022 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
21023 everything is taken care of.</p>
21024
21025       </div>
21026       <div class="tags">
21027
21028
21029         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
21030
21031
21032       </div>
21033     </div>
21034     <div class="padding"></div>
21035
21036     <div class="entry">
21037       <div class="title">
21038         <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>
21039       </div>
21040       <div class="date">
21041         12th August 2009
21042       </div>
21043       <div class="body">
21044         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
21045 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
21046 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
21047 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
21048
21049 <table>
21050 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21051 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21052 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
21053 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
21054 </table>
21055
21056 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
21057 got these numbers:</p>
21058
21059 <table>
21060 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21061 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
21062 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
21063 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
21064 </table>
21065
21066 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
21067
21068 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
21069 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
21070 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
21071 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
21072 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
21073
21074
21075 <table>
21076 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21077 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21078 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
21079 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
21080 </table>
21081
21082 <p>And with 'site:no':
21083
21084 <table>
21085 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21086 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
21087 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
21088 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
21089 </table>
21090
21091 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
21092 numbers.</p>
21093
21094       </div>
21095       <div class="tags">
21096
21097
21098         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>.
21099
21100
21101       </div>
21102     </div>
21103     <div class="padding"></div>
21104
21105     <div class="entry">
21106       <div class="title">
21107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
21108       </div>
21109       <div class="date">
21110          8th August 2009
21111       </div>
21112       <div class="body">
21113         <p>According to <a
21114 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
21115 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
21116 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
21117 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
21118 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
21119 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
21120 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
21121 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
21122 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
21123 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
21124
21125 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
21126 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
21127 seminar this autumn.</p>
21128
21129       </div>
21130       <div class="tags">
21131
21132
21133         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>.
21134
21135
21136       </div>
21137     </div>
21138     <div class="padding"></div>
21139
21140     <div class="entry">
21141       <div class="title">
21142         <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>
21143       </div>
21144       <div class="date">
21145         27th July 2009
21146       </div>
21147       <div class="body">
21148         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
21149 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
21150 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
21151 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
21152 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
21153 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
21154 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
21155
21156 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
21157 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
21158 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
21159
21160       </div>
21161       <div class="tags">
21162
21163
21164         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>.
21165
21166
21167       </div>
21168     </div>
21169     <div class="padding"></div>
21170
21171     <div class="entry">
21172       <div class="title">
21173         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
21174       </div>
21175       <div class="date">
21176         22nd July 2009
21177       </div>
21178       <div class="body">
21179         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
21180 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
21181 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
21182 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
21183 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
21184 the package up to date.</p>
21185
21186 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
21187 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
21188 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
21189 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
21190 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
21191 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
21192 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
21193 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
21194 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
21195 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
21196 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
21197 working on the future release.</p>
21198
21199 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
21200 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
21201
21202       </div>
21203       <div class="tags">
21204
21205
21206         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>.
21207
21208
21209       </div>
21210     </div>
21211     <div class="padding"></div>
21212
21213     <div class="entry">
21214       <div class="title">
21215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
21216       </div>
21217       <div class="date">
21218         24th June 2009
21219       </div>
21220       <div class="body">
21221         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
21222 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
21223 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
21224 funded
21225 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
21226 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
21227 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
21228 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
21229 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
21230 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
21231
21232 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
21233 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
21234 boot:</p>
21235
21236 <ul>
21237
21238 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
21239
21240 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
21241    clock is in UTC.</li>
21242
21243 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
21244    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21245    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
21246
21247 </ul>
21248
21249 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
21250 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
21251 Villegas</a>.
21252
21253 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
21254 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
21255 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
21256 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
21257 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
21258 using this.</p>
21259
21260 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
21261 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
21262 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
21263 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
21264 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
21265 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
21266 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
21267
21268       </div>
21269       <div class="tags">
21270
21271
21272         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>.
21273
21274
21275       </div>
21276     </div>
21277     <div class="padding"></div>
21278
21279     <div class="entry">
21280       <div class="title">
21281         <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>
21282       </div>
21283       <div class="date">
21284          2nd May 2009
21285       </div>
21286       <div class="body">
21287         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
21288 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
21289 do not yet know them.</p>
21290
21291 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
21292 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
21293 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
21294 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
21295 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
21296 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
21297 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
21298 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
21299 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
21300 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
21301 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
21302
21303 <p>The second one is
21304 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
21305 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
21306 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
21307 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
21308 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
21309 and the company behind it is running
21310 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
21311 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
21312 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
21313 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
21314 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
21315 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
21316 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
21317 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
21318
21319 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
21320 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
21321 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
21322 surrounded by today.</p>
21323
21324       </div>
21325       <div class="tags">
21326
21327
21328         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>.
21329
21330
21331       </div>
21332     </div>
21333     <div class="padding"></div>
21334
21335     <div class="entry">
21336       <div class="title">
21337         <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>
21338       </div>
21339       <div class="date">
21340         28th April 2009
21341       </div>
21342       <div class="body">
21343         <p>Julien Blache
21344 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
21345 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
21346 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
21347 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
21348 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
21349 properties.</p>
21350
21351       </div>
21352       <div class="tags">
21353
21354
21355         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>.
21356
21357
21358       </div>
21359     </div>
21360     <div class="padding"></div>
21361
21362     <div class="entry">
21363       <div class="title">
21364         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
21365       </div>
21366       <div class="date">
21367          5th April 2009
21368       </div>
21369       <div class="body">
21370         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
21371 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
21372 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
21373 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
21374 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
21375 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
21376 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
21377 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
21378
21379 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
21380 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
21381 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
21382   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
21383   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
21384
21385 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
21386 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
21387 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
21388 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
21389
21390 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
21391 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
21392 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
21393 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
21394
21395 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
21396 set -e
21397 URL="$1"
21398 SAVEFILE="$2"
21399 DURATION="$3"
21400 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
21401   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
21402   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
21403 pid=$!
21404 sleep $DURATION
21405 kill $pid
21406 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
21407
21408       </div>
21409       <div class="tags">
21410
21411
21412         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>.
21413
21414
21415       </div>
21416     </div>
21417     <div class="padding"></div>
21418
21419     <div class="entry">
21420       <div class="title">
21421         <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>
21422       </div>
21423       <div class="date">
21424         30th March 2009
21425       </div>
21426       <div class="body">
21427         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
21428 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
21429 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
21430 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
21431 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
21432 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
21433 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
21434 application.</p>
21435
21436 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
21437 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
21438 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
21439 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
21440 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
21441 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
21442 blocked from doing so.</p>
21443
21444 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
21445 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
21446 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
21447 requirements change.</p>
21448
21449 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
21450 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
21451 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
21452
21453       </div>
21454       <div class="tags">
21455
21456
21457         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>.
21458
21459
21460       </div>
21461     </div>
21462     <div class="padding"></div>
21463
21464     <div class="entry">
21465       <div class="title">
21466         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
21467       </div>
21468       <div class="date">
21469         29th March 2009
21470       </div>
21471       <div class="body">
21472         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
21473 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
21474 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
21475 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
21476 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
21477 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
21478 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
21479 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
21480 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
21481 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
21482 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
21483 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
21484 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
21485 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
21486 now. :)</p>
21487
21488       </div>
21489       <div class="tags">
21490
21491
21492         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>.
21493
21494
21495       </div>
21496     </div>
21497     <div class="padding"></div>
21498
21499     <div class="entry">
21500       <div class="title">
21501         <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>
21502       </div>
21503       <div class="date">
21504         29th March 2009
21505       </div>
21506       <div class="body">
21507         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
21508 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
21509 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
21510 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
21511 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
21512 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
21513
21514 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
21515 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
21516 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
21517 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
21518 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
21519 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
21520 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
21521 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
21522 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
21523 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
21524 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
21525 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
21526 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
21527
21528 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
21529 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
21530 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
21531 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
21532
21533 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
21534 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
21535
21536 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
21537 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
21538 new IETF work group?</p>
21539
21540       </div>
21541       <div class="tags">
21542
21543
21544         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>.
21545
21546
21547       </div>
21548     </div>
21549     <div class="padding"></div>
21550
21551     <div class="entry">
21552       <div class="title">
21553         <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>
21554       </div>
21555       <div class="date">
21556         28th February 2009
21557       </div>
21558       <div class="body">
21559         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
21560 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
21561 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
21562 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
21563 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
21564 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
21565 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
21566 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
21567 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
21568 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
21569 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
21570 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
21571 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
21572 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
21573 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
21574 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
21575 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
21576 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
21577 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
21578 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
21579 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
21580 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
21581 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
21582 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
21583 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
21584 machine.</p>
21585
21586 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
21587 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
21588 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
21589 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
21590 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
21591 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
21592 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
21593
21594 <pre>
21595 use LWP::Simple;
21596 use POSIX;
21597 use WWW::Mechanize;
21598 use Date::Parse;
21599 [...]
21600 sub get_support_info {
21601     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
21602     my $str;
21603
21604     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
21605         # fetch website from Dell support
21606         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";
21607         my $webpage = get($url);
21608         return undef unless ($webpage);
21609
21610         my $daysleft = -1;
21611         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
21612         foreach my $line (@lines) {
21613             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
21614             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21615             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
21616
21617             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
21618             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
21619             my $lastend = "";
21620             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
21621                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
21622
21623                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21624                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
21625                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21626                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
21627                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
21628                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
21629                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
21630             }
21631             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21632             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21633                 if ($lastend lt $today);
21634         }
21635     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
21636         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
21637         my $url =
21638             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
21639         $mech->get($url);
21640         my $fields = {
21641             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
21642             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
21643             'country' => 'NO',
21644             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
21645             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
21646         };
21647         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
21648                             fields      => $fields );
21649         # Next step is screen scraping
21650         my $content = $mech->content();
21651
21652         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21653         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
21654         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
21655         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
21656
21657         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21658
21659         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
21660             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
21661                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
21662             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
21663             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21664                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
21665             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21666                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
21667
21668             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
21669
21670             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21671                 if ($end lt $today);
21672         }
21673     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
21674         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
21675         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
21676         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
21677             my $content =
21678                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
21679             if ($content) {
21680                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21681                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
21682                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
21683                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
21684
21685                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
21686                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
21687
21688                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
21689
21690                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21691                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21692                     if ($end lt $today);
21693             }
21694         }
21695     }
21696     return $str;
21697 }
21698 </pre>
21699
21700 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
21701 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
21702 from dmidecode.</p>
21703
21704 <pre>
21705 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
21706                        "447707-B21");
21707 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
21708 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
21709                        "1234567");
21710 </pre>
21711
21712 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
21713 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
21714
21715 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
21716 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
21717 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
21718 do so.</p>
21719
21720       </div>
21721       <div class="tags">
21722
21723
21724         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>.
21725
21726
21727       </div>
21728     </div>
21729     <div class="padding"></div>
21730
21731     <div class="entry">
21732       <div class="title">
21733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
21734       </div>
21735       <div class="date">
21736         20th February 2009
21737       </div>
21738       <div class="body">
21739         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
21740 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
21741 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
21742 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
21743 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
21744 the "missing" computer.</p>
21745
21746 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
21747 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
21748 code blocks as defined in the
21749 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
21750 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
21751 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
21752 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
21753 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
21754 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
21755 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
21756 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
21757 codes.</p>
21758
21759 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
21760 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
21761 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
21762 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
21763 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
21764 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
21765
21766 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
21767 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
21768 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
21769 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
21770 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
21771 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
21772 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
21773 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
21774 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
21775 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
21776
21777 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
21778 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
21779 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
21780
21781       </div>
21782       <div class="tags">
21783
21784
21785         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>.
21786
21787
21788       </div>
21789     </div>
21790     <div class="padding"></div>
21791
21792     <div class="entry">
21793       <div class="title">
21794         <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>
21795       </div>
21796       <div class="date">
21797         17th January 2009
21798       </div>
21799       <div class="body">
21800         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
21801 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
21802 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
21803 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
21804 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
21805 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
21806 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
21807 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
21808 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
21809 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
21810 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
21811 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
21812 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
21813 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
21814
21815 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
21816 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
21817 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
21818 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
21819 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
21820 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
21821 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
21822 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
21823 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
21824 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
21825 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
21826 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
21827 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
21828 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
21829 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
21830 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
21831 playing when the download is done.</p>
21832
21833 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
21834 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
21835 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
21836 too.</p>
21837
21838 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
21839 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
21840 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
21841 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
21842
21843       </div>
21844       <div class="tags">
21845
21846
21847         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>.
21848
21849
21850       </div>
21851     </div>
21852     <div class="padding"></div>
21853
21854     <div class="entry">
21855       <div class="title">
21856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
21857       </div>
21858       <div class="date">
21859         28th December 2008
21860       </div>
21861       <div class="body">
21862         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
21863 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
21864 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
21865 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
21866 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
21867 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
21868 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
21869 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
21870 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
21871 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
21872 source, sink and mixer applications and
21873 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
21874 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
21875 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
21876 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
21877 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
21878 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
21879 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
21880 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
21881 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
21882
21883 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
21884 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
21885 larger stick as well.</p>
21886
21887       </div>
21888       <div class="tags">
21889
21890
21891         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>.
21892
21893
21894       </div>
21895     </div>
21896     <div class="padding"></div>
21897
21898     <div class="entry">
21899       <div class="title">
21900         <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>
21901       </div>
21902       <div class="date">
21903          7th December 2008
21904       </div>
21905       <div class="body">
21906         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
21907 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
21908 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
21909 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
21910 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
21911 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
21912 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
21913 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
21914
21915 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
21916 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
21917 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
21918 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
21919 of these cards.</p>
21920
21921       </div>
21922       <div class="tags">
21923
21924
21925         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>.
21926
21927
21928       </div>
21929     </div>
21930     <div class="padding"></div>
21931
21932     <div class="entry">
21933       <div class="title">
21934         <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>
21935       </div>
21936       <div class="date">
21937         25th November 2008
21938       </div>
21939       <div class="body">
21940         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
21941 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
21942 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
21943 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
21944 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
21945 notes are available on
21946 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
21947 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
21948 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
21949 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
21950 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
21951 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
21952 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
21953 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
21954 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
21955
21956 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
21957 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
21958
21959       </div>
21960       <div class="tags">
21961
21962
21963         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>.
21964
21965
21966       </div>
21967     </div>
21968     <div class="padding"></div>
21969
21970     <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>
21971     <div id="sidebar">
21972
21973
21974
21975 <h2>Archive</h2>
21976 <ul>
21977
21978 <li>2015
21979 <ul>
21980
21981 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
21982
21983 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
21984
21985 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
21986
21987 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (1)</a></li>
21988
21989 </ul></li>
21990
21991 <li>2014
21992 <ul>
21993
21994 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
21995
21996 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
21997
21998 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
21999
22000 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22001
22002 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
22003
22004 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22005
22006 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
22007
22008 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
22009
22010 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22011
22012 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
22013
22014 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22015
22016 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
22017
22018 </ul></li>
22019
22020 <li>2013
22021 <ul>
22022
22023 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
22024
22025 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
22026
22027 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
22028
22029 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
22030
22031 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22032
22033 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
22034
22035 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22036
22037 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22038
22039 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22040
22041 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
22042
22043 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
22044
22045 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22046
22047 </ul></li>
22048
22049 <li>2012
22050 <ul>
22051
22052 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
22053
22054 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
22055
22056 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
22057
22058 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
22059
22060 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
22061
22062 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
22063
22064 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
22065
22066 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22067
22068 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
22069
22070 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
22071
22072 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
22073
22074 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22075
22076 </ul></li>
22077
22078 <li>2011
22079 <ul>
22080
22081 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
22082
22083 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
22084
22085 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
22086
22087 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22088
22089 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
22090
22091 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22092
22093 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22094
22095 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22096
22097 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
22098
22099 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22100
22101 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22102
22103 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
22104
22105 </ul></li>
22106
22107 <li>2010
22108 <ul>
22109
22110 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
22111
22112 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
22113
22114 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
22115
22116 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
22117
22118 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22119
22120 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
22121
22122 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
22123
22124 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
22125
22126 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
22127
22128 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
22129
22130 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
22131
22132 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
22133
22134 </ul></li>
22135
22136 <li>2009
22137 <ul>
22138
22139 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
22140
22141 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
22142
22143 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
22144
22145 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
22146
22147 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22148
22149 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
22150
22151 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
22152
22153 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22154
22155 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
22156
22157 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22158
22159 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22160
22161 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22162
22163 </ul></li>
22164
22165 <li>2008
22166 <ul>
22167
22168 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
22169
22170 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22171
22172 </ul></li>
22173
22174 </ul>
22175
22176
22177
22178 <h2>Tags</h2>
22179 <ul>
22180
22181  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
22182
22183  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
22184
22185  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
22186
22187  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
22188
22189  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
22190
22191  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
22192
22193  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
22194
22195  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
22196
22197  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (109)</a></li>
22198
22199  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (151)</a></li>
22200
22201  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
22202
22203  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
22204
22205  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (13)</a></li>
22206
22207  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
22208
22209  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (272)</a></li>
22210
22211  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (22)</a></li>
22212
22213  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
22214
22215  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (15)</a></li>
22216
22217  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
22218
22219  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (14)</a></li>
22220
22221  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (41)</a></li>
22222
22223  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
22224
22225  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
22226
22227  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
22228
22229  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
22230
22231  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
22232
22233  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
22234
22235  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
22236
22237  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (32)</a></li>
22238
22239  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (260)</a></li>
22240
22241  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (175)</a></li>
22242
22243  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (15)</a></li>
22244
22245  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
22246
22247  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (51)</a></li>
22248
22249  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (83)</a></li>
22250
22251  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
22252
22253  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
22254
22255  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
22256
22257  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
22258
22259  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
22260
22261  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
22262
22263  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
22264
22265  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
22266
22267  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
22268
22269  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
22270
22271  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
22272
22273  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (46)</a></li>
22274
22275  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
22276
22277  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
22278
22279  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (30)</a></li>
22280
22281  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
22282
22283  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
22284
22285  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
22286
22287  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (50)</a></li>
22288
22289  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
22290
22291  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (35)</a></li>
22292
22293 </ul>
22294
22295
22296     </div>
22297     <p style="text-align: right">
22298  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
22299 </p>
22300
22301   </body>
22302 </html>